Seite - 807 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Strangers in the Homeland 807 surroundings, 104 small localities were completely evacuated and some of them razed to the ground. The people fled. Many Galicians attempted to escape the veritable evac- uation and the forced removal by taking to the road themselves, but strove to remain as close as possible to their settlements and houses.1885 The next thing to happen was the setting-in of deception and self-deception, which was not least a result of the war correspondence : the Imperial and Royal Army ap- peared to hasten from one victory to the next. Further compulsory measures for the ‘protection’ of the civilian population were thus not considered to be necessary. The truth was not deemed acceptable, at least until it was  – almost  – too late. The news of the first setbacks, which gradually filtered through, the fact that the Russian troops had reached Brody and Ternopil (Tarnopol) on 22 August, the circumstance that the Battle of Zborov (Zborów) was just beginning and the fact that only a week later the capital city of Austrian Poland, Lviv (Lemberg) was under threat, provoked complete flight and evacuations. The shockwaves could be felt as far as the Habsburg hereditary lands. And the local legislation and the poor laws were not sufficient to ensure the survival of the refugees. The fugitives would have had a theoretical claim for material support against their home municipalities, but this counted for nothing, since these municipal- ities would soon be located somewhere in territory occupied by the Russians. Thus, it was the job of the ministries of the interior in both halves of the Empire to organise and finance welfare assistance for refugees. Streams of refugees had to be channelled and directed to the individual crown lands that had been instructed to admit them. The first forced stop was normally at the examination stations that had been es- tablished in order to carry out a selection at the borders of the crown lands. If anyone arrived without any belongings and, above all, without financial means, they were as- signed to a refugee transport. If someone had the necessary funds in their possession, they were allowed to proceed. For farmers, the examination stations generally meant an end to their disorderly flight, since their possessions were land and cattle. They had been forced to leave both of these behind. Now they were destitute. The continuation of their journey took place first of all with scheduled trains, though they stopped in Oderberg (Bohumín), Cieszyn (Teschen), Marchegg, Bruck an der Leitha and Uh- erský Brod (Ungarisch Brod) in order to inspect once more the masses flooding back from the north-east of the Dual Monarchy, and where careful attention was taken to ensure that the refugees did not simply scatter into the countryside and the cities. The first camps had to be built. There were not just a few thousand of these, however, but instead hundreds of thousands. Ever more localities in Galicia and Bukovina were evacuated, but the population was, to the extent that they could not flee, ‘abandoned to the enemy’.1886 Those who remained behind  – provided it survived  – subsequently en- countered endless suspicion and very frequently regretted not having fled. The Russians, who had proceeded in their deployment zone no less radically, ruthlessly and indeed