In September 1914, the Russians began the siege of Przemyśl. The women locked in the fortress were in a tragic situation. To survive, they bought with their own body.
Of course, it also happened that in a besieged city relationships were made that were apparently based on sincere feelings. "This day is a blessed day for me," wrote Lieutenant Stanisław Tyro with truly touching delight. "Today, for the first time, I kissed and caressed my beautiful Valery, a lady whose beauty no other in Przemyśl can match." Often, however, such relationships developed under siege conditions had some transaction element to them.
An expression of love? Canned sardines!
In a blocked city the attractiveness of a man was not determined by appearance, grace or wit but access to provisions . Some of the young women who used common sense in selecting partners were given astonishing amounts of food from their officer lovers.
Fort of the Fortress of Przemyśl in 1915
Aniela Wilk, the daughter of a retired locomotive stoker, lived on a cat's foot with the captain, who was the commandant of the uniforms warehouse. The lover showered her with such amounts of flour, rice, biscuits and butter that when in January 1915 the city police searched her mother's apartment, it took two carts to take all this illegally seized food . On the other hand, twenty-one-year-old Stefanie Haas was gifted by her fiancé, a Hungarian cavalry lieutenant, with food sufficient to feed her entire family for a month. Moreover, on Christmas Day, she received an invitation to an exclusive social evening at Fort VII "Prałkowce", where she was played on a violin and served with Swiss cheese, sausage and chocolates.
The feeling that lovers would show in the outside world with diamonds or pearls was expressed in a starving fortress with cigarettes, cans of sardines and salami . While some women were worshiped, and very few earned a lot of money from it, men almost always wielded power in relationships in a besieged city.
The Price of Survival
In hospitals, the military hierarchy placed male doctors above young volunteer nurses, who became the object of excited male fantasy and condemnation at the same time. There have been pornographic rumors that women work in these positions only to "satisfy the desires of the officers and […] doctors […]. Neither of them wear fur, but their underwear is dirty! ”
In fact, fending off advances from insistent superiors in a strict medical-military institution must have been very difficult for single young women who were away from home. Among the civilians remaining in Przemyśl women were also in a worse position, because men had access to food . The log of a loyal officer of the 23rd Honved Infantry Division - his name has not survived - indicates what abuses could have occurred under these conditions. His fiancée was waiting for him in Hungary, but he liked female company and had plenty of free time to play.
The text is an excerpt from Alexander Watson's book “Fortress. The Siege of Przemyśl ”, which has just been released by the Rebis publishing house.
In Przemyśl he found a temporary fiancée, a certain "Mici", whom he treated in a scandalous way. He was also hanging out with other women, and when Mici accused him of contracting a venereal disease, he kicked her out of the house. After a week, however, she returned. He kicked her out of bed again in the middle of the night, but she went back to him again. The woman does not disappear from the journal of this "hero" and probably from his life only on February 7, when the officer told her that he could no longer feed her. The woman left crying.
"Flying princesses"
However, there have been rare cases where women, by exploiting men's erotic fantasies about themselves, have been able to reverse this power relationship. Nobody has done it better than Ella and Hella, nicknamed the "flying princesses" of the keep. Their real names were Ella Zielińska and Helena Dąbrowska , and they earned their nickname due to the fact that associated with airmen from planes stationed in Przemyśl . They also had a good time with the officers of the elite 23rd Honwed Infantry Division.
There was an aura of sensual mystery around them. They were definitely beautiful. Helena was said to have "had the first wave of youth behind her, but she was slim and dressed with taste. Her subtle perfumes, joyful laugh and nice voice made her very attractive ”. The charm of both "princesses", however, went far beyond their physical appearance. They only stopped with the best and the splendor fell on them surrounding airmen and soldiers of assault troops. They were unavailable to everyone else.
However, they ignited the male imagination, and for those who were worth it and whom they chose for themselves, they were the perfect lovers. Ella and Hella. The soft vowels of their names exuded femininity, and the delicious way the rhyme passed easily through the mouth suggested the possibility of ménage à trois. They were said to be dynamite in bed. There were a lot of stories about these "flying princesses". Some whispered that they were Russian spies, which made them even more appealing. These rumors turned out to be so persistent that after the fall of the fortress, they prompted the Austro-Hungarian military authorities to launch a late investigation into the matter.
Love and betrayal
One such story - rather dubious credibility, but showing how much admiration these young women aroused - was about how Hella had seduced an officer from the stronghold's command. He was a close friend of the pilots and the hero of the October battles with the Russians, and his superiors fully trusted him.
The lovers lived in a real idyll. They ate best in the fortress, and he didn't have too many responsibilities, so they spent their days together with romantic walks and sleigh rides. When they visited a balloon unit during one of their expeditions, its commander was so charmed by Hella that he offered them a balloon flight. The tethered aircraft soared high into the air, providing passengers with magnificent views of the fortifications and the snow-covered surroundings of Przemyśl.
The man's attractiveness was not determined by his appearance, charm or wit, but by the access to provisions
According to this story, Hella was molding her partner all the time. When a vacancy appeared in the balloon section, she persuaded him to request an assignment to this unit, while maintaining her current position in the fortress's command. Once in a new vessel, she would visit him sometimes and bribe the balloon crew with gifts of sweets and rum . In mid-December, the Przemyśl crew made a firm attempt to break the blockade in the southwest to join the Austro-Hungarian field army, which finally began to advance towards the fortress.
Escape Plan
Hella's lover worked hard, first helping to plan operations in the headquarters, and then, when the attack began, from the basket of the balloon he followed the progress of the advancing troops, facing the stormy weather. The command of the fortress was wondering how the Russians could anticipate his every move. The operation ended in a complete fiasco. The Honvedas have been rejected, decimated and demoralized.
After this unsuccessful attempt to break the blockade, the betrayal by Hella's lover began to weigh heavily on him. He seemed apathetic and depressed to his comrades in arms. He was afraid of exposure, especially when the military police began to arrest other people suspected of passing the secrets of the fortress to the enemy. Hella, however - as the listeners of this story might have expected - kept her lover on a leash. She scared him, calmed him down, silenced him, and at the same time devised a plan to escape.
Hella flew away…
The first days of February 1915 were foggy. To discover what the Russians were up to, it was ordered that a balloon be launched into the air at night, with a full moon . At Hella's order, her lover volunteered for this mission. The couple burned their papers. At the appointed time, Hella threw a military coat over her warm clothes, put on a military hat and with a small but heavy suitcase the lovers went to the balloon unit.
Fighting off advances from intrusive superiors in a strict medical-military institution must have been very difficult for single young women (illustrative illustration)
The hell-worshiping ground crew did not protest against her entry into the balloon, realizing that the lady might consider the moonlight flight as a romantic experience. The couple climbed into the basket with the suitcase (which was supposed to hold the "new tools", the officer explained) and the balloon filled with yellow gas rose up. It rose more and more, and finally it hovered high in the sky. But then the steel chain holding him down suddenly collapsed to the ground. The officer threw it out, tearing the aircraft from its tether. The balloon, pushed by the southwest wind, with the "flying princess" Hela, her secrets and her victim on board, passed gracefully over the fortress and disappeared somewhere above Russian territory.
Doubtless, like all lascivious rumors, this one too came from a "credible" source, which was almost a sure sign that someone had invented it. The veteran telling the story could not vouch for its truthfulness. However, he was sure of one thing: after the fall of the fortress he saw Hela for the last time . She was sitting comfortably in a Russian staff car next to a tsarist officer. They ran down the road to Lviv. So maybe Helena Dąbrowska was a spy . Or maybe she was just one of those rare and extraordinary people who, thanks to their talents and intelligence, were able to safely sail through the rough and changing waters of 20th-century Central Europe.
Source:
The text is an excerpt from Alexander Watson's book “Fortress. The Siege of Przemyśl ”, which has just been released by the Rebis publishing house.