One of the most gloomy places on the map of Lviv is the "Brygidki" prison, located at what is now 24 Grodecka Street. The former buildings of the Brigidine Sisters have become silent witnesses to the tragedies and crimes of the war and occupation period.

The Renaissance edifice was built in 1614 for the female Order of the Most Holy Saviour (Ordo Sanctissimi Salvatoris Sanctae Brigittae Sigles), whose history dates back to 1350 and is linked to the figure of St Brigid of Sweden. In 1376 Pope Urban V approved the order's rule, which originally provided for the creation of male and female congregations, but by the time the Brigidines settled in Lviv there was only a female branch of the order. In the lands of the Republic of Poland, female congregations run by the Brigidines were joined by noblewomen from wealthy homes, which is why the nuns of this rule were called 'noble maidens'. "There is a new convent of the Maidens of St Bridget, in which about thirteen virgins and widows serve God," wrote the Archbishop of Lwow, Jan Andrzej Próchnicki, in 1619 about the convent that had been founded a few years earlier. The founder and first prioress of the convent was Anna Poradowska, who came to Lviv from Lublin in 1613, where she had been a member of the local congregation of Brigidine Sisters for ten years. The convent enjoyed considerable respect, with up to 50 sisters belonging to it in some years, but usually the number was lower, especially during epidemics or invasions and wars. In 1684 we read:

"In the convent of the nuns of St. Brygita in the Krakow suburb there appeared this year a plague of plague, from which, it was said, in one week 15 pious and virtuous nuns, as if from one blow because of one disease, died. They were said to have brought the plague upon themselves through a letter, and for this reason they were ordered to avoid it and not to enter this convent, of the 50 in which once nuns are still only a few alive."

The convent's account books record just over twenty names of nuns from the mid-18th century, while the 1781 report -- 23. Many of them were relatives -- sisters, cousins, nieces and nephews, a common occurrence, such as the two Misses Szaniawski, whose dowry of 5,000 zlotys was recorded together, as was the case with the sisters.

In 1682, the Lviv monastery was shaken by a scandal when three nuns (sisters Konstancja and Krystyna Modrzyńska and Miss Nieprska), using poison supplied to them by Modrzyński's uncle, Canon Stanisław Wojenkowski, poisoned their prioress. As we read in the Chronicle of the City of Lviv by T. Jozefowicz:

"For in the aforementioned monastery some nuns committed a great transgression. At the time, their cloister was ruled by Anna Milewska, a religious, pious and rule-keeping young lady. She reprimanded and punished some of the nuns for their free conversation, long absent-mindedness, and other indecencies, and especially the nun Konstancja Modrzyńska, who was related to the aforementioned superior and spent more time in conversation, and who perceived the same mistake and punished her more severely. The scurrilous deed and the treacherous malice was immediately known, not only to the other nuns, but most of all to the doctors and barber surgeons, and finally to the whole town with the great fame of the rule and the monastery. The following were sent to prison: Nieprska, Konstancja Modrzyńska and her sister Krystyna; and the other nuns, knowing of the evil intention, told what had happened and accused the Superior, who was Modrzyński's uncle, of putting poison into her mind. Each of them was punished by the archbishop's verdict with deprivation of seniority, voice, place, tearing off her veil, some with rods, imprisonment for a long time, expulsion from the monastic rule, sending her away, as it were, to another monastery, and other punishments according to her guilt [...]".

It is difficult to verify this information, as Anna Milewska, according to monastic documents, was no longer a nun (from 1674 this function was held by Katarzyna Narajowska), and of the nuns accused of the offence, only Krystyna Modrzyńska appears in 1709 in monastic documents (as a beneficiary of the bequest made to her). Unfortunately, the monastery was repeatedly destroyed - already in 1648 it was burnt down during the Cossack invasions, and in 1704 the buildings were plundered by the Swedes. The monastery documents were also destroyed or lost.

As it was located on the outskirts of Lviv, the monastery was originally wooden, as it was forbidden to build brick buildings outside the city so that they could not serve the invaders in the event of a siege. As early as the second half of the 17th century, the congregation's nuns on the outskirts began to seek permission to have at least masonry cellars to which they could return after the enemy had receded and begin rebuilding. In the 18th century, with the changes to the city's fortifications, the ban on brick buildings became obsolete, so by the beginning of the century wooden buildings were being replaced by brick structures. An account by Archbishop Jan Skarbek of Lvov in 1731 says that the Brigidine Monastery under his administration had previously been predominantly wooden, but that construction had just begun on its "solid walls". As late as 1730-1740, a major reconstruction of the monastery took place thanks to the foundation of Michał Koniecpolski, while in 1749 the monastery windows, among other things, were repaired. During this period, a small St Peter's Church was also built next to the monastery.

Formally, the Brigidine nuns were concerned with the education and upbringing of ladies from good homes, but they did so to such an insignificant extent that this fact did not help save the order from being closed down at the end of the 18th century. There were several much larger and more popular monastic schools in Lwów, so the Brigidine sisters were more concerned with basic education (reading, writing, prayer, possibly learning to sew). In 1781, just before the order's suppression, the prioress explained to the Austrian authorities that "girls were not being educated due to lack of space" and that the convent provided only nine beds for girls. According to a census of convents carried out at the behest of Empress Maria Theresa in 1774, the Lvov convent had only 20 nuns, and as at the date of the suppression (6 September 1782) this number was unlikely to have changed significantly. The nuns of all the Galician Brigidine orders - Lvov, Sambor and Sokal - left their convents at that time and moved to Warsaw or Lublin (the convents in Brest-Litovsk and Lipie no longer existed at that time). They also made a written declaration that they renounced the salary due to them from the government, and were only paid one hundred florins each of the so-called travel allowance (Abfertigung).

In 1783, during his stay in Lvov, Emperor Joseph II used the buildings of the Brigidine monastery as a prison, proof that the buildings had to be solid. The property of the Lwów brigidines was estimated at over 80,000 florins. Some of the smaller properties were sold by the authorities at auction in 1784.

The interiors of the prison were rebuilt at the turn of the 20th century and were cancelled in 1914. Just before the outbreak of war, during the demolition of the walls, the efforts of historian and Lvov activist Aleksander Czołowski (1865-1944) managed to save the church next to the monastery, as we read in the "Kurier Ilustrowanym" of 3 January 1914: "left during the demolition of the prison housed in the post-convent building, as a monument of 17th century architecture".

During the Second Polish Republic, the Brigidki became a political prison where Ukrainian nationalists were imprisoned. On the façade of the prison building is a plaque commemorating the escape of some of them in June 1939. After the Soviet army entered Lviv, the prison was used to incarcerate Polish political and military activists, including General Władysław Anders. Witold Szolginia, in The Box of Lviv Memories , described the autumn of 1939 as follows:

"The brigidges, like indeed all prisons after September 1939, were packed with Poles. The walls seemed to have swelled. Men were sitting, women were sitting, children were sitting. Anyone who was Polish was locked up as soon as possible or deported even sooner. [...] Anyone who refused to renounce their Polish citizenship was sent to prison. Whoever worked for a Polish organisation - to prison. Whoever worked before the war - to prison. Whoever served in the Polish army - to prison. And since they all generally served in the Polish army and were Poles - one by one, one by one, Polish houses were wiped off the surface of Lviv."

After the outbreak of the German-Soviet war in 1941, the NKVD murdered the political prisoners held in Brygidki. At the time, the number of inmates was about 4,000, and the Soviets exterminated at least half of them en masse, and probably also set fire to the prison buildings before leaving Lviv. When the Nazis entered the city and took over the prison, they forced the Jews to remove the corpses, whom they then murdered. It is worth mentioning that the name of the street where the prison is located was changed to "Kerkerstrasse" (Prison Street) during the German occupation in 1942. This event was described by Karolina Lanckorońska, a lecturer at the University of Lviv and independence activist, in her Memories of War : 22 September 1939-5 April 1945:

"Brygidki, the famous Lvov prison, was the second thing that no one could speak calmly about. For the Bolsheviks had murdered all the prisoners before they left, and for a few days the Germans allowed the public to visit the prison, which was completely shattered, in the state in which they had found it. Half of Lvov went there, looking for their nearest and dearest among the corpses so disfigured that recognition was usually a completely hopeless thing. There were priests crucified on the wall, one with a rosary pulled through both eye cavities, and another with a cross marked with nails driven into his chest, and many others. Despite everything, some corpses were recognised by those closest to them, sometimes by a shred of clothing or by their teeth. These scenes were talked about by everyone because, after three months, they simply could not think of anything else yet."

Today, the buildings of the former Brigidine Priory house Detention Centre No. 19 and, until the late 1980s, death sentences were still carried out here. There have been plans to move the prison out of town, but given the current political situation it is difficult to say when these will be implemented. One can only hope that the infamous traditions of previous wars will never be continued here again.

Location: 24 Gródecka Street, Lviv, Ukraine