ZOLYNIA IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Letter from Zolynia Town Council explains that a requested birth record could not be supplied. "The relevant record books were lost during the invasion year of 1914..." The 1927 letter is signed by Mr. Dreibaud, "In Charge of Israelite Registers."

Austria invaded Serbia on July 28, 1914 and within days, Austria and Germany were at war with Russia, France and Great Britain. The outskirts of Zolynia were about eleven miles (18 km) southwest from the Austrian-Russian frontier at the San River just past Lezajsk, one day's advance for either modern army. The little town was suddenly on the front lines.

The Austrian army immediately moved into the area, using the castle at Lancut as a regional headquarters and hospital. An initial Russian attack was repulsed, but on September 13 the Russian Army moved into Zolynia and the surrounding towns, which had already been stripped of food and materials by both sides. The Austrians recaptured the area three weeks later, but then collapsed into full retreat. Zolynia was in Russian occupied territory.

Austrian Jews were taught to fear the anti-Semitic Russian Army, and hundreds of thousands of refugees streamed out of the Galicia countryside. Between one quarter and one half of the province's 800,000 Jews took to the roads with whatever they could carry, seeking safety in cities away from the front. There were also at least 100,000 non-Jewish refugees from Galicia, and many were desperate for food and shelter as they roamed.

In Feburary 1915, a German army advanced to meet the Russians. On May 2, a forty-mile wide German column stretching from Tarnow south to Golice (56 miles, 90 km east of Zolynia) began to push the Russians back. On May 12, Zolynia was again in the hands of the Central Powers and would be for the rest of the war. However, shell fire had wrecked many buildings, the passing of the huge armies had flattened farms and broken roads, and the entire area was lined with trenches, barbed wire and graves. It would take years for many residents to find their way back to Zolynia; some never returned.

The collapse of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire led to the declaration of a new, independent country of Poland in November 1918. After amost three years of peace conferences, public referenda, fighting against Ukrainians and a full-scale war against the Soviet Union, the final borders of the new Poland were set. Zolynia was in south-central Poland, a republic challenged by hyperinflation and ethnic tensions. Those tensions would soon be felt in Zolynia.