ings) or an upravdom (a manager and administrator of a building in one). [9] The residential buildings, which had not been nationalised, were located either in the poor working-class district or on the outskirts of the city. The owners of those buildings still had old Polish registration books, and that was why they could register anybody in those books as Lvov inhabitants as of September 1939, on which grounds they issued posvidkas. Initially, the authorities took it lightly and issued passports to such “Lvovian” applicants. But with an enormous increase in the number of those Lvovians (it needs to be said here that while initially obtainment of such a posvidka cost a few hundred roubles, later the price increased up to a few thousand roubles), the applicants faced additional obstacles at the stations, as they became obliged additionally to submit a document from the Address Office of the city of Lvov confirming their registration in the Office’s files under that address in September 1939.
[10] The trick was that between the outbreak of the Polish–German war (that is, after 1 September 1939) and the Bolsheviks’ assumption of power there was such chaos that the registration was not only done haphazardly, but also no data whatsoever was transferred to the Address Office, as everybody was wandering from town to town. Consequently, the Address Office usually issued a document stating that a given person was not listed in the office’s files for lack of data for the contestable period between 1 September and 20 September 1939. Consequently, the militia demanded that the applicant submit proof that he had lived in Lvov until 1 September 1939. If the applicant was unable to do that, an investigation was launched, resulting in an arrest of the macher (middleman) and of course the refugee who had submitted those documents. [11] But such cases were scarce and that was during the later period, for most of the refugees did obtain full unrestricted passports that way, without consequences and at a relatively high price (sometimes up to a few thousand roubles per passport). Relatively many people who had undergone treatment in Morszyn or Truskawiec675 in the summer season of 1939 obtained a posvidka from those localities confirming that they had been registered there prior to 1 September 1939, which served as grounds for their obtainment of a full passport instead of the type issued to refugees.
