1914-15 WW1 Refugees
Last updated 3/4/2020 Alex Feller
Title: 1914/1915 Galicia and Bukovina War Refugees Address Directory Vol.3
(Księga pamiątkowa i adresowa wygnańców wojennych z Galicyi i Bukowiny 1914-1915 oraz Album pamiątkowe. Cz. 3. Prowincya i Bukowina)
Archive: Silesian Digital Library
Image Acquisition: GenealogyIndexer.org {d32}
Indexing: Nancy Siegel
Link to document image folder for WW1 Refugees
Spreadsheet Guide: This address directory lists Polish citizens who fled Galicia and Bukovina due to hostilities during the years 1914-15.
To view a listing in the original directory, note the image number of the individual from the index below.
Go to the webpage 1914/1915 Galicia and Bukovina War Refugees Address Directory, Vol III
Brzezany starts on image number 99. Drohobycz starts on image number 111. Kolomyja starts on image number 152. Stanislawow starts on image number 236. Tarnopol starts on image 281.
A collective list of refugees from smaller towns starts on image 324.
The following information is provided for each entry:
Surname
First name (head of household)
Occupation (go to http://www.jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/PolishOccs.htm for translations)
Town of origin (included in entries in the collective list of smaller towns)
Date of departure from home town
Town of relocation
Address of relocation
Number of people in the household
This is an example of a listing from the directory followed by a translation.
Blitz, Meschulim, urzd. pryw, , Bukaczowce, 31. VIII. 914. Wieden, VI., Mariahilferstrasse 82, d. 28. 1 os.
Meschulim Blitz, an office clerk, relocated from Bukaczowce on August 31, 1914 to 82 Mariahilfer Str, Unit 28, District 6, Vienna. One person in household. Here is the location on google maps. https://goo.gl/maps/UtlzW
For a translation of the preface from this directory, see below under "Attachments" to view the file Index of War Refugees 1914-15 Preface - Translation. This is an excerpt:
On the nineteenth of January, in the context of the Polish Courier of Vienna, the slogan "Let us count ourselves and unite", the ward expelled us to foreign lands, dispersed us in all directions across the whole west of the monarchy and we do not even know how many had to take up their traveling staff (editor's note: walking stick) and where the fate of the travelers took them. They had to escape from the incursion of the enemy, often in the last hour, often when bullets whistled above heads. In wild disarray and insane agitation we left our families' roofs just as if next to some fearsome explosion. We burst family ties, ties of friendship, acquaintances and businesses and shook people from their nests, houses, towns in all directions. Ones not knowing about others and looking for each other laboriously and often without success.
The collecting of information for this publication had a deadline for submission for Lvov and Krakow it was February 6th, 1915; and for Galicia and Bukovina it was February 15th, 1915.
We received cards, letters, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people responded, including town and country, the big guys, the little guys, the squires, the farmers, the capitalists, the workers - all categories. The most touching were the many that came in the form of a badly composed letters from a heavy hand, more use to a scythe than a pen, from our working people.
The Method:
Each respondent was supposed to submit his first and last name, occupation, permanent place of residence, place before leaving the country, date when left the country, how many people were part of the party who came with the head of the family[1]. There might also be some further text such as a memory or a note.
Why the publication was created:
In order to put together statistics of our war-time Diaspora in the absence of a war-time government administration. In order to find our friends, businesses, re-connect the scattered and help them measure our creative powers so necessary for the reconstruction of our country and also to provide historians with valuable material and to preserve personal remembrances, we started the publication of our " book of remembrances and addresses". It was the whole community participating. The work of the whole Polish society under the Hapsburg scepter, one more piece of its maturity.