Page - 808 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

808 Camps pogrom-like,1887 tormented the people in the border regions unless they showed them- selves to be unconditionally Russophile, and were guilty of numerous assaults. They commenced not least with a mass resettlement and expulsion to the interior of Russia, which was then continued in Austrian Galicia. Around three million people lost their homes in this way. In the process, the Polish Count Georgy A. Bobrinsky, who had been appointed by the Russians as Governor in Galicia,1888 collaborated with Russian officials, who aspired to a Russification of Galicia and also began to make mass arrests. Furthermore, hostages were taken, above all among those members of the Jewish pop- ulation who had not fled. The Russians were also able to make use of the strife and the animosities that quickly broke out between Poles, Ruthenians and Jews, since under the cover of the Russian occupiers it was possible to plunder on a large scale and take action against unpopular people. Those who had fled to Austria had saved their lives, but in many cases their fate differed only gradually from that of those who had been deported to Russia. They were especially accompanied by distrust at every turn. Between 200,000 and 300,000 Ruthe- nians and Poles in Galicia left their country during the first great exodus or were evac- uated. In the process, a type of three-way split may have occurred : one third wanted to get to safety and thus fled ; another third was evacuated as a precaution, in order not to expose the inhabitants of a war zone that was expanding ever further westwards to the danger of the fighting ; the other third was forcibly resettled in order to get rid of civilians and reduce the risk that military measures might be spotted and reported to the Russians. Probably, each measure was overdone : some people fled who had not at least initially been endangered ; others were evacuated who were less endangered in cities like Lviv and, above all, Kraków (Krakau) than the villagers and farmers  – and it was especially they who vehemently opposed the forced removal. The fear of informers and spies was certainly justified, but it degenerated into a dangerous hysteria. The ques- tion was asked least of all as to what those people whose settlement areas threatened to become a war zone were afraid of and what they had suffered. Far more often the question was posed as to what induced them to remain. To cite just one example : when the Imperial and Royal Infantry Regiment No. 7 reached the small village of Novy Čindra near Novemiasto in the Beskid Mountains on 4 November, the order was given for the civilian population to leave its houses within twelve hours. ‘Everyone is getting in each other’s way, each one wants to take away his own [possessions], carts are loaded up. […] It is sad to watch how the people leave their native soil with difficulty and how they must go but don’t know where to. […] Everyone cries, whether a man or a woman, a child or an old person ; these poor people are expelled from their dwellings, and now with the winter just around the corner. The twelve hours are up and our patrols roam through the village, and where they encounter a civilian he is arrested as a spy and each one is hanged without even being questioned. […] Naturally, a lot of people are still to