Together with thousands of civilian and military refugees, they left for Romania via the border bridge at Kuty on the Cheremosh. Today, all that remains at this spot is a ruined customs clearance building and a section of the bridge abutment.

The Bridge over the Cheremosh

For centuries, the Cheremosh had served as a natural border – before the Partitions, between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Principality of Moldavia, and later between two Austrian provinces, namely Galicia and Bukovina. On either side of the river lay two towns that served as local centres for trade and services – Kuty and Vyžnica . Following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the river once again became a national border, and Vyzhnytsia, along with the whole of Bukovina, came to lie within the borders of Romania. A permanent wooden bridge had linked the two banks even before the First World War, but it was destroyed by a flood in 1927.

In connection with plans for the development of Kut and, more broadly, the whole of Pokucie, the Polish administration made improving the region’s transport infrastructure its primary objective . Tourists wishing to reach Kut or nearby Kosów in the 1920s first had to travel by train to Zabłotów, and then cover a further 30 km along poor roads by cart or lorry, which served as a substitute for a bus. From the late 1920s right up until the outbreak of the war, a great deal was done in this region to improve the condition of the roads , along which modern passenger buses eventually began to run. In order to streamline the transport of timber from the Carpathian forests and, at the same time, attract tourists, the Polish administration also decided to build a railway branch line connecting Kuty with the Warsaw–Lviv–Stanisławów–Chernivtsi main line . It was decided to use, for this purpose, a railway line built during the Austrian era, running along the Bukovina bank of the Cheremosh from Niepołokowce station to Wyżnica.
In the summer of 1930 , a new road-and-rail bridge was built , linking Kuty and Wyżnica. It was erected at breakneck speed by sappers from the 1st and 2nd Railway Bridge Battalions from Kraków and Jabłonna. The bridge, approximately 300 metres long, had a wooden structure with steel elements, and alongside the railway track there was also a carriageway and a footpath. To honour the bridge’s builders, one of the streets in Kuty was named Saperska Street (today Strzelców Siczowych). Shortly after the bridge was built, the Kuty–Niepołokowce–Śniatyn line began operating for freight transport.

In the years that followed, a wooden railway station building was also erected near the bridge, featuring an interesting architectural style reminiscent of Art Deco and incorporating elements of Hutsul ornamentation.

A regular passenger service to Kuty was introduced in the autumn of 1935 – the train departed from Warsaw at 3.30 pm, reached Lviv after a journey of over 9 hours, and at 4.36 the following day it reached the border station of Śniatyn-Załucze. Passengers travelling to Kut, after crossing the border, travelled in transit without passport control and arrived at their destination at 6.53, This timetable, with minor changes, remained in force during subsequent holiday seasons right up until 1939 .

Border crossing

Next to the bridge there was also a customs clearance building and a border guard post ; for most of the interwar period, however, this was a modest wooden hut. It was not until the late 1930s that it was replaced by a new , much more imposing building. It was a solid, brick-built structure in the modernist style fashionable at the time, featuring a distinctive glazed projection where passport checks could be carried out conveniently without the guard having to leave the building. Unfortunately, no details are known as yet regarding the opening of this building (presumably around 1938–1939) or its architect.

This crossing was intended primarily for tourists , with the heaviest traffic occurring in summer and early autumn. Thanks to an agreement between Poland and Romania, tourists could cross the border and move within a few kilometres of it without a passport , provided they obtained a pass from the district office in Kosów (in those days, obtaining a passport was expensive and not everyone could afford one). Goods brought from southern Romania and widely sold in shops in Wyżnica, such as raisins, sweets and wine, were very popular amongst Polish tourists.

The border crossing at Kut came to life in mid-June, around the time of the parish fair at the Armenian Catholic parish ( 13 June). At that time, large numbers of Polish Armenians — who had been living in Bukovina and Bessarabia for decades—would flock to Kuty. Many of them no longer held Polish citizenship and had never lived in Kut for any length of time, but their ancestors had come from there; these ancestors had travelled further east and south for trade purposes as early as the 19th century. A tradition passed down from generation to generation dictated that they should visit Kuty at least once every few years for St Anthony’s Day. He was particularly venerated amongst Polish Armenians as the patron saint of merchants (and, of course, he also restored health and returned lost items). It was an opportunity to meet with relatives, visit the graves of ancestors and have a Mass said for their souls. This feast day was, in fact, very popular also amongst Catholics of the Latin and Greek rites living on both sides of the Cheremosh.

After the bridge and railway station were burnt down during the Second World War, and later following the incorporation of these lands into the USSR, the customs house lost its purpose and, for decades, fell into a state of systematic disrepair. Today, all that remains is a shell of walls, devoid of doors and windows, with a basement filled with rubble and rubbish. Nearby, one can still make out the remains of the bridge abutment, namely a reinforced earth embankment with a stone-built pillar. As the bridge was rebuilt after the war in a completely different location (a few hundred metres further upstream along the Cheremosh), the area of the former border crossing has been left off the beaten track, away from the main roads, and its immediate vicinity is now home mainly to warehouses and small manufacturing and service businesses.

September 1939

As a result of the German offensive, Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły was forced, as early as 13 September 1939, to issue an order for the Polish forces to prepare a deep retreat to the so-called Romanian bridgehead. The Commander-in-Chief’s plan was for the forces remaining in the centre of the country to tie down the Germans for as long as possible, whilst the remaining units were to move off in a south-easterly direction. There – behind the Dniester, the Carpathians and the borders of neutral Hungary and Romania – the Polish Army was to regroup and await the announced general offensive by France and Great Britain on the Western Front.

From 13–14 September, representatives of the highest military and civilian authorities were in Pokuttya, establishing themselves primarily in Kolomyia, Kosiv and Kuty . Kosiv became the seat of the Supreme Commander’s Headquarters and the Ministry of Military Affairs, whilst Kuty housed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the diplomatic corps.

Following a series of defeats, on 16 September there were some signs of optimism within the Polish headquarters. In the assessment of officers from Marshal Rydz-Śmigły’s inner circle, the German forces were already exhausted by two weeks of heavy fighting, and, due to the lengthening of their supply lines, they were expected to suffer shortages of fuel and ammunition. Consequently, it was considered feasible to halt the Wehrmacht’s advance and consolidate Polish resistance along the Dniester line . At the same time – in accordance with Allied agreements – a general offensive was to be launched on the Western Front, the natural consequence of which would be the withdrawal of a large part of the German forces from Poland.

These hopes were dashed the very next day, when the USSR entered the war. Units of the Red Army broke through the resistance of the few remaining Border Guard Corps detachments, and within a dozen or so hours the first Soviet tanks had reached the vicinity of the bridge at Uścieczko on the Dniester. The road to Kut, less than 100 km from this crossing, lay wide open, all the more so as there were no Polish Army units along the way capable of offering any serious resistance.

The Polish authorities, taken completely by surprise by the Soviet advance and faced with a hopeless situation, decided to evacuate to Romania . The evacuation took place via the border bridge at Kut – it was through here that President Ignacy Mościcki, Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły, Prime Minister Felicjan Sławoj-Składkowski along with almost his entire cabinet, and with them several thousand soldiers and civilian refugees. Kuty remained in Polish hands until the morning of 21 September, when the last soldiers from Major Henryk Piątkowski’s covering unit crossed the bridge to Wyżnica.