Cemeteries and Death
From August 25 to September 2, 1914, one of the greatest early World War One battles between the armies of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, took place near Lviv. Also known as Galician, or Lviv battle, it ended with the defeat of the Austrians, and led to the 293-day occupation by Russian troops. Russian authorities ordered to bury Austro-Hungarian army POWs, who died in Lviv hospitals in 1914-1915, to be buried on a specially created cemetery in Lychakiv neighborhood.
Meanwhile Imperial Russian Army soldiers were buried on the so-called Glory Hill above Lychakiv Park. Various patriotic demonstrations were held here during the Russian occupation. For example, in April 1915, a procession was organized from the then Russian Orthodox Church of St. George on Franciszkańska Street (now. V. Korolenka Street) to the Hill of Glory, which was attended by Orthodox clergy of Lviv, officials of the Russian government, Russian army units and members of the so-called Moscowphile parties of Galicia.
On November 2, Roman Catholic community of the Lviv celebrated All Souls' Day. Relatives of the deceased streamed to the cemetery to decorate the graves of their dead and light candles. During the war this traditional ceremony acquired a tragic connotation. A local newspaper wrote the following about the All Souls' Day celebration in 1917, “There was no former splendor, with which graves had been surrounded in the past, here and there tombs lanterns were flickering or a solitary candle would cast a faint shadow on the vault.”
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Monday, September 14, [1914]. The city looks gloomy. There have been visible changes in traffic. Instead of Oziash Wicksell’s carts and bottled beer wagons of Brewers Association, it becomes more and common to observe smaller and larger black closed wagons with crosses on the top. They are the wagons of local Concordia funeral home. They take the bodies from infirmaries to places where the deceased can find eternal rest and reconciliation. On the hill behind Bartosz Głowacki Park, Russians took a large plot for an Orthodox cemetery. This is where black Concordia wagons head towards the Glory Hill, as it is called by the Russian military.