Keywords

Introduction

Verse

Verse Their home stands lonely on the hill among the wreaths Made from the black lace of spruces and the white lace of snow, Strange people lie inside it, far from the shore of an incomprehensible country, The country of people alive and insane Marja Kazecka “Disabled Veterans’ Home”Footnote

Biały Orzeł, 1 January 1930, 7; my translation.

Marja Kazecka’s verse suggests that residents of the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home were separated from the rest of society. They were far from “the country of people alive and insane.” According to the poet, this separation was visible in urban space, as the institution was located on a hill. Scholars have indeed argued that such institutions excluded disabled persons from everyday life.Footnote 2 More inclusive projects based on the concept of the Garden City aimed to prevent the segregation of disabled veterans in Poland. The Lviv architect Roman Feliński believed that unbearable social conditions in modern cities caused physical and cultural degeneration, and he suggested establishing special garden urban settlements or agricultural colonies where disabled veterans would live close to healthy neighbors and be an integral part of society. Despite this new vision, the state initially chose traditional forms of institutionalization over the implementation of such new models for veterans who needed special care.Footnote 3 The sociocultural environment, and arrangements—including the “architecture of injury” that often separate disabled persons from the rest of society—are crucial in the construction of disability as a community bound together by discrimination and exclusion.Footnote 4

Disability historians have acknowledged that “disability” itself is a socially constructed notion, and that an individual’s particular impairments “have no meanings in and of themselves.”Footnote 5 Rather, the experience of bodily or psychological difference is mediated by a complex set of social and cultural beliefs and conditions.Footnote 6 Experience as an analytical category studies both social reality and the cultural process that interprets social reality.Footnote 7 Although the understanding of disability changed over time, the experience of war disability has its distinctive features. War disability typically affected adults, who generally did not want to challenge social norms; rather, they preferred to return to conventional, masculine roles and a “normalized existence with ordinary street invisibility.”Footnote 8 Through studying documents, the disabled veterans’ press, and local Lviv newspapers, the chapter explores how the state facility and its location influenced the veterans’ experience of disability and how the institution shaped the community and its self-representation. It examines the interplay between various discourses constructed by the disabled veterans and the military and civilian authorities, which together formed the Lviv institution and shaped the injured soldiers’ experiences of disability—or, to put it differently, how their wartime wounds translated into lives of disablement. However, the soldiers were hardly passive, and I will argue that activism and resistance to disciplinary regulations were crucial factors that shaped this state facility and the daily experience of its residents.

Due to the unstable political situation in the eastern borderland and Lviv, the largest city in the region, the social policy of the Polish state was especially important in these territories. Before 1918, the Polish lands were divided between the Russian, German, and Austrian empires, and as a result, sometimes Poles fought on opposing sides in the various imperial armies. The dissolution of the Austrian Empire led to the Ukrainian–Polish war of 1918–19 for the eastern part of the former province of the “Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria,” as two contesting national projects proclaimed their rights to this land. Lviv, a former provincial capital, had an ethnically and religiously heterogeneous population. According to the official census of 1931, 50.4 per cent of city dwellers were Roman Catholics, 15.9 per cent were Greek Catholics, 31.9 per cent were Jewish, and 1.7 per cent were of another faith, but 63.5 per cent spoke Polish as their mother tongue, 24.1 per cent Yiddish or Hebrew, 7.8 per cent Ukrainian, and 3.5 per cent Ruthenian.Footnote 9 The city attained a central symbolical meaning for both national projects and became an epicenter of street fights in November 1918.

The Polish army won the war, but the Ukrainians did not accept the defeat, and the Ukrainian–Polish conflict became one of the important features of political life in interwar Poland. Because of the Ukrainian–Polish dispute, the ethnically and religiously mixed lands of former Eastern Galicia were officially incorporated into the Second Polish Republic only in March 1923 (although de-facto they had been part of Poland since July 1919).Footnote 10 Moreover, the Lviv pogrom in November 1918 and increasing political anti-Semitism caused a tense relationship with the Jewish community throughout the interwar era.Footnote 11 In addition, the border with the enemy state, the Soviet Union, added to the complexity of the political situation in the region.

The imperial past and the Ukrainian–Polish war of 1918–19 and the subsequent Soviet-Polish war of 1920–21 resulted in various groups of veterans cohabitating in the same territory. The largest organization of disabled servicemen, the Polish Union of Disabled Veterans, was founded in April 1919 in Warsaw. The main purpose of this organization was to represent disabled veterans and defend their rights. Among its main principles were ethnic, religious, and political neutrality, as well as the inclusion of every demobilized disabled soldier regardless of the army with which he had been affiliated. Legislation that would provide state benefits was the main focus of the Union’s activism in the early 1920s.Footnote 12

At the same time, parliamentarians considered the social program for disabled veterans as a means to strengthen the Polish influence and loyalty to the state in the eastern and western borderlands. After long debates over whether disabled soldiers who belonged to the national minority groups and imperial armies could be considered “Polish” disabled veterans, the parliament passed the inclusive legislation in March 1921. Disabled activists won the battle for benefits, and the Polish government provided assistance to all disabled servicemen regardless of their ethnic origin, religious beliefs, or army affiliation. The only exceptions were disabled soldiers of the Ukrainian Galician army who had fought against the Polish army during the Ukrainian–Polish war. Among the benefits provided by the Polish state was the right to institutional care in the Disabled Veterans’ Homes for severely disabled combatants. Only those whose bodies were considered damaged beyond repair and who could not become productive members of society were eligible to live in these institutions.Footnote 13

Like any special architectural arrangements, “the architecture of injury” was a part of urban social space in Lviv and it shaped the urban experience of disability.Footnote 14 The Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home was built in the neo-Romanesque style by Viennese architect Theophil Hansen in 1855–63.Footnote 15 It was located in the Żółkiewskie district, an area described in the Illustrated Lviv Guidebook (1925) as a “dirty and shabby northern part of the city populated by Jews.”Footnote 16 Despite its location, the Disabled Veterans’ Home was impressive. It consisted of three wings and had about 225 rooms. It was a modern facility with running water, gas, and electricity, surrounded by a park, in which a small chapel was built. The 1933 edition of the Illustrated Lviv Guidebook listed “the Disabled Veterans’ Home” among major public buildings and praised it for its well-planned space.Footnote 17

The magnificent building also housed a complex history of social and political relations. By the 1920s, it was a special state facility that was part of the welfare system and embodied the social policy of the Polish government, but at the same time, it was an institution inherited from the imperial era. Not only did the Polish authorities use the Austrian building of the “Home,” but prewar Austrian disabled veterans continued to reside there, emphasizing the continuity of the Disabled Veterans’ Home. To complicate matters, the building also accommodated various military offices, a prosthesis factory, a school for disabled soldiers, a residence for veterans who were studying, a temporary hostel for disabled servicemen, and an orthopedic surgery and military hospital. However, as victims of the economic crisis, many of these institutions established for disabled veterans would be closed by the mid-1920s (Fig. 8.1).Footnote 18

Fig. 8.1
A photograph of the Lviv disabled Veteran's home.

The Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home (The National Library of Poland)

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The State Disabled Veterans’ Home

Admission Policies. The right to reside in the state Disabled Veterans’ Home was conditional: demobilized male soldiers were allowed to stay at the Home only if they were either 75–100 per cent disabled or were veterans with 47–75 per cent disability but could not perform paid labor because of mental disorders and could not receive adequate assistance at home.Footnote 19 In summer 1924, 194 disabled veterans resided at the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home. The number of institutionalized servicemen decreased over the years; only 86 veterans resided at the institution in 1931. Among them were 61 disabled veterans who had served in 1914–21, 15 prewar veterans, one participant in the January uprising of 1863–64, and nine people who did not enjoy the status of disabled veterans. The majority of the residents of the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home were 100 per cent disabled.Footnote 20

Institutionalization in the Disabled Veterans’ Home meant the loss of personal freedoms, such as freedom of movement. Moreover, disabled veterans could be institutionalized against their will. They could not leave the Home without the permission of its administration. Residents could be granted “vacations,” but they had to return to the institution or else the authorities would start an investigation. According to instructions issued in 1929, the Lviv province administration made decisions about the admissibility of disabled soldiers to the Disabled Veterans’ Home. The Department of Assistance to Disabled Veterans conducted its own investigations into the applicants’ families, and bureaucrats often delved into a family’s most private and intimate details. Local authorities also refused to admit disabled veterans to the Disabled Veterans’ Home when their health conditions were potentially dangerous to other residents of the institution.Footnote 21

Before disabled veterans were placed in the Home, they had often spent years in military hospitals, victims of the convoluted procedures and policies involved in patient transfer, which delayed the process of moving to the Home.Footnote 22 For example, in spring 1927, the Lviv military hospital informed the Lviv Province administration that one of its patients, Michał Woźniak, did not need further medical treatment and had to leave the hospital. At the same time, the veteran applied for permission to reside in the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home because his family could not care for him. The investigation of the family’s finances and łcommunication between the various levels of the local administration took more than two years. Woźniak was granted permission to move to the Disabled Veterans’ Home only at the end of 1929.Footnote 23

Veterans could also be removed from the Disabled Veterans’ Home in the early 1920s if the medical commissions determined that there was an insufficient connection between military service and the individual’s disability. However, in some cases, the administration actually suggested prolonging the veteran’s stay so that another institution or job might be found for him, since he would otherwise be left homeless and without income. For instance, a soldier of the Polish army, Teodor Kubejko, continued to live in the Disabled Veterans’ Home for years, despite the fact that he was injured not on the battlefield but in a railway accident.Footnote 24

Defending the “Right to the City.” The various branches of military and civilian administration had different visions of what constituted both institutional care and war-related disability, and in the early 1920s, bureaucrats often discussed different institutional models for caring for disabled servicemen. In 1923, the Ministry of Social Welfare and Labor requested that the Disabled Veterans’ Home be transferred to its control.Footnote 25 Military and civilian medical professionals represented the Ministry of Military Affairs and the Ministry of Social Welfare and Labor during the negotiations. The representatives of both ministries shared the same opinion about disabled veterans and the institution. The officials agreed that veterans with a high level of disability had to be transferred from Lviv to the countryside, and they believed that these new circumstances would force the majority of disabled veterans to find work. In other words, Lviv military and civil bureaucrats considered residents of the Home to be loafers who used and abused state benefits.Footnote 26

At the same time, other reports written by civilian authorities indicated that they opposed the effort by the Ministry of Military Affairs to transfer disabled soldiers from the Disabled Veterans’ Home. The increasing tension between military and civilian bureaucrats led to years of struggle over the institutions for disabled veterans and highlight their varying bureaucratic approaches to this issue. The representatives of the Ministry of Social Welfare and Labor underlined that the transfer of disabled veterans to the countryside would have negative consequences for the Polish government. The eastern borderlands and Lviv constituted a special region where the various branches of the government had to cooperate to organize the welfare system for disabled veterans, and any failure of the authorities to support disabled soldiers could be used as anti-Polish propaganda by state enemies.Footnote 27

Local officials also tried to use the “continuity” argument to keep the Disabled Veterans’ Home open. The province administration uncovered from the Viennese archive the founding documents that confirmed the establishment of the Home by Emperor Franz-Joseph as an institution for disabled veterans.Footnote 28 After negotiations in March 1924, civilian and military authorities ultimately divided the responsibilities for the institutions located in the building. The hospital of orthopedic surgery and the prosthesis factory were transferred to the Ministry of Social Welfare and Labor, while the Ministry of Military Affairs kept control over the care of veterans with a high percentage of disability.Footnote 29

As the Ministry of Military Affairs maintained control over the management of severely disabled veterans, it continued to work on a plan to transfer these residents out of Lviv to the countryside. Among the many factors that influenced the Ministry’s plan was the resistance of local disabled veterans’ organizations as well as public opinion. The Lviv Organization for the Assistance to Blind Soldiers (“Latarnia”), the Little Poland Organization of Blind Soldiers (“Spójnia”), and the Union of Disabled Veterans of the Polish Republic protested to the local authorities in May 1924, and the Union even published a special booklet.Footnote 30

Interestingly, the organizations mobilized many of the same arguments that the various authorities had used. The organizations emphasized that the Home had been founded as a residence for disabled veterans and had served as such for more than fifty years; they also contended that military authorities did not have the right to evict them. The Disabled Veterans’ Home, moreover, was situated in the region’s “metropolis” and could thus offer its residents the conveniences of modern urban life. It would be impossible to provide the same quality of life in any provincial town, and veterans would lack access to adequate medical and cultural services. Disabled veterans would also lose the employment opportunities that came with being in Lviv. The activists of “Latarnia” stressed the accessibility of the Disabled Veterans’ Home, and they underlined that blind soldiers had already learned the Home’s physical layout. Activists suspected that the authorities were trying to “hide” them from urban spaces and make them an invisible part of society. They explained that the governments of Western European countries had established special institutions for disabled veterans in large cities and capitals, and so too should Poland.Footnote 31 Veterans were not passive victims in the experience of disability; rather, they defended what Henri Lefebvre called their “right to the city.”Footnote 32 Disabled soldiers effectively appealed to many of the same social and political priorities that had shaped their lives and service in the first place.

Among the defenders of the disabled veterans was Captain Dr. Józef Aleksiewicz, the founder and former head of the Lviv hospital of orthopedic surgery. Much like the disabled activists, he believed that servicemen were entitled to assistance and should continue to lobby for their interests. For Aleksiewicz, the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home was not only a veterans’ residence; it was also an educational and cultural institution that could strengthen the Polishness of the eastern borderlands.Footnote 33 Thus, the Disabled Veterans’ Home also acquired an additional symbolic meaning. It was a space that represented the Polish state project in Lviv.

Such opposition from disabled veteran organizations and some local bureaucrats was effective, and the Home was not closed down. In 1929, the military finally relinquished control and civilian authorities took over management of the Home. But the transfer was not seamless, and a dispute between the administrators of the Home and the military hospital over the attached park lasted about a year. In the summer of 1938, the military authorities again tried to regain control over part of the building. Although the local military officials requested the documents that confirmed the transfer of the building to the civilian authorities in 1929, employees from the Lviv province administration claimed that they were unable to find them.Footnote 34 However, it seems that the officials resisted the military authorities. In fact, the transfer of the institution to the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare in November 1929 was well-documented and these papers are publicly available today.Footnote 35

Everyday Life in the Disabled Veterans’ Home

The Ministry of Military Affairs documents addressing the state’s attempt to regulate daily life in the Home before 1929 are not well preserved. However, several newspaper articles paint a rather gloomy picture, including one published in Inwalida by a disabled veteran who visited his blind friends at the institution in 1925. He claimed that the residents of the Home did not have enough food and that their threadbare clothes confined them to the institution and its grounds. Veterans who spoke out, he reported, were expelled from the institution or punished.Footnote 36 The official document on food consumption at the Home differed from the newspaper articles. In 1925, for example, the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare issued nutritional guidelines for Home residents. The officials underlined that the menu had to consist of a variety of dishes rich in proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and vitamins. The daily norm for veterans was 3643.9 calories, and they received, among other products, 800 g of bread, 250 g of meat, and 18 g of coffee. The Ministry also developed guidelines for nutritional substitutions depending upon availability and the season. In addition to food, residents of the Disabled Veterans’ Home also received three cigarettes per day. These norms were not necessarily shared outside the administration, but the nutritional guidelines did have to be displayed.Footnote 37

However, the press continued to publish the articles about the Home’s shocking hygienic conditions, its lack of professional care, and the poor quality of its food. In 1929, the anonymous authors of Biały Orzeł, the Lviv newspaper for disabled veterans, demanded that authorities intervene and provide decent conditions for veterans.Footnote 38 Allegedly, the sorry state of affairs in the Home had serious consequences. In August 1928, Inwalida reported two suicides at the Lviv institution.Footnote 39 The same incident was reported in the Ukrainian newspaper Novyi Chas, which argued that the suicides were caused by the material hardship endured by the Home’s disabled veteran residents. The journalist also mentioned that local Polish newspapers had ignored this case.Footnote 40 At that time, the Lviv institution for veterans was still under the control of military bureaucrats, and it was possible that the authorities had tried to prevent a public discussion.

Disabled activist and journalist Mironowicz published a rare outsider’s account of his visit to the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home in 1939. According to his article, disabled veterans were well taken care of, and food prepared at the Home could be served at the best restaurants. Although he was a disabled veteran himself, the visit was a very challenging experience for Mironowicz. He described the “macabre figures” in the park, but the worst place in the Home, in his view, was the room for servicemen with severe disabilities. Mironowicz was shocked by faces that looked like “death masks”: “I do not know what to do with myself? Should I ask them something? Or should I leave ashamed?”Footnote 41 It is interesting that the journalist shared his shocking experience of exposure to disabled bodies, which were usually hidden from others, not with the general public but with veteran-readers of the journal for disabled servicemen (Figs. 8.2 and 8.3).

Fig. 8.2
A group photograph of disabled people in the Veteran's Home.

The Disabled Veterans’ Home, 1926–39 (The National Digital Archive)

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Fig. 8.3
A photograph of two people in their wheelchairs in the park.

Park near the Disabled Veterans’ Home, 1926–39 (The National Digital Archive)

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Nowadays, scholars challenge the idea that institutionalized disabled soldiers were “passive or voiceless” and could not influence their experience of institutionalization.Footnote 42 Conflicts between residents, with the administration, and with the rules were common at the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home after 1929, and their documentation has been well preserved. In general, the numerous clashes and disciplinary violations indicate the failure of the traditional model of institutionalization. Residents of the institution had different backgrounds and ethnicities, and they came from different Polish regions. Some veterans had mental conditions or suffered from alcoholism, both of which often exacerbated conflict with other residents.Footnote 43

In August 1930, the Disabled Veterans’ Home in Płock was closed, and 27 disabled veterans were transferred to the Lviv Home.Footnote 44 This resettlement of disabled veterans from other regions resulted in an even more heterogeneous environment. Nevertheless, the number of veterans residing at the institution also gradually decreased in the 1930s. In the summer of 1933, the commission that examined the work of the Home administration even recommended a reduction in the number of staff. In the end, in order not to increase the unemployment rate or to dismiss staff during the Great Depression, it was decided to reduce the employees’ salaries.Footnote 45 By the 1930s, the Lviv Home became the only facility for institutionalized disabled soldiers in Poland, and its work showed the tension between the Polish government’s managerial strategies and disabled residents’ daily resistance to the disciplinary power of this institution.

Forced Institutionalization. Although many residents voluntarily chose to live in the Lviv Home, some were admitted against their will. State officials, guided by regulations and expert advice, could decide disabled soldiers’ futures for them. For instance, in August 1930, Włodzimirz Skwirski was admitted to the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home despite his wish to live with his fiancée. After treatment in a psychiatric hospital, local bureaucrats had decided to transfer Skwirski to the Home. They investigated the veteran’s fiancée’s background and concluded that she was not reliable enough to care for her disabled partner, who was addicted to morphine. However, in April 1931, Lviv province authorities sent a request to transfer Skwirski to another institution: his addiction to morphine rendered him ineligible for residence at the Home. The veteran, however, wished to stay in the institution, and he even demanded a separate room for himself and his wife. The local authorities refused to approve his request.Footnote 46 Moreover, Skwirski violated the Disabled Veterans’ Home’s rules when his wife and dog moved in with him, and other disabled veterans, who lived in the same room, opposed this violation of their personal space.Footnote 47

The relationship between Skwirski and the Home administrators deteriorated further after he accused them of financial fraud. Skwirski was finally expelled from the institution in August 1931.Footnote 48 His story illustrates how some disabled veterans tried to lead a “normal” life and ignored the institution’s rules. They demanded accommodations that the institution simply could not provide. At the same time, while the administration had the power to admit or expel people from the Disabled Veterans’ Home, it took several months to evict Skwirski.

Disabled residents of the Lviv Home often suffered from various mental disorders. In August 1923, 74 disabled soldiers resided at the Kulparkiv Psychiatric Hospital in Lviv, and they constituted only about one quarter of institutionalized disabled veterans.Footnote 49 According to a report from 1931, among 61 disabled residents of the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home who had served in the military between 1914 and 1921, ten had various mental disorders.Footnote 50 Sometimes their conditions worsened, and their behaviors became dangerous to other veterans and the employees of the institution. In April 1931, the administration of the Home requested that Marjan Fischbach be transferred to the psychiatric hospital. According to their report, Fischbach had a “demoralizing” influence on other disabled residents and even threatened to shoot the director of the institution and his family.Footnote 51

Two months later, in June 1931, Adolf Twardowski, the new director of the Disabled Veterans’ Home, wrote to the Lviv province administration about the veteran Kazimerz Klimczak, who had previously resided at the Home but whose behavior had resulted in him being transferred to the Kulparkiw Psychiatric Hospital. The administration of the Home refused to admit Klimczak to their institution again because of his dangerous history. Before institutionalization in the Kulparkiw hospital, the disabled veteran had threatened fellow veterans and nurses with a knife and a hammer. Considering that a dozen disabled soldiers might reside in one room, such behavior caused serious concerns for the administration.Footnote 52

The Role of the Family. Institutionalized disabled veterans usually lacked close relatives or family members able to care for them. A few, however, were married but simply could not stay in their homes. In the early 1920s, several married disabled soldiers even tried to support their children and spouse. They applied for a one-time payment in order to help their families cope with financial problems.Footnote 53 A payment of this kind was granted to veteran Piotr Flügel in May 1923. In his letter to the Lviv province administration, the disabled resident of the Home mentioned that he needed money to open a cigarette kiosk that would allow his wife to have a source of income.Footnote 54 As the traditional division of the gender roles assigned husbands to the role of breadwinner, disabled veterans tried to find ways to live up to this responsibility.

In many cases, veterans themselves—and occasionally their relatives—applied for residence at the Home.Footnote 55 Some disabled veterans could be re-admitted to the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home several times. Family members could also request that veterans be released from the Home. In cases where local authorities recognized relatives as suitable caretakers, they allowed veterans to leave the institution. Some disabled veterans, however, preferred to stay at the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home.Footnote 56 For instance, Piotr Pycek, a former soldier of the Polish Legion, moved to the Home in 1935, complaining that his wife was starving him. Although he left the Disabled Veterans’ Home in 1936 and moved back with his wife, he again applied for permission to return at the beginning of 1938. Pycek informed the authorities that his wife, Albina, had taken his allowance but had not taken care of him. In other cases, the wife not only took the veteran’s money but also had other lovers and pursued an “immoral lifestyle.”Footnote 57 In times of economic crisis and unemployment, disabled veterans’ allowances became a very important source of income for some families. Relatives sometimes took advantage of disabled soldiers, and institutionalization was a way for these men to defend themselves.

Like other aspects of everyday life in the Disabled Veterans’ Home, visits from relatives and friends were regulated. When five disabled veterans asked for permission to have visitors in their rooms twice per week, the province authorities refused. These residents reported that they were unable to move without wheelchairs, and it was inconvenient for them to meet visitors in the special room downstairs. However, a doctor testified that the disabled veterans in fact did have wheelchairs and could move downstairs using the electric elevator without harm to their health. Moreover, some of them went to cinemas, theatres, or the park near the Home, so they should certainly be able to meet their visitors in the special room.Footnote 58 These strict regulations divided the space of the institution into “private” and “public” parts. Families and friends could not see the private part, which was open only to residents and employees of the Home. This denied the veterans the privacy to meet with friends and relatives outside the designated public meeting space.

Ethnic Conflict. Tensions continued in the form of ethnic conflict. Technically, the administration of the Lviv Home did not classify servicemen according to their nationality or army affiliation. Rather, residents’ lists indicated only the percentage of disability and the diagnosis of Home residents.Footnote 59 However, while the administration showed little concern about the backgrounds of disabled servicemen, national and regional divisions caused many conflicts. For instance, although veterans of the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR) armyFootnote 60 were allowed to reside at the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home, they did not always have a pleasant stay. In September 1931, the Central Ukrainian Committee in Warsaw requested that two Ukrainian veterans, who were about to be expelled, be allowed to remain temporarily at the Home. The members of the committee needed time to find them another residence.Footnote 61

Antoni Slusarczyk, a veteran of the UNR army and Szymon Atrachowicz, an 85-year-old veteran of Denikin’s and the UNR armies, were not typical residents of the Lviv institution (and veterans in general). They had been transferred from the Płock Home to the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home in 1930. After this transfer, the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare decided that the former soldiers did not have the right to reside at the Lviv institution. The Ministry reasoned that the veterans had served in the UNR army before it became an ally of Poland and that legally they were not entitled to the status of disabled veteran.Footnote 62

In addition, the residents of the Home and the other local disabled activists were dissatisfied that disabled servicemen who did not have the official status of “Polish disabled veterans” were allowed to stay there.Footnote 63 Legal regulations had likely governed the course of events, however; perhaps the reason for their expulsion was more prosaic. Indeed, it seems that the key reason for the departure of these two Ukrainian veterans stemmed from a nationalist-based personal conflict between Slusarczyk and a soldier of the Polish army, Adam Gryglewski. Slusarczyk was a Ukrainian patriot and openly expressed his political views. He publicly declared his desire for Lviv to become a Ukrainian city. Such statements irritated Gryglewski and resulted in a serious conflict between the two residents. On 20 February 1931, Slusarczyk was listening to a Ukrainian record when the furious Polish veteran smashed the recording and beat him. Eight months later, Slusarczyk left the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home and was directed to the Central Ukrainian Committee in Warsaw. The other disabled Ukrainian veteran, Atrachowicz, was forced to move from Lviv to Kalisz at the end of May 1932.Footnote 64

Although disabled veterans of various ethnic origins were accepted in the Disabled Veterans’ Home, Jewish veterans rarely resided at this institution. In May 1936, Leopold Steier wrote to the Lviv Province administration that he was the only Jewish veteran among the 57 residents at the Home. Steier complained that he did not feel welcome in this environment and asked for a transfer to a Jewish facility with kosher food and co-religionists. The Jewish disabled veteran was transferred first to the Jewish institution for elderly people in Przemyśl; after his second transfer request, Steier was moved to a similar institution near Poznań.Footnote 65

The political climate outside the institution also influenced the interethnic relations inside it. In the late 1930s, some disabled residents denounced their fellow veterans as German, Ukrainian, or Soviet sympathizers. In July 1939, for example, the Pole Franciszek Nowak and the Ukrainian Cyryl Kowalczuk accused each other of anti-Polish views, as well as German and Ukrainian sympathies.Footnote 66 Veterans’ reports, moreover, described not only national but also regional differences between disabled servicemen at the Lviv Home. In September 1938, Józef Irla, a former soldier of the Polish army, informed the province administration that the so-called “Warsaw group” of disabled veterans was linked to Lviv criminal circles and that it terrorized the other residents of the institution. Many veterans also believed that one’s region of origin determined one’s political orientation. For instance, a person from Poznań would be labelled a German sympathizer because this city had previously belonged to the Second Reich.Footnote 67 At the same time, these reports show that, despite institutionalization, disabled veterans were not isolated from society and were well aware of political developments outside the Home.

Resistance to Disciplinary Regulations. Disabled servicemen often resisted the disciplinary regime of the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home. Alcohol consumption and prostitution were the main reasons for the intervention of the local authorities.Footnote 68 Scholars have emphasized that alcoholism was a common problem for institutionalized veterans. Alcohol became an escape from a depressing reality.Footnote 69 Some residents acknowledged their alcohol addiction and asked for treatment in special institutions.Footnote 70 Both the administration of the Lviv Home and disabled residents themselves also reported numerous cases of intoxication that resulted in conflicts with other residents and employees of the institution.Footnote 71 For instance, in January 1931, veteran Piotr Hołuj was supposed to spend a vacation with his family in Cracow; instead, he stayed outside the Disabled Veterans’ Home in Lviv and pursued an “immoral lifestyle.”Footnote 72 Moreover, during his vacation, a drunken Hołuj would occasionally visit the Home and terrorize other disabled servicemen and Home employees. As a result, the director of the Home asked him to leave the institution. He was finally expelled from the Home in March 1931 after he stole money from the director’s private apartment and robbed several people in the city.Footnote 73

A special committee that examined the work of the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home in December 1938 informed the province administration that reports of rampant alcohol abuse and fornication in the Home were unfounded. However, in June 1939, Home administrators requested permission to hire an additional watchman. On the evening of 16 June, two unknown women fought inside the institution. One of them had been invited by a resident, so the administration suggested tighter rules on visitors.Footnote 74

While they asserted their independence, residents of the institution could technically participate in the “outside world” only with the permission of the administration. The urban space stood in contrast to the regulated world of the closed institution, and the city was often a space of “sin, immorality, and pleasures,” where disabled veterans consumed alcohol and spent time with prostitutes. At the same time, the boundaries between behavior outside and consequences inside were permeable, as the Home would alert local police and authorities about its residents’ misbehaviors, and the Home’s administrators were also alerted to the improper behavior of disabled veterans outside the institution. By the end of 1938, the Lviv province authorities questioned the administration of the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home about disabled beggars; in response, the administration denied that residents of the institution begged on the city streets.Footnote 75 Lew Kaltenbergh, a future Polish writer, lived near the Disabled Veterans’ Home as a teenager and used to spend time in the park near the institution. In his memoirs, Kaltenbergh emphasized that despite the fact that the Home was fenced in by barbed wire, the shabby fencing had never been an obstacle for those who wanted to leave or enter the grounds of the institution. Moreover, an illegal “club” where semi-criminals gathered was located close to the facility, and one of the Home residents, Miron Łegkij, was its “majordomo.” Amputee Łegkij, “a gadabout and cynic,” was bored by life in “the nursing home” and was sneaking out in order to join a more entertaining group of companions in the “club.”Footnote 76

As institutionalization still limited mobility, servicemen frequently opposed the Home’s tight regulations. Bolesław Nosarzewsky often stayed overnight outside the institution. In March 1939, Adolf Twardowski, the director of the Disabled Veterans’ Home, stated that he would inform the Lviv Province administration about Nosarzewsky’s behavior. The director mentioned that he could no longer turn a blind eye because a disabled resident had reported to local authorities that he had been too lax and unable to maintain discipline in the Home.Footnote 77 In other words, Twardowski openly admitted that he had ignored rule violators and permitted residents more freedom than what was allowed by regulations, but bureaucratic pressure might soon change that. Moreover, several months later, another resident of the Home requested permission to spend three nights per week with his female friend. He argued that he was a young man and that life in the institution was too monotonous.Footnote 78 In other words, veterans aimed to receive some of the benefits provided by the Home while also having some semblance of an ordinary life beyond the institution.

Conflicts Between Residents and Staff. Although the Home’s administration was not always responsible for the shortcomings of the welfare system, disabled soldiers were prone to blame it for them.Footnote 79 Conflicts between administrators and residents could have serious consequences. For example, in June 1931, the employees of the Home suspected that some disabled veterans had obtained weapons. As a result, Lviv police searched the disabled resident, Fischbach, but they did not find any. In fact, not only the veteran who had been searched but also some other residents were shocked by the actions of the Home administration and police. Fischbach threatened to appeal to Józef Piłsudski’s wife, while a disabled soldier named Jan Piekielski intended to report these events to one of the Lviv newspapers.Footnote 80 In the spring of 1939, Twardowski informed the province administration that some disabled veterans were threatening him. The authorities had not granted a one-time payment to disabled soldier Franciszek Struś at the end of March 1939, and according to the director, the disappointed resident came to his office and criticized the government.Footnote 81 As Twardowski tried to placate him, Struś threatened that the director would soon be unable to work at the institution.Footnote 82

In June 1939, the Ministry of Social Welfare warned the administration that an inspection of the Home was imminent. Warsaw bureaucrats were aware of the conflicts in the Lviv Home and insisted that residents of the institution had to behave in accordance with the regulations and that all troublemakers had to be expelled.Footnote 83 However, a strict administrative policy could cause dissatisfaction and a desire for revenge among veterans. For example, disabled residents could accuse the administration of various crimes. Veteran Józef Irla had been one of the major troublemakers at the Home, and he was expelled from the institution in July 1939. In his letter to the prime minister, he accused the director of embezzlement, leading Warsaw officials to conduct an investigation into the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home one week before the start of the Second World War. Although central authorities took this accusation seriously and requested the necessary information, the Lviv Province administration confidently concluded that Adolf Twardowski had not committed a crime.Footnote 84

Still, the administration of the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home continued to fail in its efforts to maintain discipline, and it even tolerated some bending of the rules during the years before the Second World War. The Home’s model of institutional care needed serious revision. At the same time, periodicals described life in the Disabled Veterans’ Home differently. Mironowicz, who wrote about the Home for an article in Front Inwalidzki at the beginning of 1939, was well aware of the institution’s challenges. He stressed that even though Twardowski was a disabled veteran himself, he was a very capable director. Mironowicz acknowledged that it was hard to work with various groups of disabled veterans of the imperial and the Polish armies who often had mental disorders, but stressed that Twardowski had been able to establish “exemplary discipline and order” at the Home.Footnote 85 The director described his job to Mironowicz: “It is hard and exhausting work. A person often faces various nuisances and unfounded criticism, remarks, or accusations, but there are also bright minutes.”Footnote 86 Although Twardowski and Mironowicz revealed that the administration faced some problems, they tried to present the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home as a well-managed institution and a successful state project.

Conclusion

The fortress-like Disabled Veterans’ Home emerged as a visible urban landmark in a poor suburb of Lviv in the middle of the nineteenth century. It was a present from the emperor to injured men who had sacrificed their health for the Habsburg monarchy. At the same time, even the location of the Home—built on a hill and surrounded by a park—emphasized the separation of disabled veterans from the rest of the city’s inhabitants. After the proclamation of an independent Polish state, the government organized a welfare system for disabled servicemen of the imperial and the Polish armies, and the institutions located in the former Austrian “Disabled Veterans’ Home” in Lviv became a part of this project.

Activism was one of the important factors influencing the institution during the first decade after the wars. Disabled servicemen were not passive beneficiaries; rather, they struggled for their rights, and as a result, they participated in the formation of the public sphere. When in the early 1920s, the military and civilian authorities debated different approaches to the institutionalization of veterans, both disabled veterans’ organizations and some civilian officials opposed their isolation in the countryside, and they struggled to find alternative spaces for disabled veterans in the metropolis. These groups used the argument of the continuity of rights. As the Austrian emperor had first established the institution for disabled veterans, these men still had the right to live there; despite the dissolution of the empire, the new Polish state had to absorb the imperial tradition. They actually presented institutionalized life in the urban center as the life of a person incorporated into society, rather than as an exile in a remote rural area. Indeed, although everyday life in the state Disabled Veterans’ Home was supposed to be regulated and rule-bound, the reality was quite different. Many residents were not completely isolated from everyday urban practices; their behaviors were rather shaped by both life inside and outside the Home.

In their efforts to shape the experience of institutionalization, disabled veterans resisted the disciplinary regime of the institution, and the state Disabled Veterans’ Home became a site of various conflicts. As the only Disabled Veterans’ Home in Poland in the late 1930s, it provided institutional care to veterans from the different regions and mirrored the political and ethnic tension outside its walls. At the end of the 1930s, the administration could not maintain discipline consistently, and the Lviv Disabled Veterans’ Home became an example of the failure of the state-promoted institutionalization model. Disabled veterans’ experiences had been shaped by a complex combination of individual agency, group activism, ethnic tension, and political, fiscal, and military priorities, a combination that the vision of institutionalization had proved too simplistic to manage.