FAMILY HISTORY
PALUBNIAK - BRENIA
THROUGHOUT HISTORY
PASCAL PALUBNIAK
13 june 2017
2
3
SUMMARY
Preamble
Part One: History, definitions
I ° The deep origins through time (prehistory) (4500 BC-920 AD)
- The Polgarians
- The Indo-Europeans
- The Wallachians
- The Venedes
- The Slavs
II° From the Middle Ages to the great partition in Central Europe (920 - 1772)
- Galicia
- A short history of Poland
III ° The ethnic period (1772 - 1965)
- The Congress of Vienna and its consequences for Galicia and Nowica
- The Ruthenians
- The Lemkos
- Poles and Ukrainians: the borders
IV ° A difficult 20th century
- The wars
- Galicia and the Lemkos at that time
Part Two: The family
V ° First family apparitions (1787 - 1956)
- The family from the 18th century onwards
- The life of our family in the early 20th century
- TheVistula Operation, from Nowica to Stradun
- Emigrations to the USA
VI ° The end of the 20th century is calmer (1945 - nowadays)
- In France
- Poland
- In the USA and other places
- The birth of our generation
VII. Conclusion
Table of contents
4
5
Preamble
This is a small manual for the younger generations, so that they understand where they come
from, and those who are interested in transgenerational psycho genealogy. It is not meant to
be read in one day, it refers to various periods. We are all the fruit of our history and for some
of us, we must draw further than in our own history.
The idea came to me when I got interested in genealogy. At first I thought we were the only
ones in the world named PALUBNIAK (by the way, the basic meaning of iak is small), which
seems to be the case in France, but after some research, it didn’t seem to be right.
Now I am French, because I was born in France, although it took a court judgment to confirm
this, being born of a Polish father and a mother born in France of Polish origin.
When we go backwards in our genealogy, we can see that our ancestors come from Nowica,
in Poland in the region now called Małopolskie (small Poland). We will see that this has not
always been the case, for in the course of history the land of the village of Nowica has often
changed its nationality and its inhabitants have often been called different names.
It is necessary to start from the sources and proceed methodically, for the story is not very
simple. Today, everyone knows that the history of Central Europe is very complicated.
A lot of questions arise, so it was necessary for me to do some research, collect all the ideas
and see how it all began.
This is certainly not a History textbook, others have done it very well already and it is thanks
to them that one can know history, it is just a small guidebook about the origins of the
BRENIA, PALUBNIAK family and some others. For this purpose, a few friends are to be
thanked, such as PALUBNIAK STANISLAS, a fifth-degree cousin living in Poland near
PRZEMYSL, PAUL STEVE BRENIA, the son of a fifth degree cousin who lives in Los
Angeles, USA, and who greatly contributed to reconstruct the branch of our grandmother and
grandfather, as well as PALUBNIAK MARIUSZ and his children, our cousin from our
father's half-brother, and finally MICHEL PALUBNIAK for his travels in Poland and
Ukraine.
And also many thanks to Mr. Copy and Mrs. Paste, the legitimate children of the Internet.
Our history is closely linked to that of Central Europe and Poland, even if most of us have
become French or American, Australian, German, South American or whatever.
6
A short summary of what will follow for those who do not want to go into details
The land of the present Poland, where our origins lie, was populated by Polgarians. That was
3,500 years BC.
Then, the Indo-Europeans (a term that is only a linguistic fiction) came to say that they were
the Walachians and the Venedes.
First the Walachians, coming from Romania, peopled this land and were assimilated to the
Slavs. They come from the Thracians, the Dacians and the Illyrians (ex-Yugoslavia). We are
in 1500 BC.
Then came the Venedes, which are Indo-European populations and will disappear with the
arrival of the Germans, the Vandals and the Goths. We are here from 1500 to 200 BC.
The Venedes are the ancestors of the Slavs.
Of course, all these people have mixed in the course of history before we come in the year
800 AD to the Poles of the North who are from Polane tribes (inhabitants of the fields or
people of the plain). The Vislanes were a Slavic tribe settled at least since the seventh century
in the region of the upper reaches of the Vistula (today's small Poland).
By the ninth century, the Vislanes had created a tribal state whose main centers were Krakow,
Wislica, Sandomierz and Stradow. They constituted the most powerful and numerous tribe of
what later became Poland.
So, in a nutshell, for salon discussions:
Polaris -> Wallachians -> Venedes -> Slaves -> Vislanes -> Polish (with variations).
Then in the next chapters we shall deal with the different groups of Poles -> Galicians ->
Ruthenians -> Lemkos, but you will need a little patience.
7
Chapter I - Deep Origins through time (Prehistory)
This is a long time ago: short legendary genealogy
Noah
Sem
Cham
Japhet
At the very beginning, Noah had three sons, one was called Shem; he took the lands in the
East.
The other was called Cham and took the middle ground. Finally the last one was called Japhet
and took the lands in the North and South-West.
After the collapse of the Tower of Babel and the confusion of languages, Russia belonged to
Japhet with the western and northern countries where the Slavs settled along the Danube.
In turn, Japhet also had three sons, Ghazi, Turk and Alp. They were beautiful and strong, but
they finally fought and the war between Ghazi and Turk broke out. This war ended with the
victory of Turk, who nevertheless decided to leave his native land and to go north, where he
settled near a large river.
Alp was a hercule who could move mountains and raise a horse with one hand. One day, he
went to distant lands, he lost himself and could not find the way back. Then he went to the
river and met a tribe speaking a language similar to his own. He chose his wife there and
stayed with that tribe.
Alp had two sons and he did not know how to call them. Suddenly clouds appeared, it was
cold and the children began to scream. Alp tried to calm them down, but the children
continued to cry. Then Alp thought they were not crying for nothing. Obviously, they had to
be given names. Alp took counsel with his wife and they named them, one was named
Bulgarian, and the other Burtas. The children of Alp grew up like hercules, and later founded
two cities. Each son was the founder of a people. In the beginning, they spoke the same
language, and then their languages started to diverge.
This is the subject of the shortened legend. Clearly, it presents the ethnic origin of the modern
Tatars, where the ancestors seem to be Turks, Bulgarians and Burtas.
As Crimea is topical, we have the origin of Crimean Tatars which as we can see come from
many places. The Tartars were also at the origin of the word Tartars.
A beautiful picture shows the descendants
So much for genesis...
8
Now, to be more serious this is how it was 3,500 years ago.
THE POLGARIANS
Proto-Polgarians are Indo-European Pontics. Around 4000 BC, their cavalry troops infiltrate
the Rubanese of Poland, thus creating the culture of Malice (4000 / 3500 BC).
The Rubanese or "peoples of the Rubanese linear ceramic" are a branch that separated from
the northern Ascetica of the north (Körös) about 4800 BC / 5900 BC.
From the beginning of the Neolithic era, Asianic peoples are known to have spread to a large
part of Europe and south-west Asia. The term Asianic was used to refer to populations in
Europe, the Near and Middle East, who were neither Semites nor Indo-Europeans. The
development of agriculture, livestock, ceramics, and the cult of women and bull in the Fertile
Crescent is attributed to the expansion of Asia.
Of all the Rubanese, those of the Tisza Valley (called Oriental Rubanese or "Tibiscins /
Tiszoïdes") are the ones who have been the most influenced by the painted ceramic peoples of
the Balkans.
Their civilization is divided into several phases:
-Szatmar / Alföld (4800 BC / 5900 BC): protolinear pottery engraved and grooved then
incised with dark on light red. The dead are buried with the legs bent to the left, heads to the
east or to the southeast, in ovoid pits containing ocher, near the houses.
-Tiszadob and Szakalhat-Lebö (4500 BC / 5500 BC): breeders of goats and sheep with
incised-inlaid or paste-like pottery under the influence of Vinca
-Tisza / Theiss (4300 BC / 5400 BC): cattle breeders returning more and more to the hunt and
using pottery with pasty paint.
9
As early as 3600 BC, a group of proto-Polgarians headed south, crossed the Czech Republic
and settled in northern Hungary (Tchitcharovce and then Csöshalom-Oborin culture).
Around 3450 B.C, they founded the cultivation of Polgar (the beginning of the work of
copper, the use of undecorated red pottery and then dotted-furrowed). They seized Thuringia
(Gatersleben) and Hungary (Tisza-Polgar and then Bodrogkeresztur) by mingling with the
Eastern Rubanese and the Lengyelian Pelasgians (Lengyel 4-5-6). Continuing south, they will
also mix with other Pelasgians in Croatia, Austria and Bavaria (Lasinja-Balaton 2).
After this period of dominance, the Poles will begin to retreat on all fronts and will be
absorbed by the Indo-European Hunyadi-Halom and Lasinja-Balaton 3 (proto-Baden) to the
south.
The Indo-Europeans
This Indo-European notion is only a fiction to explain the origin of languages. However, the
Slavic language is part of the Indo-European group. The term Indo-European was introduced
in 1816 by the German Franz Bopp to designate a set of languages from Europe and Asia
(including northern India with Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh), whose structural
relationship proved to be remarkable. Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Hittite, Old Irish, Gothic, Old
Bulgarian, Old Prussian, etc., do indeed have surprising common bonds. This means that most
of the languages of Europe and a large part of the languages of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Bangladesh and India belong to the Indo-European family.
The first tribes stopped in Romania, many continued their journey to populate the northern
part of Europe, and among them the Wallachians.
The Wallachians
10
The term " Wallachians " is originally an exonym (the name for a place). All the Wallachian
groups use different words derived from romanus to refer to themselves: Romani, Roumani,
Rumâri, Aromanians, etc. (note: Megleno-Rumanians nowadays say "Vlasi", but, historically,
"Ramani"; the Istro-Rumanians also adopted the Vlasi names, but still use Roumani and
Rumâri to refer to themselves).
The Wallachians are normally regarded as descendants of the romanized peoples like the
Thracians (about 1500 BC) (including the Dacians) and Illyrians (formerly Yugoslavians).
Wallachian, also called Roman language of the East, has a common origin in the
protoromanian language. Over the centuries, the division into various Wallachian groups (see
Romania in the Dark Ages) mixed with the neighboring populations: Slavs, Greeks,
Albanians, Coumans, and others.
Almost all modern nations in Central Europe and Southern Europe descend from the
Wallachians: Hungary, Ukraine, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, Albania, Greece and Bulgaria.
In other countries, the native Wallachian population has been completely assimilated by the
Slavic populations and has thus ceased to exist: Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bosnia
and Montenegro.It’s only in Romania and the Republic of Moldavia, that the Wallachian
population (Dacoromanian or Romanian) is made up of an ethnic majority today.
The Venedes: people of battle axes
These people were the ancestors of the Balts and Slavs. They were probably from the Pontics
(Indo-European) of Yamnaya.
They used axes of naviform battles and stringed pottery and were divided into several
subcultures:
* The Western Baltic battle axes of the Baltic (Haff).
They are the ancestors of the present Latvians and Lithuanians.
* The Northern Bali Kiukaïs battle axes of Finland (Kiukainen).
They disappeared during the expansion of Uralians in Finland around 1600 BC.
* The Eastern Baltic battle axes of the Volga (Fatyanovo):
These tribes (Galindians, Goliads, Aukstotes, etc.) occupied a vast territory in Russia and in
the north of Biellorussia. They had adopted the timber-framed tombs of the Iranian-Aryans.
They lost territories in the north facing the Urals of Abashevo around 1600 BC and were then
absorbed by the Slavs during their great expansion in Byzantine times.
* The Venedes of the Middle Dnieper (Proto-Slavs):
These tribes occupied the Pripet region in northern Ukraine and southern Belarus.
At first, they were under the cultural influence of the Proto-Celts with rope pottery and battle
axes. But unlike them, the Venedes buried the men on the left side and the women on the right
side, both facing east.
Later the Venedes adopted the catacomb tombs of the proto-Thracians and their western
branch (also using catacomb tombs) settled in Poland (culture of Zlota) by driving away the
Proto-Celts.
11
Here are the different stages their civilization went through:
-Venedes of Komarow in Ukraine and Trzciniec in Poland (2100/1400 BC).
-Venedes of Wiszoko in Ukraine and Lusatia in Poland (1400/800 BC).
-Venedes of Tchornyi-lis in Ukraine and bell-tombs in Poland (800/200 BC).
- Then the Western Venedes of Poland will disappear before the expansion of the Germans
Vandals and Goths. As for the eastern Venedes of Ukraine (Ostrov-Zhitomir), some tribes
will submit while others will settle further north in the Eastern Baltic region.
-After the defeat of the Germans against the Huns, the Venedes will undertake their great
expansion in Russia at the expense of the Eastern Baltic and the Balkans at the expense of the
Byzantines. At that time the Venedes were divided into two groups: the Antes of Penkovka
and Kolotchin in eastern Ukraine (which will eventually disappear) and the Stavanes /
Sklavons / Sklavenians from Prague-Kortchak in western Ukraine.
The latter will be the ancestors of all the present Slavs.
12
Languages
This is how we say hello in the different countries of Europe: Dzien dobry in Polish
Dobro jutro (in the morning) ou dobar dan in Croatian
Dobar dan in Serbic
Halo in Bosnian
Dobry den in Czek
Dobré ràno in Slovakian
Pozdravljen or Dobro jutro in Slovenian
Dobryï den in Russian and in Ukrainian
Dobraj ranicy in Bielorussian
Ok in Ruthenian I do not know, but it must be a bit of everything with a southern accent.
The Polish language began to develop towards the end of the 15th century under the influence
of the Ruthenian language, which was itself only a modification of the Lechite language. The
Ruthenian language was brought to Poland by Ladislas Jagellon, who knew neither Polish nor
Latin.
The origins of the word Slav
The name Slavs is mentioned for the first time in 500 AD: it refers to Indo-European peoples
of the north, neighbors of the Balts and Germans on the ethnolinguistic level, but appeared
late in history. Before that date, they had very little contact with Mediterranean Europe and
they were probably those remote people called the Venedes, known as the Slavs.
13
The word Venedes stems fromVind, Vendes or Indes but this primitive form is divided into
two main branches, in German Winde and Wende, and in Finnish Vene, Vané. All the other
diversities (Vendi, Veneti, Vindi, Indi, Veliti, Huindi, etc.) belong to these two essential forms,
of which they are merely nuances or alterations. A long research establishes that this name
was given to the Slavs by foreigners.
After the name of Serbian, it was the names of Leks or Lekhs and Polanè (Poles) which had
the greatest extension among the Slavs. The language of the Leks is the Ruthenian language.
This part is derived from a study made in a book published in 1869 by AugusteViquesnel:
“Slavic Peoples and their neighbors, the Turks and the Finns”.
Several explanations of the Slavic word coexist: the Slavic word probably means "speaking"
but there are many more explanations.
The most obvious one and the simplest one is to relate the name to the old Slavic "Slava" with
the meaning of fame, glory. The Slavs would have called themselves glorious.
Another hypothesis starts from the Old Slavic (word, speech), the Slavs defining themselves
among themselves as those who know how to speak, whose language is comprehensible. This
assumption is based in particular on the fact that , in the Slavic languages, the term for a
German is derived from an adjective signifying non-speaking .In Ukrainian, Polish, Serbian
and Czech, the words niemy, nemtsi mean mute , and niemiec means German.
A hypothesis, which follows the same etymology as the first, claims that the word Slavic
comes from Slava, the original name of the river Dnieper, around which the first Slavic traces
in Europe are accredited. The Slavs would have been named according to their geographical
origins as did the Saxons, the Vikings ...
As a matter of fact, the word slav is at the origin of Slavonia, Slovakia and Slovenia. It is also
at the origin of the French word esclave and the English word slave ( medieval Latin slavus,
sclavus), many Slavs of the currently East German, Czech and Polish countries having been
enslaved during the High Middle Ages and especially in the Carolingian Empire.
According to Michel Kazanski
The name of Slavs proper appears in the sources written during the first half of the sixth
century under the calamus of Procopius of Caesarea. Subsequently, the philologists studied
the meaning of this word. The first identification, the easiest too, with the Latin Slavus, was
quickly abandoned because of the late appearance of Slavs on the markets of Rome and the
fact that the first Slavs were ignorant of slavery. An etymology was then proposed, referring
to the term "slava," "glory," but this hypothesis did not prevail. Polish scholars also proposed
linking the term to the Skoak-Sklav root, to be related to the Latin cloaca, sewer, marsh. The
Slavs would therefore be the inhabitants of the marshes, reconstitution based on their
hypothetical original habitat.
Finally, it has been suggested to link the Slavic term to the Slovoe Russian, "the verb, the
word." This hypothesis seems to be confirmed since, even today, the Russians name their
German neighbors nemtsy, "the mutes": the Slavs would thus have been "Those who speak", a
way of contrasting culture and nature, whose ethnography provides many parallels. However,
the debate does not seem to be closed.
14
Origin and expansion of the Slavs (5th-10th centuries)
The exact origin and etymology of the name of the Slavs remain uncertain: the historical
sources about them are abundant only from the tenth and eleventh centuries.
As far as their ancestors are concerned, most Slavic historians agree that the first of them (the
Protoslaves) could have been enrolled in the confederations of various other migratory
peoples north of the Black Sea. Protoslavs among Turkish-speaking Vikings Huns and Iranian
Alans (4th-5th century), finally among the German-speaking Goths (5th century) and then
among Turkish-speaking Avars in the 6th and 7th centuries (for the latter, it is a certainty
Attested by the Byzantine chroniclers).
The original cradle of the Protoslavs at the end of antiquity, if we are to believe the
archaeological evidence left by these non-Germanic populations, could be found in the
regions between the sources of the Vistula in the west, Dniestr to the south, and the course of
the Dnieper to the east. These regions of the plain, situated in western Ukraine and eastern
Poland, bear the oldest testimony of a Slav presence. It is not known how far it stretched to
the north: some historians limit it to present-day Belarus, others make it rise to a line of St.
Petersburg-Moscow.
In the 6th and 7th centuries, part of the Slavs migrated westwards to the Elbe and to the south
and to the Carpathians and the Danube, in place of the Germans (Goths, Vandals, Gépides,
Lombards ...) Were moved to the Roman Empire of the West. After the reign of Justinian,
between 586 and 610, the Slavs of the Danube, allied to the Avars arrived in 567, burst south
of the river, reaching the Roman Empire of the East. They penetrate the Balkans and reach the
Adriatic. Around 548, they are in Illyria (Carinthia, Istria and Albania), causing the
abandonment of the eastern limes. In the Lower Danube basin and in the Balkans, the Slavs
formed so-called "Sclavenies", called Sclavenas, which the Byzantine chroniclers gave them.
Some Slavs settle down to the heart of Greece and small groups have reached Anatolia, some
Greek islands and Italy (where they have left surnames like Schiavenno or Schiano).
The slave trade, a name justly derived from the Slavs, has brought some far farther from their
land of origin, to Muslim Spain where court slaves founded Sakaliba dynasties.
The reasons for the movement of the Slavs to the west and south are the same as those of the
Mongols: the climatic cooling marked from the third to the seventh century, which caused all
the "barbaric migrations" from the confines Asia (where decades of terrible drought and
prolonged ice age have been witnessed by fossil pollens) and from northern Europe (where
the absence of summer caused famine considering the state of the people then buried). Well, it
looks like it's the opposite today.
Nevertheless one can say to make a logical sequel that:
In 550 LECH took power in Poland with his brother CZECH in Bohemia.
Then the Palatins (they are warlords).
700 – Cracus
Then Lech II
Vanda
Return of the Palatins
760 Przemislas named LESKO Ist
804 LESKO II
810 LESKO III
15
815 POPIEL I
830 POPIEL II
842 LES PIAST
861 ZIEMOWIT Sons of Piast
892 LESKO IV
913 LIEMONISLAS
962 MIECISLAS ie MIESKO I and there it becomes Poland
Under Pope John XIII Cardinal Gilles will christianize Poland
992 BOLESLAS
The problem of Kosovo concerning the Slavic origins
In the Roman province of Illyria covering Kosovo, the Dardanians originally spoke an Indo-
European language close to Albanian. The 34th Roman emperor, Constantine, was born in
Dardania in 274. After the break-up of the Roman Empire into a Byzantine empire, the Slavs
began to conquer ancient Illyria, so that Kosovo became Serbian by the end of the eleventh
century. The Ottoman Empire defeated the Serbs in 1371 and in 1389, 36,000 Orthodox Slavs
left Kosovo, but the vast majority of the population, of bogomile religion, remained on their
lands and escaped the Catholic Inquisition at the price of Conversion "to Islam. The study by
Professor Alexandre Soloviev, "Bogomilism", published in the Cahiers d'Études Cathares of
the summer of 1988, indicates that some Kosovo "Muslims" still celebrated Christmas at the
beginning of the last century! There was therefore a progressive albanization-islamization
under Turkish domination of a Slavic population in the 6th century in Albanian-speaking
Illyria, mostly bogomile and then Muslim. Between Slav-Orthodox Kosovars and Slavonic-
Islamizing Kosovars, there is only one cultural difference due to the vagaries of history.
Now to see things a little more clearly and have the clear ideas that go with it, we must have a
look at the map of Poland today.
Here is a short summary of what will follow for those who do not have the courage to
read everything.
That's it.We are getting into the history of our corner.
First the place of our origin is Galicia, a little history then…
It is a strip in the north of Slovakia and in the south of Poland which stretches as far as
Ukraine.
Around 1349, Galicia is annexed to Poland, so one has Polish origins.
Then a little history of Poland, it does not hurt after all, and this is where we can see that it is
very eventful.
This chapter goes until 1815 because it is just to situate the action of family history, but it is
already at this time that our ancestors appear.
To cut a long story short, here are a few dates to remember for salon discussions:
960: Birth of Poland
1078: Birth of Galicia
1349: Attachment of Galicia to the Kingdom of Poland
1768: Birth of Jacobus Brenia
1772: First dismemberment of Poland (we are Austrian)
1815: Second dismemberment (congress of Vienna) (we are Austro-Hungarian)
16
After that, Poland will be reborn in 1918 and it will be tumultuous.
This is a map of Poland and to situate yourself: start from Krakow, you have to go a little to
the south-east on the right of Zakopane, this is NOWICA.
But before we get to that, what a story! We will see that we are not French by chance and that
it could have turned out very differently.
In order to fully understand this, it must be remembered that multiple population movements
have taken place over the past centuries and that the formation of Poland, and in particular the
history of our origins in Western Galicia, has undergone innumerable changes during these
centuries.
In short, the Ukrainians, the French, the Austrians, the Russians followed one another, we
nearly had the Ottomans, and of course the Poles.
But let us start from the beginning and to understand, we must go back to the sources.
17
Chapter II - From the Middle Ages to the Great Sharing in Central Europe (920 - 1772)
One begins to appear in history
It was a long time ago in the year 1000, Nowica does not exist yet, that's why we can come
from anywhere. On the other hand, given our name, we are definitely Slavic.
The Grand Duchy of Galicia when it was not yet Polish
In the process of decomposition of the great principality of Kiev, begun as early as the
eleventh century, the secondary principality of Galicia emerged for the benefit of the Rurukid
cadets.
The latter owing its name to the city of Halych, from where the princes establish their
authority, from their fortress. Galicia knew a brilliant period during the reign of Yaroslav
Osmomylz, in the middle of the twelfth century. His successors succeeded in making
themselves the masters of neighboring Volhynia.
Grand Duchy of Galicia (1085-1349)
Editor’s Note: H is G for us which transforms HALICE into GALICIA.
18
1078 - "Galicia" finds its name as it becomes independent.
1086 or 1087- First mention of Zvenigorod which becomes one of the most important cities of
the Southwest of the principality of Kiev.
Late XIth - Principalities of Zvenigorod, Terebovlia and Peremyshl governed by the brothers
Rostilavitch, grandchildren of Prince Yaroslav, the sage of Kiev.XIIth (beginning) - The
princes Vladimir of Zvenygorod and Rostyslav of Przemylsh meet at Shchyrets (ray of
Pustomysti).
1124 - Vladimir Volodarevitch makes Zvenigorod its capital.
1141 - Vladimir Volodarevich unites these principalities and makes Halicz its capital.
1152-1187 - Reign of Yaroslav Osmomylz ( a brilliant period in economic and cultural
terms).
1189 - The Hungarian king Bela III occupied Galicia in 1189 and became king of halychyna".
1199 - Unification of Galicia-Volhynia. Roman Mstilavitch of Volhynia was invited by the
Galician boyars to the throne of the Halicz Volhynia-Galicia Union.
It was founded by Roman the Great, the prince of Volodymyr (Volhynia), of the Riurikid
dynasty, who conquered the principality of Halych and united the two countries at the end of
the twelfth century. Relying on the inhabitants of the cities, on devoted boyars and on good
relations with the Dukes Piasts, he built a very powerful state. He signed a peace treaty with
Hungary and established diplomatic relations with the Byzantine Empire.
1205 - In 1205, Roman the Great launched an offensive against Poland but was arrested by
the armies of Conrad of Mazovia and Lech the White. He was killed while passing the Vistula
on June 19, 1205 (battle of Zawichost).
1213 - First mention of Horodok (Gorodok, Grodeck), center of the salt trade.
The thirteenth century was marked by various threats: an internal threat with the conflicts
between the princes and the boyars, a threat that was mainly external with the great Mongol
invasion of 1241, and also the aims of the Polish and Hungarian neighbors on the territory. In
1256, however, the city of Lvov (city of Leon, Leopolis in Latin, Lemberg in German, etc.,
was promoted to a bright future).
1214 - Boyard Volodyslav Kormylchych becomes Prince of Galicia. During his reign, the
political situation was very unstable. A treaty between Hungarians and Poles is signed with
regard to the affairs of Galicia.
1220 - First mention in the annals of Novgorod of the archbishopric of Przemylz.
1227 - Prince Mstyslav Mstyslavovych beats the Hungarians in Zvenigorod.
1227 - Daniel, Prince of Galicia, visits Horodok.
Daniel of Galicia (in Ukrainian: Данило Галицький, Danylo Halytskyï) (1201-1264) was,
with Alexander Nevsky, the most important Ukrainian prince of the beginning of the Golden
Horde period. He possessed the Rus' of Halych-Volodymyr (Galicia and Volhynia) and,
briefly, Kiev. Danylo was the son of Prince Roman of Lodomerie (1170-1205). In 1223, he
was one of the princes to participate in the battle of Kalka against the Mongols. Beaten, he as
still able to escape. After his campaign of 1240-41, the Batu Khan endeavored to obtain from
19
Daniel Reconstruction of his country. The latter therefore sent foreign settlers to the country,
founded and / or developed cities such as Lviv, Chelm and the construction of roads.
The prince tried to create a broad network of alliance for his protection and received from the
pope the crown of king in 1253. But his attempt to free himself from the Golden Horde ended
in 1259 in a fiasco. His country was again severely ravaged and he had to flee.
1235 - Daniel, Prince of Galicia, visit Horodok.
1238 - Daniel, son of Roman becomes king of Galicia, by decision of the pope.
1241 - Mongol threat. The Mongols of Batu attack the principalities of the South-West. They
are repulsed with difficulty.
The city of Sambir (today Stary Sambir) is destroyed. The survivors took refuge on the banks
of the Dniester, where they founded a new settlement.
Destruction of Zvenigorod.
1245 - Battle of Jaroslav. Daniel beats the Poles and Hungarians.
1253 - Daniel is crowned king by a legate of the Pope, under the suzerainty of the Mongolian
khan.
1256 - Lvov Foundation in honor Leon (Lev) (Leopolis> Lviv), son Danylo Romanovych, not
far from the town of Zvenyhorod, wiped out by the Tatars.
1259 - Khan Burundai ordered Danylo to destroy the castle of Lviv, after a military campaign.
1264 - Death of Daniel. Chrvarno becomes Prince of Galicia.
At his death, his son Chvarno succeeded him (1264-1270), then his second son Leo (Lev)
(1270-1301), the latter managed to get some independence for his country.
1285 - Devastation of Galicia and Volhynia by the Tatars (Telebuha).
1301 - Death of Leon (Lev), Prince of Galicia. Youri 1st succeeds him.
1308 - Death of Youri Ier. André succeeds him.
1323 - Death of Andrew. End of the Roman dynasty. Boleslaw of Mazovia, elected by the
boyars, became Prince of Galicia under the name of Youti II. It is orthodox, at least in
principle.
1340 - Boleslaw Jersy of Mazovia assassinated.
In the end, however, the weakening of the duchy of Galicia was to lead to its conquest by
Poland: this was done in 1349.
For more than four centuries, Galicia was attached to the kingdom of Poland, a political
construction with relatively vague outlines. This attachment could only deeply mark the
region. Polonization marks many aspects of culture and society. For the Ruthenian peasantry,
the most important thing was the establishment of the Polish nobility, which monopolized the
land of the boyars and imposed rudely its economic and social domination and explained the
powerful antagonism between the peasants and their masters. The Poles, through the
intermediary of the cities and the administration, impose their laws. In religious matters, the
old Orthodox religion of the Ruthenians is the target of Roman Catholicism. This will
ultimately lead to the uniatism which is still today, one of the fundamental marks, the
mentalities of Galicia.
20
The term "uniate" has long been used to refer to the Eastern Catholic Churches. In other
words, it serves to designate the fractions of these Eastern Churches which broke with their
Orthodox "mother" Church and entered into communion with the Roman Catholic Church. It
is attested for the first time at the time of the Synod of Brest-Litovsk of 1596, which gives
birth to the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. Today mostly used by the Orthodox, it most
often has a pejorative connotation. In fact, "Uniate Churches" and "Eastern Catholic
Churches" are not synonymous.
The attachment to the kingdom of Poland (1323-1386)
Since 1323, the date of the death of the last descendant of Roman, it is a Polish Piast,
Boleslaw Trojdenowic who becomes the master of Galicia. For this, he converted to
orthodoxy and took the name of George II. In 1339, Georges de Ruthénie, who remained
Catholic in his heart, designated Casimir the Great as his successor.
In 1340, George II was poisoned, but the succession did not go without saying. The Polish-
Hungarian troops met with those of Lubart of Lithuania and the Tatars, called by a Ruthenian
prince, Dierko de Przemysl. The defection of the two allies of this prince, solicited by
problems of succession, caused an agreement in which Dierko administered Western Ukraine
on behalf of the Polish-Hungarians, with the title of staroste. Casimir, however, was soon to
denounce this convention, and in the autumn of 1349 his troops invaded the whole of
Ruthenia and Volhynia. Poland was thus engaged in a policy of expansion towards the south-
east. The King of Hungary, however, surprised, ratified by the treaty of Buda in 1350 this
dominion.
Nevertheless, the Lithuanians were able to maintain themselves in the principality of Belz.
Small historical reminder
In France, it is the Hundred Years War.
The Hundred Years War spanned a period of one hundred and sixteen years (1337 to 1453)
during which two dynasties, the Plantagenets and the Capetian house of the Valois, clashed on
French soil during numerous conflicts, interspersed with longer or shorter truces.
In Asia
China is a victim of drought, famine and floods, followed by plague in 1334. Five million
people die. The Black Death left China and spread to the West to reach Europe in 1347.
White Croatia (in Croatian Bijela Hrvatska, in Polish, Biała Chorwacja) also named
Chrobatia, was a region extending in present-day Southern Poland, Bohemia and Slovakia.
The area west of White Croatia is known as White Serbia. The Croatian tribes lived there
before they moved to the north of the Carpathians and then to the north-west of the Balkan
Peninsula (now Croatia) in the early seventh century. A principality of white Croatia
remained, however, around Krakow. In 995, Czech armies from Bohemia and Moravia
invaded the state of White Croatia and destroyed its capital Libya. Shortly afterwards, the
White Croats (Byelohravati) were invaded by the new kingdom of Poland. The last leader of
the White Croatia state - Sobjeslav - was killed by the Polish armies in 1004, near Prague.
21
Short history of POLAND – (965 – 1815)
The kingdom of Gniezno (10th century)
Shortly after the middle of the tenth century, the first Polish state was formed around
Gniezno, under the reign of Mieszko I (or Mieszko, 920-992), who took the title of king,
received baptism and married the duke's sister Of Bohemia, Boleslas I, in 966. Thus he chose
to marry Christianity directly from Rome to avoid falling under the Saxon rule.
Mieszko had agreed with the Saxon Margrave Gero (died in 965) to subdue the Slavs of the
Baltic. Having united the Slavs of the Vistula, he succeeded successively by the crushing of
the Magyars by Otto I at Lechfeld (955), then by the Italian defeat of Otto II at Cape Colonne
(982), as well as his successors The weakening of the Hohenstaufen in the eleventh century,
in order to have its kings recognized by the emperor and to constitute a Polish kingdom which
extended from Gdańsk to Krakow.
22
FEUDAL POLAND
Immediately after the canonization of Adalbert, his tomb became a holy site. In the year 1000,
Otto III, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, made a pilgrimage to Gniezno, which then
became an archdiocese of Rome and not of the German archdiocese on the other side of the
Odra. Otto proclaimed Boleslaw "brother and collaborator of the Empire", a gesture that
demonstrated a relationship that was certainly not that of a subordinate. Unfortunately, Otto's
premature death put an end to his dream of a peaceful Christianity.
In the face of the invasions of the new emperor and other Germanic feudal lords on the
western borders of Poland, Boleslaw tried to unite Poles, Czechs and Slovaks to form a great
state, and to cope together with the Slav invasions coming from the West. But the Czech and
Slovak lands were under his direction only very briefly.
On the other hand, Boleslaw made war on the East and succeeded in establishing a benevolent
sovereign, Kievan Rus. To mark his victory, Boleslaw seized his sword and several times
struck the bars of the great golden gate of Kiev. The sword was then known as Szczerbiec
("the sword with the notches") and was later used in the ceremonies of the Polish crowns.
Throughout his life, Boleslaw begged Rome to grant him a royal crown. In 1025, almost at
the end of his life, Boleslaw was finally crowned king with the blessing of the pope, but
without the approval of the Germanic emperor. This event marked the recognition of Poland
as a real kingdom within Latin Christianity.
On the great expanses of forest between the Vistula and the Oder slowly formed the properly
Polish tribes: Vislanes, centered on the Krakow region, but probably extending as far as the
Carpathians; Mazivians fixed on the Vistula average and limited to the south by the territory
of the Silesians. Finally, around the Golpo Lake, an important relay on the famous Amber
road, the State of the Poles was built, the centers of the old towns of Kruszwic, Gniezno and
later Poznan.
According to legend, the tribe of Polanes (inhabitants of the fields) imposed its law on the
other tribes under the leadership of a chief named Piast, the founder of a dynasty that reigned
until 1370. Mieszko I, first historical ruler, paid tribute At Otto I in 966, married a princess of
Bohemia and went with her people to Christianity, thus placing herself under the protection of
the pope, from whom he obtained an autonomous ecclesiastical administration. Since then,
Poland has remained faithful to Rome and to Latinity. From the time of Mieszko's reign,
Russian incursions, added to German pressure, gave rise to the double threat to Poland
throughout its history.
23
Mieszko's son, Boleslas the Vaillant, gave his kingdom a place of choice in Europe; He
imposed his law on the Slavs, and received as Emperor Otto III, who had come to Gniezno on
the tomb of St. Adalbert. He took advantage of this to have the independence of Poland
recognized. He distinguished himself in his campaigns against the Emperor Henry II. The
Peace of Bautzen, in 1018, gave him Lusatia and Misenia in fief. In 1024, the Pope finally
granted him the royal crown, which was of capital importance in the Middle Ages. This
beautiful rise was broken under Mieszko II (1025-1034). He had to recognize the suzerainty
of the Empire; Lusatia and the land between Vistula and Bug were lost. After the death of
Mieszko II and four years of anarchic interregnum, his son, Casimir, returned to Poland with
Germanic aid. He was beaten by the Czechs. Casimir, merely duke of Poland, reconquered
Mazovia and Pomerania, and had his rights recognized on Silesia by Henry III . He
transferred the capital to Krakow and made Poland a centralized duchy.
Map of Europe in 1099, we had not yet Alsace and Lorraine, and the Nice people were not yet
French
His son, Boleslaus II the Bold, openly asserted the ally of the pope in the quarrel which
opposed him to the emperor. In exchange, the pope acknowledged his right to the royal
crown, provoking the wrath of the emperor, who helped the lords and the clergy to rise
against the new king. He caused the head of the insurrection, Stanislas, bishop of Cracow, to
become the patron saint of Poland and the symbol of the unity of the country. Boleslas,
attacked on all sides, was contested in exile. Very serious feudal disorders marked the reign of
Ladislas Herman, younger brother of Boleslas II. His successor, Boleslas III Bouche-Torse,
annexed Pomerania and the territories between the Elbe and the Oder. His will will be a
source of dynastic troubles. He instituted the Senoriat by designating his eldest son as the
sovereign of Little Poland, with Cracow, and the Cadets dividing the duchies of Mazovia,
Greater Poland, and Eastern Poland.
24
Small historical and comic side
Birth of Marco Polo (1254 - 1324)
Marco Polo, famous Venetian traveler, would be a Slavic ... Well there is exegesis:
During my last visit to Croatia in Korcula, Dalmatian island, you can visit the home of the
parents of Marco Polo. Then the Croats say that it was conceived in Croatia but was born in
Venice, as the Croats come from an immigration from the northern Carpathians, that is to say
from our home ... Marco Polo is a Polish Lemko ... Well, I am exaggerating a little ...
Poland was divided, in the middle of the thirteenth century, into two dozen small duchies. The
Church, who was always powerful, maintained the idea of unity. In spite of the suppression of
the senoriate by the assembly of the dukes and bishops of Leczyca in 1180, the division
remained. As early as 1226, Conrad of Mazovia appealed to the order of the Teutonic
Knights, who undertook the Germanization of the countries bordering the Baltic towards the
Gulf of Riga and founded the fortress of Torun. In spite of the efforts of Boleslas the Pudique
(1243-1279), of Leszek the Black (1279-1288), of Henry IV (1290-1296), the domains of the
Piasts could not be united. With the support of the clergy, Wenceslas II of Bohemia (1300-
1305) seized the throne of Poland. The leader of resistance to the Bohemian party will be
Ladilsas the Brief (1306-1333), which restores the Piast dynasty and the unity of the State; He
was crowned in 1320 in Cracow. Silesia, however, remained in Bohemia, and the Teutonic
Order granted itself the duchies of Pomerania and Cujavia.
Casimir the Great Casimir III (1333-1370) fully deserved his nickname of Grand: he founded
the University of Krakow in 1364, had Cujavia restored to him by the Teutonic in 1343,
imposed his suzerainty on the Duke of Mazovia and seized The Galicia. The consolidation of
the state continued with Louis d'Anjou, nephew and successor by his mother, of Ladislas the
Short. Already king of Hungary, he united, from 1370 to 1382, the two catholic crowns in a
personal alliance which will be renewed later. But in order to obtain the support of the Polish
nobility, he granted him, at the diet of Kosice, important political privileges, which would
undermine the establishment of an absolute monarchy; On the other hand, the succession of
the throne of Poland was guaranteed in favor of her younger daughter Hedwig. Hungary being
reserved for her eldest daughter. The young princess was compelled to marry Jagellon, Grand
Duke of Lithuania, a pagan prince whose vast estate, enlarged after the fall of the Kiev
kingdom, constituted an eastern march between the West and the Russian lands subject to the
Horde of Gold. Jagiellon was baptized under the name of Ladislas, married and crowned in
Cracow, and the union of Poland and Lithuania with Wilno proclaimed in 1386.
THE JAGELLON
Ladislas Jagellon reserved the title of sovereign duke and entrusted the direct government of
Lithuania to his cousin Witold. On July 15, 1410, the combined forces of the two princes
inflicted a bloody and decisive defeat on the Teutonic and Glaive knights at Grunwald, but
failed on the fortress of Marienburg. Only the Grand Duchy found access to the Baltic at the
first peace of Thorn in 1411.
In 1422, the victory of Lake Melno took away the Samogitia from the Teutonic. Jagellon died
in 1434, leaving two young sons. Ladislas III was ten years old, the bishop of Cracow,
Olesnicki, governing in his name, put an end to the squabbles between Poles and Lithuanians,
signed peace with the Teutonics, and then conceived the ambitious plan of federating the
Catholic peoples of Europe Eastern region against the Turkish danger. At his instigation,
Ladislaus III (1434-1444) took the lead in a real crusade that he pushed to the shores of the
Black Sea, but was beaten and killed in Varna in 1444.
25
During the reign of Casimir IV Jagellon (1447-1492), the final assault, at the price of thirteen
new years of war (1454-1466), was given against the Order of Teutonic Knights, to which
Danzig was retaken. The Grand Master recognized himself as a vassal of Poland. The thrust
towards the Black Sea having failed, at least the maritime outlets to the north were thus
assured.
It was then that Georges de Podebrady appointed Ladislas as his successor in Bohemia
(1470). When King Matthias Corvinius died in 1490, Ladislas also became sovereign of
Hungary. Thus, the Jagellons held at the same time Poland, Lithuania, Bohemia and Hungary.
Faced with this new great power, the Habsburgs, in search of allies, turned to the "great
rallying of the Russian lands" Ivan III. This German-Russian rapprochement took Poland in
pincers, and the successive sovereigns had a difficult task, especially as the internal political
and social system had profoundly changed.
The supremacy of the magnates and bishops had replaced the preponderant influence of the
small nobility (the szlachta), who, conscious of bearing the full weight of the wars, intended
to participate in public affairs as well. The clergy had imprudently defended it to disgrace the
great dignitaries, its rivals. Casimir IV, realizing that he could do nothing without this new
political force, had granted them, since 1454, the "statutes of Niesawa." Disengaged from
aristocratic domination in many fields, the "dietines" (local assemblies) had the right to give
or refuse their assent to the promulgation of new laws and the general convocation of chivalry
As early as 1493, a national diet was united at Piotrkow: Poland became a "noble republic".
The reign of Casimir IV marked one of the peaks of the Polish economy. The towns of the
Vistula were particularly prosperous. Lwow and Krakow were active markets with Germany
and Silesia. But socially, this prosperity was reflected in a questioning of the peasant liberties,
hitherto greater than in the other states of Europe. The new sovereign Jean Albert (1492-1501)
succeeded Casimir. He too was forced to rely on the nobility. He granted him new and
important concessions, in 1496, to the diet of Piotrkow: a monopoly of landed property;
Political freedom and exclusivity of accession to the high offices of the State; Finally,
exemption from certain taxes and customs duties. The peasant condition was further
aggravated.
The former oligarchy of the great lords temporarily regained its influence under the reign of
the third son of Casimir IV, Alexander (1501-1506), Grand Duke of Lithuania. The diet of
Radom in 1505, which brought together the king, the senate, the deputies, provincial dietines,
and decided alone taxes and all legislative or military measures. The szlachta retained the
monopoly of civic life and armed service. But the state was weakening.
Henry of Valois was the first foreign king. To be elected, he consented to the demands of the
nobility, who practically took away all authority from the sovereign. Without great elegance,
Henry de Valois fled from Poland at the end of five months, in order to collect the crown of
France from his late brother Charles IX.
Let us not forget the battle of Renty on August 10, 1554 between Henry II and Charles V. It
was on this date and thanks to this battle that Pierre Dehandschoewercker was ennobled (by
Charles V). At that time, the north was not yet France. Well, that's a detail in the story but 425
years later I will marry his offspring.
Henry of Valois, who is the son of Catherine de Medicis and who became Henri III, reigned
over France with his mignons. He fled from Poland on horseback and in one go. He was
assassinated on the throne (not the king's seat, on the pierced chair, the toilet what!).
1512 is the birth of the village of NOWICA, where our family came from, but we do not
know very well if we were at the origin of this village.
26
The Polish throne, vacant for a year, was run by the Habsburgs, but the Grand Turk was
opposed to this choice. The szlachta ruled out the danger by calling Stefan Bathory (1576-
1586), Palatine of Transylvania, husband of Jeanne Jagellon, sister of Sigismond August.
Remarkable statesman, Bathory placed Ivan the Terrible on the right, took Livonia from him
and acquired Polotsk. He opposed the appetites of the szlachta, broke the indiscipline of the
magnates, favored the action of the Jesuits, eliminated the dissenters, and favored the Church.
Three Swedish princes then occupied the throne of Poland for eighty-one years. The first,
Sigismund II Vasa (1587-1632), was an uncompromising Catholic. From an absolutist
tendency, he took the side of the magnates, enemies of the diets, against the szlachta. A revolt,
which brought together Protestants and Catholics, broke out: the diet of 1592, led by the
Hetman Jan Zamoyski, faithful companion of the late king Stephen Bathory, and to whom he
owed his election, obliged him again to recognize the articles of Confederation Of Warsaw.
Sigismund III, having failed in his desire to reestablish absolutism in Poland, then wished to
appropriate the Swedish crown passed to his cousin Gustavus Adolphe, leader of the Lutheran
party. Thus, not content with having held a two-year garrison in the Kremlin and not having
left him until he had won Smolensk at the peace of Deoulino, he allied himself with Ferdinand
II, enemy of Adolphus, and sent armies to assist the Austrians besieged by the Turks in
Vienna. In retaliation, a Turkish army successfully operated in Poland.
The Polish disaster was put to good use by Gustavus Adolphus, who seized Riga and the
mouths of the Vistula; He obtained, through the truce of Altmark (1629), maritime Livonia
and the collection of customs duties on the ports of the Vistula. The reign of Sigismund ended
in complete failure.
Small historical reminder
In France
Henri IV, born Henri de Bourbon (13 December 1553 in Pau - 14 May 1610 in Paris) was
king of Navarre (Henri III of Navarre, 1572-1610) and then king of France (1589-1610), first
French ruler of the branch Known as Bourbon of the Capetian dynasty.
But let's take
His son Ladislas IV (1632-1648) attempted to reconcile Protestants and Catholics at Thorn's
colloquy, defeated the Muscovites, transformed the peace of Deoulino into perpetual peace,
and consolidated Poland's position in the Baltic after concluding a truce with the Sweden. He
died as the Ukrainian Cossacks began to revolt against their Polish lords
The Cossacks, already masters of the Ukraine, placed themselves in 1654 under the protection
of Tsar Alexis, who carried off Smolensk and Wilno. Muscovites, Swedes, Tatars rushed to
the cure. Warsaw was taken by the Swedes, who occupied the whole Republic except Danzig
and Lvov. Many gentlemen agreed with them, and soon what remained of the army passed
over to the enemy. The king and queen took refuge in Silesia. Charles X of Sweden was about
to crown the crown of Poland when the resistance of the monastery of Czestochowa in 1655
galvanized the people, exasperated by looting and desecration. Filled with heroism, Poland
nevertheless went out of the turmoil.
At the treaty of Welhau in 1657, it lost its suzerainty over ducal Prussia; The Peace of Oliwa
(1660) recognized Maritime Livonia to Sweden; Finally, at the end of a long conflict with the
Russians, the truce of Andrussovo, in 1667, yielded to Moscow Smolensk. Kiev and Ukraine
from the left bank of the Dnieper.
27
The country was devastated, the cities were sacked, the farms abandoned, poverty was
general. The black plague was added to these misfortunes: a third of the population perished.
King Jean Casimir understood the need for institutional reform. He was on the point of
making him accept by the diet, when the intrigues of his wife, Queen Louise de Gonzague-
Nevers, to secure by a pre-elections the crown to a French prince, compromised everything.
Two years of insurrection followed, and Jean Casimir, who had become a widower, abdicated
and exiled himself to France.
History
Crescents: The crescent was invented in 1683 by the Polish Kulyeziski.
The city (Vienna) had been besieged by the immense Turkish army of Kara Mustafa. The
hungry Viennese had been rescued by the Polish and German armies under the command of
the Polish King John III Sobieski. Kulyeziski having taken a decisive part in the final victory
(battle of the Kahlenberg), he was given coffee stocks abandoned by the Turkish army and
permission to open a coffee in Vienna. What he did. To accompany the coffee, he ordered a
baker buns in the shape of a crescent (the standard of the Ottoman Empire was decorated with
a crescent), to commemorate the victory over the Turks. The success was immediate.
Polish voters, fearing, with good reason, foreign aims, preferred to elect a Polish prince,
Michal Korybut Wisniowiecki. The latter, a poor sovereign, saw himself bequeathed to him
the primate and hetman Jean Sobieski. The civil war was threatening. It was then that the
Sultan, in order to satisfy his new allies the Cossacks, declared war; A series of setbacks
forced King Michal to cede Podolia and the whole of Ukraine. But, faced with the national
outburst, the Diet refused to ratify the treaty and entrusted the fate of the country to Jean
Sobieski
Here is Europe in 1715 at the death of Louis XIV after the treaty of UTRECHT, our origins
are there, in Little Poland.
28
He kidnapped the entrenched camp of Chocim, and when king Michal died, he was
triumphantly elected by the diet. This prince was as fine a man as a vigorous saber. He
stopped another Turkish invasion, yielded for a time to the solicitations of France, but not
receiving the support he expected against the Sultan, turned to Austria, which recovered its
former influence: an alliance was tied with the emperor in 1683. Vienna, besieged by the
Ottoman troops, was unblocked by the German and Polish armies.
Sobieski, who himself led the ultimate charge at the head of his winged "usarz", was the hero
of this memorable victory. Animated by the spirit of crusade, he led Russia into the Holy
League in struggle against the Sublime Porte. Sobieski then conducted two difficult
campaigns in Wallachia, the duration of which revived the indiscipline and party spirit in
Poland.
He died in 1696, despairing of not being able, in spite of his victories, to reconstitute the
Polish state.
The vigorous nobiliary democracy of the sixteenth century had slowly changed into a shady
and aggressive demagogy. The great lords, holders of the high offices of the state, masters of
the senate, possessors of immense landed estates, had henceforth domesticated the poor and
needy szlachta, and held the diets under their cuts.
To the intrigues of the magnates were added those of France, which proposed the candidacy
of Conti, and those of Austria, which first supported the candidature of Jacques Sobieski, son
of the deceased king, then that of Frederic Augustus, elector of Saxony "(also supported by
Russia) and a Polish minority called for power.
Frederic Augustus, proclaimed illegally king by the bishop of Cujavia, entered the head of an
army at Krakow, where he took the royal crown under the name of Augustus II. The Saxon
sought to impose himself by taking back the lost provinces from the Turks and the Swedes. If
by the peace of Karlowitz (1699) the Turks returned part of the Ukraine and the PPodolia, the
war was less fortunate against Charles XII. The war of the North (1700-1721) made Poland a
battlefield.
Charles XII had an anti-king elected, Stanislas Leszczynski, while Tsar Peter the Great
supported Augustus II and, after his victory at Poltava, succeeded in imposing it as the only
king naturally, the Tsar reserved to intervene and to arbitrate the situation in Poland.
History
King Stanislas Leszczynski was the inventor of the baba. It is said that he found the Alsatian
pastry known as Kouglof too dry. Kouglof is a dough cake raised with dried raisins soaked in
kirsch, the dough must be light and aerial, and is cooked in a fluted terracotta fluted mold.
The paternity of the baba would come directly to King Stanislas, who, finding the Kouglof too
dry, had the idea of soaking it in a sugar syrup with rum. The name baba can have two
origins: the most commonly used is a Polish word baba, referring to a popular Polish pastry
whose ovoid appearance recalled an old woman weighed down by age and her clothes stacked
or baba.
The other origin, more doubtful but ingenious, is literary: Baba was born from a tale of the
thousand and one nights, translated in the eighteenth century by Galland, Ali Baba, who was
the favorite hero of the inventor of the cake, the King Stanislas. This discovery so pleased the
29
king that about twenty baba recipes appear in "Le Cannaméliste Français" especially flavored
with sweet white wine and even flavored with saffron. Publicity was also made at the Court
by his daughter, Maria Leszczynska, wife of King Louis XV, just as gourmet as her royal
husband. The celebrity of the baba has not stopped since and it has remained one of the
classic desserts of French cuisine.
Nicolas Stohrer realized his apprenticeship in pastry in Wissembourg, in the kitchens of King
Stanislas I of Poland then in exile.
Stohrer became a pastry maker for Marie Leszczyńska, daughter of Stanislas, and followed
her in 1725 at Versailles following her marriage with King Louis XV of France.
RUM BABA
Nicolas Stohrer is the inventor of baba au rhum, a gourmandise made with dry brioche,
flavored with saffron and served with custard cream, currants and fresh grapes. This dessert is
derived from a dry brioche, traditional Polish pastry not soaked with alcohol. The name of the
dessert comes from the character of Ali Baba of the tale of the Thousand and One Nights; Ali-
baba is the first name of the dessert.
Pâtisserie Stohrer
Pâtisserie Stohrer rue Montorgueil in Paris.
Nicolas Stohrer took up residence at 51 rue Montorgueil in Paris in 1730. This shop is the
oldest pastry shop in Paris and partially registered with the historical monuments since May
23, 1984. It is now managed by Pierre Liénard, Also caterer.
Stanislas Leszczynski also helped popularize the Madeleine de Commercy around 1755. He
lived in his castle in Commercy, where a quarrel broke out between the confectioner and the
steward: the pastry cook gave up his apron, and a maid made the madeleine that rejoiced the
sovereign. The king asked for the name of this pastry, and gave it the name of a woman who
took part in their manufacture. He also addressed to the court these famous Madeleines de
Commercy, who rejoiced the king and his wife, accomplished gourmets. It is also said that the
recipe came as often from a convent, and the paternity of the Madeleine de Commercy is also
claimed in 1843 by Madeleine Paulmier. As we know, we only lend to the rich!
End of the aside
At the death of Augustus II (1733), his son, Auguste III, held a diet of Pacification (1736) and
ceded the Duchy of Courland to Biron, favorite of the Tsarina. The Czartoryski (or as it was
then called "the Family") sought with Russia the necessary support to reestablish for their
profit a strong monarchy.
30
After the death of Augustus III in 1763, these intrigues succeeded, thanks to the help of
diplomats and Russian troops. On September 7, 1764, Stanislas Auguste Poniatowski, nephew
of Catherine of Russia, was proclaimed king.
STANISLAS PONIATOWSKI
The new sovereign was animated with a sincere desire for regeneration. He created an Army
Commission, a Treasury Commission, a Good Order Commission and a Cadet School;
Confederation, a restricted assembly representative of the lords, was maintained after the
royal election; it was a circumventing means of abolishing the liberum veto which each lord
possessed in ordinary diets, and which, on the veto of one, allowed To anarchy to settle.
Catherine, dissatisfied with the reforms and a reversal contrary to her views, encouraged the
demands of the "dissidents" and the tycoons of the opposition. At the extraordinary diet of
1767-68, the procedure of election of the king, the liberum veto, and the privileges of the
nobility were proclaimed "cardinal laws." Some lords with a desire for renovation then
formed the "Confederation of Bar" and allied themselves with the Sultan against the Russians.
Poniatowski made the mistake of fighting them first, then changed, but was deposed by the
Confederates in 1770. The foreigner intervened, once more, to "restore order." The King of
Prussia Frederick II. Occupied a part of Greater Poland.
Europe in 1789, the dismemberment of Poland is done in 1772, we have become Austrian at
this time of history because it is Austria that takes over Galicia
Birth of HYACINT BRENIA IN 1768 and certainly in this period birth of JACOBUS
BRENIA
31
Catherine was favorable to the principle of a dismemberment of Poland, and after much
hesitation and two years of bargaining, the Empress Maria Theresa rallied.
In 1772, Frederick took Pomerania and royal Prussia, less Torun and Danzig; Austria annexed
Galicia and part of Podolia, Russia contented itself with part of Lithuania and Ruthenia
Blanche, but reserved the protectorate in the territory of the Republic.
The first sharing was consummated. The diet sat until 1775 to carry out the reforms. If the
religious quarrels subsided, the dissidents having acquired full freedom of worship, the
executive power, entrusted to a permanent council of thirty-six members, deprived the king of
the direction of foreign affairs. In spite of the numerous obstacles placed on his personal
authority, Stanislas really wanted to achieve interior restoration; Thus, it renewed the National
Education and promoted the spread of "new ideas". A law authorized the nobles to derogate
by exercising trades and trading.
Between 1775 and 1788 the nobility formed a genuine national party. The Great Diet, a sort
of constituent assembly, sat from 1788 to 1792. It was naturally very influenced by the events
of France. A Constitution, elaborated in secret, was voted as a whole, on May 3, 1791, under
the motto of the Physiocrats: "Freedom, Security, Property." The right of vote was suppressed
by landless gentlemen, a too docile clientele of the magnates, and the powers of the senate
reduced. The crown became hereditary in the house of Saxony. Poland was therefore a
constitutional monarchy.
This renovation, like that of 1767-68, was to alarm Prussia and Russia, who found allies
among the conservative magnates who confederated Targowica. The Russian armies invaded
the territory once more and forced the lines of the Bug. In January 1793 the Prussians
occupied Greater Poland. Danzig was taken by assault.
Poland took a large part of the eastern provinces. In a tragic silence, the "silent diet" of
Grodno endorsed the second partition on 23 September 1793.
Yet even in this mutilated state, which numbered only three and a half million souls, unity
was not made. The union was against the occupier: General Kosciuszko, famous for his
participation in the American War of Independence, called the nation to rise in March 1794.
At the end of April, Poland was released, a "Council National supreme "took power. On 7
May Kosciuszko, the head of the insurrectionary government, decided to abolish serfdom,
limit the drudgery and ban hunting of peasants from their lands. The limited material means,
the lack of arms, the remoteness of revolutionary France, itself struggling with foreign
intervention, accelerated the fall of the insurrection.
The Prussians were victorious at Cracow on the 15th of June, the Russians at Maciejowice on
the 10th of October. Stanislas confided in vain the unfortunate Poland to the generosity of
Catherine II before abdicating the 25th of November 1795: the kingdom was completely
dismembered.
Eliminated from the world map without ceasing to exist, the Polish nation, from the end of the
eighteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century, continued to impose itself on the
world's attention by its patriots, thinkers and artists . It was, however, necessary to await the
victory of Napoleon I over the fourth coalition (England - Prussia - Russia) for such
conceptions to see a beginning of realization.
The Franco-Russian treaty of Tilsit (1807) created the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, from the
Polish territories under Prussian rule, and entrusted it to Frederick Augustus of Saxony, a
prince already chosen by the Constitution of 3 May 1791.
32
Reduced to the basins of the Warta and the middle Vistula, and to a moor between the
Niemen and East Prussia, it was without an outlet to the sea.
Some timid reforms were promulgated: equality of the bourgeoisie and nobility before the
law, abolition of serfdom, but maintenance of the corvée, a monopoly of landed property to
the nobles, adoption of the Napoleonic code; In fact, these reforms resulted in an aggravation
of the peasant condition.
Birth of JOANNES BRENIA IN 1798
Cool in France the revolution has just taken place, and the king is already decapitated,
Napoleon makes his own
The life of this small state, enlarged in 1809 by Lublin and Krakow, was linked to the
outcome of the Napoleonic adventure.
Historical aside
But we are already in the Napoleonic era and it is time to explain the expression:
"Drunk like a Pole"
Under the Empire, a Polish army of up to 100,000 men fought in the French ranks, from
Madrid to Moscow: its contribution to the French victory of Friedland over the Russians (14
June 1807) prompted the Emperor French government to restore a small independent Polish
state in the form of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, which was enlarged after the new joint
victory of Wagram (5 June 1809), from 102,000 to 155,000 km2 and from 2.6 to 4, 3 million
inhabitants.
Is it known, in connection with the Polish military prowess under the Empire, that the French
expression "drunk like a Polish", a priori so pejorative, was forged by Napoleon I to salute the
courage of his Polish troops? In Spain, a decisive charge of the Kozietulski Polish horses
carried off in November 1808 the defile of Somosierra, a narrow gorge defended by
murderous Spanish batteries, and which opened the road to Madrid. To the Emperor who had
the remainder of his Guard march past the survivors of this elite unit, jealous French generals
pointed out that they were drunk. "Then, gentlemen, know how to be drunk like Poles,"
retorted Napoleon. And it was of a hundred Polish lancers that he chose to compose his Guard
during his exile on the island of Elba.
Another version says that Napoleon, admiringly, would then have said: “One had to be drunk
like a Polish to accomplish that.”
Toile de Janvier Suchodolski 1875 with the Polish horsemen of Kozietulski at the Battle of Somosierra in 1808
33
Besides numerous and valiant troops, Poland supplied the Empire with one of its most
celebrated generals, Prince Joseph Poniatowski, killed at the famous "Battle of the Nations"
which took place near Leipzig on 19 October 1813: Wounded and encircled, while the last
bridge over the Elster had been unfortunately destroyed by the French sappers, he threw
himself on horseback into the river and drowned rather than surrender to the enemy. The
portrait of this great warrior, who was at the same time Marshal of Poland and Marshal of
France, adorns the residence of the Ambassador of France at Warsaw.
34
Chapter III - The Ethnic Era (1772 - 1900)
A short summary of what will follow for the lazy ones:
Napoleon has just been sent back to the islands and the victors of Waterloo share Europe. It is
the Congress of Vienna, that is the date to remember. 1815
Then it is not a really good time because Poland will disappear until 1918.
Nevertheless the family is still in Nowica, and the generations succeed one another.
We come to the middle of the 19th century, we find that there is a strange people in the hills
in southern Poland, north of the Carpathians along the Slovak border and these people will be
called the Lemkos. That's us.
35
And here in 1815 this is what we get, we are still Galician but downright Austro-Hungarian,
which explains why our ancestor BRENIA JOANNES had a name with Austrian tendency.
Poland's Congress
At the Congress of Vienna, once again, the Polish lands were redistributed: Prussia was
enlarged by Posnania and Thorn; Krakow was erected into a small republic; the rest of the
duchy received the name of the kingdom of Poland and was united to the Russian Empire by a
personal alliance. Yet the final act of the Congress of Vienna recognized Polish nationality
and promised the respective subjects of Prussia, Austria and Russia national representation
and institutions.
In fact, Austria regarded the territories of Galicia and Lodomeria as a reservoir of men and
taxes. On the other hand, a systematic denationalization was undertaken in Prussian Poland,
which imposed itself on Prussian code, German language and colonization.
As early as 1815, Alexander I granted the kingdom of Poland a constitutional charter
guaranteeing an autonomous government, administration and army.
But as early as 1818, the reactionary evolution of the Tsar ruined all hopes set in the kingdom,
from 1825, the repression took place very hard. Yet the intellectual movement remained
intense, centered on the old University of Cracow. But the national sentiment was torn
between two poles: the conservative clergy, and the disciples of the revolutionary movements
of 1791-1793. Thus the Parisian revolution of July 1830 aroused great excitement in the army,
some conspirators calling for insurrection.
36
The great powers, including Louis Philippe's France, abandoned Poland to its isolation.
Despite the resistance of the national government, the revolution was defeated by the Russian
repression and ended on 7 September 1831 by the capitulation of Warsaw.
Massacre in Galicia - 1830-1846
During this period, Galicia was administered by the Austrians and everything proves that they
did everything to perpetuate a large number of massacres.
Birth of ANDRZEJ BRENIA on 3 SEPTEMBER 1835
World Historical Reminder
In France it is the monarchy of July: small reminder for those who have forgotten
Proclaimed on 9 August 1830 after the so-called "Trois Glorieuses" riots, the July monarchy
(1830-1848) succeeded to the Restoration in France. The younger branch of the Bourbons, the
house of Orleans, then came to power. Louis-Philippe Ier is not sacred king of France but
inducted king of the French. His reign, begun with the barricades of the Revolution of 1830,
was completed in 1848 by other barricades, which drove him to establish the Second
Republic. The Monarchy of July, which was that of one man, marks in France the end of
royalty.
In Great Britain it was Queen Victoria (1837-1901)
Alexandrine Victory of Hanover, known as Drina, is the daughter of Prince Edward Augustus,
Duke of Kent and Strathearn and Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. She was born in London
on 24 May 1819 and died at Osborne on 22 January 1901. She was Queen of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1837-1901) and Empress of the Indies (1876-1901).
His reign, which lasted for more than 63 years, remains the longest in the history of the
United Kingdom and that of female monarchs. In French, it is commonly referred to as
"Queen Victoria".
In Russia it is Nicolas I (1825-1855)
Nicholas I of Russia (Nikolai Pavlovich Romanov (6 July 1796 - 2 March 1855) was Emperor
of Russia, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland from 1 December 1825 until his death.
Nicholas was the son of Tsar Paul I and Princess Sophia Dorothea of Württemberg, and was
also the younger brother of Alexander I. Married Princess Charlotte of Prussia, who took the
name of Alexandra Feodorovna in 1817. Charlotte was the daughter of King Frederick
William III of Prussia and Princess Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the sister of the German
Emperor William I.
In America it is the declaration of Monroe (1823). For young people: small explanation:
This was the so-called Monroe doctrine from 1854 on, in which three principles were defined:
1. The former affirms that the American continent must henceforth be regarded as closed to
any subsequent attempt at colonization by European powers.
2. The second, which ensues, that any intervention by a European power on the American
continent would be considered as an unfriendly manifestation with regard to the United
States.
3. And the third, in return, any American intervention in European affairs would be excluded.
37
But let's go back to the story.
The fall of the insurrection led to the liquidation of the Polish army and a brutal restriction of
the formal autonomy of the kingdom, while the territories subject to Prussia became the object
of intensive Germanization. Nine million former insurgents, fleeing a severe repression, went
into exile in Western Europe, mainly in France. It was here that the political leaders and the
most brilliant representatives of the intellectual elite of the time gathered. A democratic and
revolutionary current, insofar as it linked the question of agrarian reform to that of national
independence, emerged rapidly among the exiles. While Austria, in 1846, drew up a peasant
uprising by annexing the autonomous republic of Cracow purely and simply, the
revolutionary movement reached the whole of Europe.
The Polish exiles participated in all the national revolutions without seeing their fulfilled
aspirations.
It was only after the abolition of serfdom in Russia (1861) that the hope of a national revival
was again allowed. An uprising took place in January 1863, in Warsaw, in connection with
the Russian revolutionaries. It was to last a year. The Tsar won militarily, but yielded to the
bottom and agreed that the land should be distributed to the peasants who cultivated it. There
was a new wave of exiles, among them Jaroslaw Dabrowski (1836-1871), who practically
assumed command of the Paris Commune during the last phase of his defense.
Birth of LUKASZ BRENIA on 1 MAY 1874. He is our great-grandfather, the father of
Theodora BRENIA
In the time of PALUBNIAK jean, it was he who told his grandfather's war against the
armies of NAPOLEON, this ancestor had been defeated by Napoleon in Italy and had
been pushed back into the sea.
World Historical Reminder
In France it is the third Republic (1870-1940)
The Third Republic was the political regime of France from 1870 to 1940. The Third
Republic was the first French regime to impose itself in the long term since 1789. After the
fall of the French monarchy, France experimented in eighty years seven political regimes:
three constitutional monarchies, two republics and two empires.
In Austria-Hungary it is François-Joseph (1848-1916)
The Emperor of Austria François-Joseph I and his wife, the Bavarian Princess Elisabeth,
nicknamed "Sissi", worship in Budapest the crown of St. Stephen, patron saint and first king
of Hungary. They consecrate the union of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary,
and thus the birth of the two-headed monarchy of Austria-Hungary. But this grouping does
not satisfy the multiple nationalities that compose it. At the end of the First World War, its
territory will be divided between Italy, Romania and five new states: Austria, Hungary,
Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
38
Marriage of JUSTINIA BRENIA in 1882 as evidenced in the following document, which
shows that JUSTINIA is the daughter of JOANNES BRENIA AND MAKRINA KOPCZA.
She is the sister of our ancestor Andrzej Brenia. She marries a Hulan Nicolas ZAWISLAK
It's written in Ukrainian.
Between 1864 and 1890, Germany and Russia endeavored to denationalize the country to
excess. Alexander II. And his successors annulled most of the liberties granted to the
kingdom. They tried to oppose gentlemen and peasants, and attacked the Catholic Church.
The teaching was russified, the Polish language forbidden. Despite the abolition of serfdom
and the granting of cheap land, the peasants did not pardon the tsarist regime for the
persecution of their priests, the administrative use of the Russian language, and the military
service of their sons in the confines of the empire.
The situation was comparable under the Prussian regime, where Germanization was
vigorously undertaken. The Kulturkampf provoked the union between German and Polish
Catholics. The clergy retained everywhere its role as federator of Polish society. As the
population was prolific and tended to overwhelm the Prussian element, a policy of acquisition
of large estates in favor of German settlers was undertaken but did not have the expected
results. On the other hand, in Austria, the emperor Francis Joseph granted a large autonomy to
Galicia with a diet and a permanent commission presided over by the "marshal of the
country". At the end of the century, the national life had revived, under the influence of an
elite centered on Warsaw. The National League was founded in 1886 and the National
Democratic Party in 1897.
Birth of Victor PALUBNIAK on November 23, 1886 .Hold on! Here is Grandfather !
39
The slogan was that of a legal resistance to Russification and Germanization. Socialism made
its appearance, but it never separated itself from the idea of country and national
independence. Limanowski presided, in 1892, a congress which gave birth to the Polish
Socialist Party; Among his followers Jozef Pilsudski (1867-1935), a small Lithuanian
gentleman, passed from 1904 to direct action and caused unrest.
But let us stop at this point in history, we are in the middle of the 19th century and it is time to
talk about the Ruthenians and the Lemkos
The Ruthenians
The name Ruthenes, in conformity with the Latin name, was officially attributed in 1848 to all
the Rusyny living in Galicia by the Austrian Governor of that time.
The use of the name Rusyn is currently restricted to the inhabitants of Transcarpathia,
Slovakia and Hungary, who were formerly part of the Kingdom of Hungary and not of the
Empire of Austria.
It should be noted that there are still colonies of a few thousand Rusyny in Croatia, Serbia and
Slovenia which have preserved their languages and customs, although surrounded by other
Slavic peoples. They are the descendants of settlers who, like other peoples of the Empire,
were called in the 18th century by the Austrians to repopulate these regions after their
conquest of the Ottoman Empire ... and to take the place of the Turks who had fled .
The Ruthenians (also called Ruthenians, Rusins, Rusyns, Carpato-Ruthenians, and Rusniaks
or Rusnaks) form a modern ethnic group that speaks rusyn. They are the descendants of the
Ruthenian minority who did not adopt a Ukrainian national identity in the 19th and early 20th
centuries. Today, because of the vast majority of Ruthenians living and having adopted a
Ukrainian identity, most Ruthenians live outside the country. In addition, the ethnic identity
of the Ruthenians is rather controversial, as some scholars regard it as a Slavonic ethnicity
distinct from the Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians, while some believe that the
Ruthenians form a subgroup of the Ukrainian nation, and So that a parallel can be made with
the Moldovans and Romanians.
The Ruthenians traditionally inhabited the Eastern Carpathians, and still live in these regions.
While their geographical origin is often cited as Subcarpathian Ruthenia, the latter region no
longer corresponds to the current location of the Ruthenians. There are also Ruthenian
communities in the plain of Pannonia, as well as in Serbia (especially in Vojvodina), Croatia
(in Slavonia). Other Ruthenians migrated to northern Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Many Ruthenians also emigrated to the United States and Canada and are now very active on
the Internet to make their voices heard in order to preserve their distinct cultural and ethnic
identity.
The Ruthenians are an ethnic group that never managed to constitute an independent state,
except for a short period of six months in 1919 (Podkarpatska Rus). Thus, their destiny
remained in the hands of greater powers: Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Slovakia, Poland, Soviet
Union, Ukraine and Russia. Unlike the Ukrainian national movement, which unified the
Ukrainians from the west with those of the rest of Ukraine, the Ruthenian national movement
takes two forms: one considers the Ruthenians as a separate East Slav nation, the other is
based on the concept of fraternal unity with the Russians.
40
Most of, if not all, the eastern Slavic inhabitants of present-day Western Ukraine called
themselves the Ruthenes, the Roman transcription of Ukrainian rusyny, and before the
nineteenth century the majority of these populations were " Active participants in the creation
of the Ukrainian nation, and became themselves the Ukrainians (Uk) Русини, Latin
transcription Ukrayintsi). There were, in fact, ethnic Ruthenian enclaves that did not take part
in the movement: for those who lived on the borders of the territory or who were more
isolated, like the populations of Subcarpathian Ruthenia, or the Ruthenians of Podlasie.
Having no reason to change the way they were named, these isolated groups continued to call
themselves Ruthenes even after the majority of their members had adopted a Ukrainian
identity. Thus, the Ruthenians are similar to other border ethnicities, and their national
awakening may be regarded by some as a negation of Ukrainian nationalism.
Some specialists consider the Lemkos, the Boykos, the Hutsoules, the Verkhovinetses
(Verkhovynetses, or Montagnards), and the Dolyninins (Haynal) as Ruthenes.
In fact, like the rest of the inhabitants of present-day Western Ukraine, these peoples named
themselves Ruthenians in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Some of these groups consider themselves totally differentiated, while some claim to be
Ukrainians, and others still identify themselves as Ruthenians. According to a recent
Ukrainian census, a large majority of Boykos, Lemkos, Houtsoules, Verkhovinetses and
Dolinyanins in Ukraine declare their ethnicity as Ukrainian.
Nearly 10,100 people, or 0.8% of the Zakarpattya Oblast, declared themselves Ruthenians;
On the other hand, 1,010,000 of them consider themselves Ukrainians. Research carried out
by the University of Cambridge during the peak of Ruthenianism in the 1990s, which focused
on five specific regions of the Zakarpattya oblast, with the strongest pro-Ruthenian cultural
and political activism, showed that only 9% Of the population claimed Ruthenian ethnicity.
These figures may change with the future acceptance of Ruthenian and Ruthenian identity in
the education systems of the region, but at present most Ruthenians consider themselves
Ukrainians.
Curiosity
Historically, the Ruthenians were the Gallic tribe occupying the territories of the present
departments of Tarn and Aveyron (the inhabitants of Rodez - Aveyron prefecture - are still
called "Ruthenois"). It is also known that the Volscians, a neighboring tribe of Ruthenians in
Gaul, were also neighbors of the Ruthenians before their migration from Central Europe.
Their capital was Rutni (Rodez).
The main part of this people has not exceeded Central Europe, the Ukraine and the
Carpathians.Their name means blond.
Julius Caesar estimated the number of Ruthenian soldiers engaged against his troops at
12,000.
Other curiosity
Here is a small reproduction of the annals of the Flemish committee concerning the
Ruthenians published in 1864-1865. It's digitized at the New York Library, just do not use it
commercially.
For a long time the name of the coast of Morinia was a very singular name: Russium littus,
Russian shore, or Reuse; Ruthenicum littus, Ruthenian or Rhuthenian shore.
41
The adjoining country was Ruthenia, Ruthlie or Ruthunia; A name derived from Ruthen, a
vast forest that existed in the time of Julius Caesar.
Vander Haer reports that this general "traveling with his army through the country of
Flanders" would have found "several giants or Reuses on the navy, which he defeated and
heading for the West ..." would have arrived in Boulogne.
These giants or Reuses, whose memory has passed through twenty centuries, are not yet
forgotten in Douai, which preserves Gayant; Nor in Dunkirk, where Reuse is still popular;
Nor in many other towns of Flanders, where gigantic figures appear in the processions of the
great public ceremonies. In Lille, under the name of Lydéric; In Menin, Ghent, Antwerp etc ...
under other names.
Were these Reuses the first inhabitants of the Russium littus? And do the Ruthenians or
Ruthenians who are now in Russia have any connection with the first inhabitants of Flanders?
Maybe we'll know someday.
In any case, prior to the Christian era, this designation of Ruthenia continued for a long time;
In 870 the coast of Graveline was still the Ruthenium littus. Malbrancq in
His book of Morinies, Mayer in his annals, use this designation.
Nowadays, in Saint-momelin (north), the place where the ferry which helps to pass the Aa, in
the neighborhood of Holque to go to Rumingen, is called the Ruthe, the countryside of Ruthe.
The Diablinthes, the first inhabitants of the country, according to Faucolnnier, would also
have been designated by the name of Ruthenrens.
Mayer thinks that the Ruthenians of Morinia were tribes of Cimbri or Saxons. Montlinot
brought them from Sweden.
Besides, Ruthenians are reported to be in Russia; In the north of Poland; In Serbia, a
metropolitan church of the Greek rite Ruthen is shown at Lemberg in Galicia. The province of
Liège to a village and a castle of this name. In the life of Saint Patrick is found the Ruthen in
Scotland. Orodoc claims that our Ruthenians are a colony of Bretons; he advances as a well-
established fact that the Albians, Northumbres and Bretons have always been called Ruthenes,
Ruthenians by the name of Ruthenus their leader. He adds that the city, the port and the shores
of the Morins were conquered and occupied by these tribes.
To those who would prefer the southern origins, we shall say, after D'Oudegherst, that the
Ruthenians belong to the diocese of Rodez, near Toulouse, Nantua, we shall add that
Rouergues is often called Ruthen.
The earliest title in which this name appears is, according to M. Courtois, the Cartulary of St.
Bertin. Ruthenia is distinguished from Flanders, which is indicated as being in the
neighborhood.
The Ruthen forest, the Ruthenus chief, the Ruthenicum littus, Ruthulia or Ruthenia, the
Ruthenians. These are concrete beings whose existence seems to be positive.
D'Oudegherst tells us that Lyseric I married the daughter of the Prince of the Ruthenes.
Thus, a territory, a nation, a king, an alliance with a historical characacter. This is what we
know about the Ruthenians, who still remain a local figure whose details we are lacking until
now.
End of quote, all this was in 1864 of course.
42
The map of the Ruthenians in 1250
Red Ruthenia (in Russian and Ukrainian Chervona Rus, in Polish Ruś Czerwona, in Latin
Ruthenia Rubra or Russia Rubra) is the name that has been used since the Middle Ages until
the First World War to refer to Eastern Galicia.
Black Ruthenia (or Black Russia, in Ruthenian Чорная Русь, in Polish Ruś Czarna) is the
name of a former independent principality that was located in the south-west of present-day
Belarus. It was crossed by the upper Niemen and its capital was Navahrudak.
White Russia or White Ruthenia is a name that designated different regions of Eastern
Europe, but most often this name was given to the region that corresponds to modern Belarus.
Many languages continue to use this name now obsolete as a reference to Belarus.
In conclusion we realize that Ruthenians are everywhere or that they have traveled all over
Europe, it is true that we find a Constance Brenia in the 1600s and other Brenia in France in
the department of Allier in the years 1700.
43
The Lemkos
The term LEMKO was used for the first time in the literature by O. Lewickij in 1834 in his
book: Grammaire des Ruthènes or Petits-Russees spoken in Galicia, then in 1844 by PJ
Szafarzyk in "Slavic Antiquities", and finally in 1851 by Vincent Pol in a Slavic description
of the Carpathians.
Lemkos, who call themselves "Rusyny" or "Rusnaky", are a branch of the Ruthenian
highlanders, the origin of their name being a combination of the word "LEM" which means
"only." The Lemkos Region, called Lemkovyna (mother tongue) is located in the western part
of the mountain of Karpathos, due to Operation Vistula in 1947, they were deported to the
north and west of Poland, and today about 60,000 Lemkos live in Poland.
The Ukrainian Lemkos consider themselves an ethnic group of the Ukrainian nation, and the
Lemkos language as a Ukrainian dialect. These Lemkos gather around a "Union of Lemkos."
These Lemkos organize the teaching of the Ukrainian language in Polish schools.
The second group, Karpatho-Ruthenian Lemkos, identified themselves with an organization
called "Lemkos Association", and voted for the creation of an independent Karpatho-
Ruthenian nation.The language they tend to protect schools is Lemkos .
In order to give the reader, from the beginning, an objective orientation, we decided to cite the
most useful and many sources of various encyclopedias.What do they say about us ?
44
Let's start with the Poles.
"Lemkos, or, as they call themselves" Rusnaki "(Ruthenes - WM) - a branch of the" Great
General Encyclopedia "(Warsaw, 1910, pg. Hillbillies ruthene (rural), so named in connection
with their partial use of the word "blame", which means "only". They inhabit the northern
slopes of the Carpathian range. Their villages stretch from the Poprad River, to the east by the
counties of Noviy Sanch, Hrabiv, Horlitse, Yaslo, and Korosno, and inhabit a strip of land
from the mountain boundary to the north at about 20 - 30 km, and In the length of about 100
km .... ".
"Lemkos - a group of mountain people, who live on the northern slopes of the Carpathians,
from the Poprad River to Ivanytch and Rimaniv." In total, "The Illustrated Encyclopaedia"
(Pshatski, everta, Mikhalski, v. 3, 1927).They amount to about 100,000 people, their name
comes from a word "LEM" or "lyem" - for "just", "only".
This issue is also dealt with by "The General Encyclopedia," published in 1934 in Warsaw:
"The people of the Lemkos-Ruthenian hills (hillbillies), who reside on the so-called
Lemkivshchyna in the western part of Malopolska on the northern slope In the west, the
villages of the River Cross, a little further from Poprad, in the north, they approach Hrabiv,
Gorlitse and Yaslo, to the east to reach Mountain Dukla Pass "PG. 666-7. 666-7.
Lemkos - one of the branches of the Ruthenian mountain population in the Carpathians, east
of the Poprad River until the Dukla Pass "declares" General Illustrated Encyclopedia,
published in 1937 in Warsaw.
"The Great Contemporary Encyclopedia" (National Scientific Publishers, Warsaw, 1965, c.6,
pp. 697) states that "Lemkos, their own name Rusnaki (Ruthenes-wm) (ethnographic name -
ik and DS) Literature since the end of the 19th century, a name for Ruthenian nationality,
which lived until 1945, in the lower Beskid Mountains, from Dukla Pass to the Poprad River.
And finally, "The General Encyclopedia (Povshekhna)" (v. 2, Warsaw, 1974) also states that
"Lemkos, their own term Rusnaki (Ruthenians - WM) - Ruthenian people, who until 1945
lived Bas Beskid. Within the framework of the UPA (Ukrainian Insurrectional Army - WM)
activity on the territory mentioned above, after 1945 returnees Vrotslav, Shchetsin, Olshtin
and Koshaleen districts ".
We cite the appropriate references of two published Czechoslovak encyclopedias.
"Encyclopedia illustrated Dictionary", v. 2, (Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, 1981),
believes that "Lemkos - ethnographic group of the Ukrainian people in the Carpathians,
between Syan and the Poprad rivers, and west of the river Uzh".
"The Czechoslovak Encyclopaedia" (v. 3, 1986) cites an identical definition: "Lemkos -
ethnographic Ukrainian group in the Carpathians, between Syan and the Poprad rivers, and
west of the river Uzh" .
Definitions of "Ukrainian encyclopedic publications" are roughly identical, for example
"The Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language" by B. Hrichenko (v. 2, Kiev, 1908) defines
"Lemak - a name for Little Russians living in Hungary, resident in the Beskid valleys" A
Russian woman from Hungary, a resident of the Beskid valley ".
45
(These definitions apply only to the Trans-Carpathians Lemkos-Lemaks.) "Lemko - Galician
little Russian, inhabitant of Lemkivshchyna" (PG 354-5).
"The Ukrainian ethnic group, which for a long time inhabited the two eastern slopes of
Beskydy (in the Carpathians, between the small rivers Of Syan and Poprad, west of the river
Uzh) ... ".
A similar definition is found in the Soviet Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine ", (v. 2,
Kiev, 1970)," Encyclopaedic Soviet Ukrainian Dictionary "(v.2, Kiev, 1987) and others.
Let us quote two other publications making Russian authority encyclopedic, among them
being: "Great Encyclopedia" (v.12, St. Petersburg, 1903): ".... Lemkos Ruthenian inhabitants
of the Western Beskids (Carpathians), uniates (Ukrainian Catholics - WM ). Their language is
a combination of the Ruthenian language, with Polish and Slovak words ".
"Small Soviet Encyclopedia" (v.6, Moscow, 1937): "Lemkos - one of the branches of the
Carpathians of the Ukrainian people. Population - 250,000. Reside west of Ukraine (Poland),
the Carpathians, on both sides of the summits of the Carpathians, and Ukraine Zakarpatska ...”
It is Lemkos (Lemken) - inhabitants of the Western Carpathians, and belongs to the Ukrainian
people, writes "Der Grosse Brokhaus", Munich, 1955).
Similar conclusions are extracted from other publications, and to continue to quote them is not
necessary.
We will not accuse the authors of different views lack of knowledge of the exact ethnographic
demarcation lines for the Lemkos inhabitants, and the exact number of the population.
What is important is the following: all the encyclopedic states, the Lemkos are a part of the
Ukrainian people.
And the publications that until now, without any sympathy for the term "Ukraine", continue to
use the old name "Rusiny".
It seems that everything is well understood. But why use different national names for the
labeling of Lemkos, whether by their neighbors, or between Lemkos themselves?
The memories left by Operation Vistula remain another scar in the tormented relations of
Ukrainians and Poles in the twentieth century, with the massacres of Poles in Volhynia by the
Ukrainian Insurgent Army during the Second World War to counter- Oppression of the
Ukrainians between the two wars by the Poles who controlled Galicia following the Polish-
Ukrainian War of 1918-1919 and the Peace of Riga which had followed it.
On 3 August 1990, the Polish Senate passed a resolution condemning Operation Vistula led
by the post-war Polish government. In response, the Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada)
adopted a declaration in which it regarded this resolution as an important step towards
correcting the injustices committed against Ukrainians in Poland. By the same resolution the
Rada condemned the criminal actions of the Stalin regime against the Polish people.
On April 18, 2002 in Krasiczyn, Poland's President, Aleksander Kwasniewski, who died
tragically in 2010, expressed regret about Operation Vistula. The President described it as a
symbol of the harm done to the Ukrainians by the communist authorities. "In speaking on
behalf of the Republic of Poland, I wish to express my regret to all those who have been
46
harmed by this operation". In a letter to the National Remembrance Institute and participants
at the 1947 Operation Vistula Conference, Wisła Kwaśniewski wrote: "For years it was
believed that Operation Vistula was the revenge for the Polish massacre by The IAU in the
East, during the years 1943-1944. Such an attitude is bad and can not be accepted. Operation
Vistula should be condemned. "
TERMINOLOGICAL PROBLEMS
For the French scientific community, the Lemkovian problem remains completely unknown.
Researchers who want to address this topic in French face many and sometimes surprising
difficulties. They wonder, for example, what forms to use to designate the LeMkovian people,
because we must first name reality so that we can talk about it. There is only one text in
French, The Eastern Border of the Lemki, written by the Polish linguist Zdzisław Stieber in
1935. This work was published in the "International Bulletin of the Polish Act of Science and
Letters" ( Stieber, 1935). The author regularly used the term Lemki to designate the
Lemkovian people. There is also a publication by Juliane Besters-Dilger entitled Regional
Differentiations of the Linguistic Space in Ukraine, where the term Rus (s) ines appears as the
name of the group made up of those who live in Ukraine and are gathered in the Carpathians
and Transcarpathia. Until recently, they were counted as Ukrainians and, like Rus (s) in other
states, speak a language that is now written in Cyrillic and is fighting for its recognition as the
fourth eastern Slavonic language (Bester-Dilger, 2002). The author speaks here only of the
Lemkovians who were deported from Poland to Ukraine in the years 1944-1946. Rus (s) ines
is a new terminology that recalls the Polish term Rusini, and the Lemkovian Rusyny,
Rusnaky. However, it already has an equivalent in French Ruthenes. This name Rus (s) ines
here concerns a supra-regional Carpato Ruthenes group formed by the Ruthenians living in
the territories of seven countries (Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Croatia and Poland).
This appointment must differentiate this ethnic group from Ukrainians, also called Ruthenians
in the past. In 1928, the Polish Diet decided by decree to replace the word Rusin [Ruthene] by
Ukrainiec [Ukrainian]. The term rusiñski [Ruthenian] existed in the Polish publications as a
synonym of the term ukraiński [Ukrainian] until the end of the Second Polish Republic.
The origin of the name £ emkini, emko, emkowie is pejorative. The ethno-emo-emko dates
back to the first half of the nineteenth century when it appeared at the borders of the
Lemkovian and Bokovian peoples. The emko nickname was given to individuals who used
the term borrowed from the Slovak dialects to mean "just, only". It was given to the
Lemkovians by their Ruthenian neighbors whose dialects did not know the word lem.
The form Lemko is an abbreviated form, readily used by the Anglo-Saxons, but somewhat
disturbing for a French ear because of its too exotic resonance. On the other hand, the term
Lemkovien brings us back to the idea of nation (as we call the inhabitants of Peru - the
Peruvians). The Lemkovans aspire to be considered a nation. Moreover, the Lemko form is
articulated only in the sentence. It is then necessary to speak of language lemko, lemko people
while the lemkovian with a capital or a small letter is already meaningful. So that's another
reason why I chose this designation.
The term Lemkovian is a formation by suffixation. It is derived according to the traditional
model of the French derivation. As soon as it enters the language system, it has its roots in the
tradition of language, thus creating a new form of historical, cultural and identity existence.
The names Lemkini, Lemko are layers, their transposition is done according to the determined
/ determining scheme. For the first time, the term Lemkovien was used in the course of work
47
on the Cd-rom devoted to this ethnolinguistic minority and which I directed. They were
crowned by the multimedia publication in April 2004 (Misiak, Laurent, 2004).
The Lemkovian land is called in Polish emkowszczyzna; In Lemkovian, it is Lemkowyna or
Lemkiwszczyna. The suffix "-szczyna" is an equivalent of the Polish suffix "-szczyzna". In
Polish, the traditional and correct appellation of this region is £ emkowszczyzna. The Polish
denomination places the term in the same rank as Wileñszczyzna - that is, the Vilnus region,
the homeland of Vilnus or Kowieñszczyzna and Opolszczyzna. Emkowszczyzna therefore
refers to regions delimited geographically and culturally. Moreover, it operates in this sense in
historical space. But for the Lemkovans, this region is not just and simply a region in the
south of Poland. Today it is a homeland in the mythical universe of relations between the past
and the present; it remains alive and still exists in the hearts and tradition of the Lemkovians;
A "little homeland", that is their virtual community around language and culture. It refers to
the whole of Carpathian Ruthenia, so it is a part of the "extended homeland" (of Carpathian
Ruthenia composed by Lemkovie, Prešov land in Slovakia and the subcarpathian region).
Thus, how can one include in the French language abstract and real elements of the meaning
of Lemkowyna? We can of course say "the land / land of the Lemkovians", but we can also
call this land Lemkovie, creating the word in the way of Bolivia, Mazovia or Moldova.
In texts written in Polish or translated from Lemkovian into Polish, Lemkovian writers (often
authors are their own translators), the name Lemkowyna is used. For the Polish, it is a
linguistic hybrid. The situation would be the same if in a French text the "Polska" was used
instead of "Poland". The causes of this state of affairs are political and historical.
Today, the "Lemkovians" are divided into two opposing tendencies:
One considers that the Lemkovians belong to the great Ukrainian family;
The other they are totally external to it and completely "autonomous". Those who consider
themselves "autonomous" mark their difference by using in Polish the lemkovian term to
speak of this small territorial or communal and linguistic homeland.
They speak of Lemkowyna in Polish and not of emkowszczyzna as the Polish demands.
When, in a poem, the translator finds himself obliged to translate this nuance, which is so
sensitive to authors, he has little recourse.
The average Lemkovian is that in which the Lemkovian language acquires an autonomous
character.
Two of its variants were used in parallel.
The first literary variant of the lemkovian was transcribed according to a phonetic principle
referring to the local dialects, and it had as its defenders the nationalist circles. It was used for
the first time in the writing of "Rusalka Dnistrowa", which was published in Pest in 1837.
This variant had no particular designation. There were therefore no difficulties in its
translation.
The second variant had its followers among the ancient Ruthenians. It was created according
to the etymological principle and therefore, in accordance with the historical principles of
writing inspired by Slavic, Russian and local popular variants. This second variant was called
jazyczij. Jazyczij is a word that does not exist in the Polish language. It comes from
Ruthenian. The translation of this word was made by transcription. The relationship between
the formal and semantic meaning of this term and its basis remains undecipherable. We
48
should therefore transcribe the word Polish into French, which would give the transcription of
a transcript. The final result would then be iazytchij.
If the lemkovian has obtained the status of language in accordance with the sociolinguistic
definition of the language, it should be included in the linguistic classifications already
existing. From a geographical point of view, the Lemkovian joins Polish, Lithuanian,
Belarusian, Ukrainian and Kashubian. All these languages form a group of languages which
are neighboring and, indeed, their systems penetrate. In Polish linguistic terminology, this
influence is called rokytnicka liga. The adjective rokytnicka takes its root in the name
Rokytno (a city of Ukraine). The term liga rokytnicka is the sign of the language, it really
exists and it is concrete. This aspect of his existence results from a complicated process of
bonding abstract marks and real meanings. By taking signifier and signified separately, one
finds oneself in the presence of something false because the differentiation of these two
elements induces an obscurity of linguistic communication (Saussure, 1957). What
differentiates within the language a linguistic sign from another is what forms it. Why was the
name Rokytno originally used? What does this term mean? How should it be transmitted in
French to keep its semantic structure when it has already faded into Polish?
The Republic of Lemkos
National People’s Republic of Lemko
Ruska Noroda Respublica Lemkiv Lemkos
Décember 5, 1918 – January 1919
In yellow, the repuclic of Lemkos in the European borders of 1920.
General informations
Capital : Florynka
Language : lemko
History and Events
December 5, 1918 Creation
10 September 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye
The treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, sometimes called the Treaty of Saint-Germain, signed
on September 10, 1919, at the Chateau of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, established peace between
the allies and Austria, Collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy: the former Habsburg
Empire was dismantled and replaced by a half-dozen successor states according to the
principle laid down in the 9th of the 14 points of American President Woodrow Wilson of the
"right of peoples to Self-determination ". The treaty entered into force on 16 July 1920.
Romania signed it only on 9 December 1919.
March 1920 annexation by Poland
49
18 March 1921 Peace of Riga
The peace of Riga was signed between Poland and Soviet Russia on March 18, 1921. It ended
the Soviet-Polish war, which had opposed Bolsheviks and Poles. Discussions initially started
in Minsk (Belarus) on August 17, 1920, but due to an incident against the Polish negotiators,
they were moved to Riga (Latvia).
President
1918-1920 Jaroslav Kacmarcyk
Previous Entities: Austria-Hungary
Entities: Republic of Poland
The Republic of the Lemkos, Republic of the Lemkos-Ruthenians or Republic Lemkos (-
ruthene), officially the Ruthenian National Republic of the Lemkos (Ruska Narodna
Respublika Lemkiv) is a small Ukrainian organization, running from November 1918 to
January 23, 1919 in the south of Poland, in Galicia, following the collapse of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire, located on the territory of present-day Poland. It was founded at Florynka
on 5 December 1918 in the aftermath of the First World War.
It initially intended to unite with a democratic Russia, and opposes a union with the Western
People's Republic of Ukraine. Since union with Russia was not possible, it attempted to join
Subcarpathian Ruthenia on the southern slopes of the Carpathians as an autonomous province
of Czechoslovakia. This strategy was challenged by Gregory Zatkovich, the governor of
Subcarpathian Ruthenia.
It ceased its activities on 23 January 1919. Its official language was the Lemkos and its
president was Jaroslaw Kacmarczyk.
50
The Polish-Ukrainian War
The March 1919 border
General informations
Date 1918-1919
Location Galicia (currently shared between Ukraine and Poland)
Issue Polish victory
Belligerents
Republic of Poland
People's Republic of Western Ukraine
Commanders
Józef Piłsudski
Edward Rydz-Śmigły
Józef Haller Yevhen Petrouchevytch
Simon Petlioura
Oleksander Hrekov
Strengths in the presence :190,000 men 75,000 men
Losses : 10,000 dead
Polish-Ukrainian War Battles
Przemyśl · Lviv · Chortkiv · Lubaczów · Gniła Lipa
The Polish-Ukrainian War is a conflict between November 1918 and July 1919, between
Poland and the Western Ukrainian People's Republic for the control of Galicia, after the
dissolution of Austria-Hungary.
51
Summary
• 1 Preambule
• 2 The War
• 3 Epilogue
1.Preambule
In 1772, on the occasion of the first partition of Poland, Galicia became an Austrian province.
With more than 8 million inhabitants in the early twentieth century, it is the largest province
in the empire and represents more than a quarter of its population. However, the western part
of Galicia, which includes Krakow, Poland's former historic capital, has a predominantly
Polish population, while the eastern part of Galicia, which includes the heart of Galicia's
historic territory, has a majority of Ruthenians Ukrainians). The history of Galicia since the
medieval Ruthenian kingdom of Galicia was incorporated into Poland in the 14th century is
marked by the peaceful coexistence not only between the Ruthenians and the Poles, but also
many other minorities, including Jews and The Armenians.
However, in the nineteenth century, the emergence of the Polish nationalist movement was
observed in Galicia in the context where most of Poland was under Russian control. The
Polish movement in Galicia benefited from Habsburg liberalism, and Lviv and Cracow
became major centers of Polish culture and attracted large numbers of immigrants from the
Russian Empire. Similarly, Galicia welcomes many Ukrainian nationalists in exile.
A large majority of Galicians, however, remain insensitive to nationalist appeals, and until the
beginning of the twentieth century, Poles and Ukrainians are particularly opposed during the
parliamentary elections. Throughout the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth
century, Ukrainians tried to persuade the Austrians to divide Galicia into the western (Polish)
and eastern (Ukrainian) provinces. These efforts are thwarted by the resistance of the Poles,
who are afraid of losing Lviv, which they consider to be one of the cultural capitals of Poland.
Although eastern Galicia is populated by about 60 per cent of Ukrainians, in 1910 Lviv, its
big city, counts half Poles. For many Poles, seeking identity while their country has been
divided by neighboring powers, it is unthinkable that the city is not under their control. The
Austrians finally agreed to divide the province, but the outbreak of the First World War
prevented them. In October 1916, Emperor Charles I of Austria promised to do so once the
war was over. However, Austria suffered a heavy defeat, and the empire collapsed. In this
context of general confusion, Polish and Ukrainian nationalists are preparing to act.
On October 18, 1918, a Ukrainian National Council (Rada) was formed, composed of
Ukrainian members of the Austrian Parliament and regional diets from Galicia and Bucovina
as well as political leaders. This Council announces the intention to unite the lands of the
Ukrainian west in one state.
Thanks to the intervention of the Archduke William of Austria, who adopts the Ukrainian
identity and considers himself a Ukrainian patriot, two Ukrainian regiments arrive in garrison
in Lviv. During the night of 31 October to 1 November, before the Poles took their own
measures, Captain Dmytro Vitovsky led his troops into decisive action and took control of the
city. The People's Republic of Western Ukraine was proclaimed on 1 November 1918, with
Lviv as its capital.
The proclamation of the new Republic, which claims its sovereignty over eastern Galicia and
the Carpathians, to the town of Nowy Sącz in the west, as well as Bukovina, is a surprise for
the Poles. The Ukrainian residents of Lviv approve the proclamation with enthusiasm, the
large Jewish minority supports it or remains neutral, while the Poles prepare their response.
52
2.War
In Lviv, the Ukrainian Army of Galicia successfully opposes the Polish units, consisting
mainly of First World War veterans and students. On 21 November, after two weeks of
incessant fighting, a Polish army unit, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Michał
Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski, broke the siege and rejected the Ukrainians. However, they
continued to control most of eastern Galicia and threatened Lviv until May 1919. Immediately
after the capture of the city at the end of November, the Polish forces engaged in the
neighborhood pogrom Jews and Ukrainians. This pogrom is a rare episode of violence against
the civilian population during this war.
In March 1919, fresh and well-equipped Polish troops arrived, commanded by Edward Rydz-
Śmigły. The Polish general's offensive in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia began on 14 May
1919, aided by the recently arrived Army General Józef Haller's army. This army well
equipped by the Western allies and benefiting from French military advisers was formed in
order to fight against the Bolsheviks in Russia. The decision to use it in Galicia provoked a
few telegrams of protest from the Entente, but these remained ignored.
The Ukrainian lines are quickly broken. On 27 May the Polish forces reached the line Zlota
Lipa - Berejany - Jezierna - Radziwiłłów. At the request of the Entente, the Polish offensive
was stopped and General Haller's troops adopted defensive positions.
On June 8, 1919, Ukrainian forces commanded by Oleksander Hrekov began a counter-
offensive and after three weeks advanced to the Gniła Lipa River and the upper Styr, but lack
of weapons and ammunition. Oblige to stop their advance. The Ukrainian government
controls the oil fields of Drohobych, with which it plans to buy weapons from
Czechoslovakia. But although Ukrainian forces succeeded in pushing the Poles back about
120 km, they could not make their way to Czechoslovakia. Without arms or ammunition,
Hrekov puts an end to his campaign.
Commanded by Józef Piłsudski, the Polish forces began a new offensive on 27 June. Short of
ammunition and in numerical inferiority, the Ukrainians are pushed as far as the river Zbruch,
the historical border of Galicia.
3 Epilogue
Unlike the typical brutality of battles in the East, in the former parts of the Russian Empire,
the war between Poland and the Ukrainians in Galicia is conducted on both sides by
disciplined and professional forces, Relatively few civilian casualties. About 10,000 Poles and
15,000 Ukrainians, mostly soldiers, died during the war. Particularly during the Lviv fighting,
the two sides often agreed to cease-fires, to allow the resupply of civilians and the evacuation
of the dead and wounded.
A ceasefire was signed on 17 July 1919. Ukrainian prisoners of war were detained in the
former Austrian camps of Dąbie, Lancut, Pikulice, Strzałków and Wadowice. On November
21, 1919, the High Council of the Paris Peace Conference granted eastern Galicia to Poland
for a period of 25 years, after which a plebiscite would decide the question.
The Government of the People's Republic of Western Ukraine exiles itself in Vienna, where it
enjoys the support of various Galician political emigrants, as well as soldiers of the army of
Galicia interned in Bohemia. He continues to defend the creation of the Republic of Galicia
representing the Ukrainians, Poles and Jews, the three major nations of the country.
53
Diplomatic relations with the French and British Governments are in the hope of securing a
just settlement at Versailles. On 23 February 1921 the Council of the League of Nations
declared that Poland had no mandate to establish administrative control in Galicia and that
Poland was merely the occupying military power of eastern Galicia, Determined by the
Council of Ambassadors to the League of Nations
After a long series of negotiations, on March 14, 1923, it was decided that East Galicia would
be incorporated in Poland "taking into account that Poland has recognized that given the
demographic conditions, the eastern part of Galicia deserves full its autonomy status ". This
autonomy will never be granted to Galicia. Indeed, the victorious powers of the First World
War want a strong Poland, in order to create a counterweight to Germany.
In September 1939, as part of the alliance between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (see
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), Galicia was invaded by Soviet troops. The Polish forces, which
also include many soldiers of Ukrainian descent, are rapidly overwhelmed.
Massacres or why we are not very good with Ukrainians
In 1942 local elements of the UPA began to attack the Polish minority in order to "clean up"
Volyn. The first known attack was the one against the village of Oborkin on 13 November
1942 in the canton of Luck where Ukrainian women murdered 50 Poles. In spite of this, the
majority of the Poles regarded this event as an isolated case resulting from disorganized
groups of bandits and no one thought that this would happen again. The member of the
National Memory Institute, Władyslaw Filar, himself a witness of the massacres, says that it is
impossible to establish whether these events were ever planned. There is no documented
evidence that the UPA and the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) have decided to
exterminate the Poles of Volhynia.
On 9 February 1943 the colony of Parośło in the canton of Sarny was attacked and 173 Poles
murdered. In March 1943 some 5,000 Ukrainian policemen took up arms and fled to the
forests of Volhynia. Tymothy Snyder considers that this event marks the beginning of the
UPA operations on a large scale. On the night of 22 and 23 April Ukrainian groups attacked
the model colony of Janowa Dolina by killing 600 people and burning the whole village. The
presence of 1000 soldiers of the Wehrmacht did not prevent it, which makes it possible to
suppose a silent collaboration between the two forces. The Polish survivors were those who
had found refuge with friendly Ukrainian families like the Karwan. Between May and June
attacks multiplied. In the canton of Sarny four villages were burned (12.05.), In Kostopol 170
inhabitants of the village of Niemodlin (24.05.), In Włodzimierz Wołynski, all the manors and
exploitations of nobles destroyed by fire on the night of 24 25th of May, the 28th, the
inhabitants of Staryki, all massacred, and the list goes on for all the cantons of the region.
These actions were mounted by many units and appeared to be coordinated. But it would be
exaggerated to say that the massacres received general support from the Ukrainians and yet
their realization would have been possible without the collaboration of the local Ukrainians.
Until July 1943 the number of Poles murdered in Volhynia was estimated at 15,000, but the
total losses (dead, wounded, deported to Germany for work and fugitives) reached 150,000.
Yet two delegates from the Polish government in London, Zygmunt Rumel And Krzysztof
Markiewicz, accompanied by a group of AK officers operating in the area, tried to negotiate
with the UPA leaders but were all murdered on 10 July 1943 in the village of Kustycze. On
that day units attributed to the UPA surrounded and attacked the Polish villages and
settlements in the three cantons of Kowel, Horochów and Włodzimierz Wołynski. In three
days a series of massacres was launched and many witnesses confirmed the movement from
village to village of UPA units continuing their work against Polish civilians. In the canton of
Horochów we recorded 23 Attacks, in that of Dubien-15 and that of Włodzimierz-28. The
events began at three o'clock in the morning, and the Poles could not afford to escape. The
Ukrainians used all kinds of weapons: rifles, axes, saws, scythes, pitchforks, kitchen knives,
54
hammers etc. After the massacres the villages were systematically burned and burnt to the
foundations. According to the few survivors, the action was carefully prepared since a few
days earlier meetings had taken place in the Ukrainian villages where the UPA explained to
the inhabitants the necessity of the extermination of the Poles up to the seventh generation,
Except those who no longer spoke Polish.
In July the village of Gorów was attacked: 480 inhabitants were killed, 70 survived. In the
colony of Orzeszyn the UPA murdered 270 people out of 340. In the village of Sadowa only
350 inhabitants out of 600 survived, in Zagaje just a few out of 350. In September in the
village of Wola Ostrowiecka 529 people were exterminated including 220 children under 14
and in Ostrówki 438, including 246 children. In September 1992, the victims were exhumed
in these two villages.
Norman Davis in "No Simple Victory" provides a brief and brutal description of the
massacres. He wrote: "The Jews of the region had disappeared assassinated by the Germans
(between 1941 and 1942), [...] in 1943-44 the hatred of the UPA fell on the defenseless Poles.
Villages were burned, Catholic priests cut to pieces or crucified, churches burned with all the
faithful who had taken refuge there, isolated farms attacked by bands of men armed with forks
and kitchen knives, defenceless people were slaughtered, pregnant women pierced by the
bayonet, the children sliced in two ... The authors could not determine the future of the
province but could envisage that its future would be without the Poles.The survivors were
repatriated( 1944-1946), as were their compatriots from Belarus and Lithuania, replaced by
the Russians, and in 1991 Western Ukraine (Eastern Galicia and Volhynia) formed part of the
independent Republic of Ukraine.
Timothy Sonder describes the massacres: "Ukrainian partisans burned houses, firing at those
who tried to escape, forcing the occupants to stay there, and using forks and pitchforks to kill
those who were caught, In some cases the decapitated, crucified, dismembered or
disembowelled were shown in order to obtain Poles who remained that they would flee
leaving their places of life forever.”
The Ukrainian historian of Lviv, Youryi Kirichuk, wrote that the massacres had been the fruit
of the historical times of Jarema Wiśniowiecki and Maxime Krivonis. The scenes in the
villages of Volhynia were similar to those of the massacres of Niemirów (property of the
Potocki) in 1648 and 1768. According to him, this was a "peasant war". Władysław and Ewa
Siemaszko, authors of the "Genocide of the Polish population of Volhynia carried out by
Ukrainian nationalists 1939-1945" confirm this idea of the atrocities of another time, that of
hajdamaks and Cossacks (Chmielnicki uprising in the 17th century and " Koliyvshchina "in
the eighteenth) In July the Ukrainians attacked 167 villages. This wave lasted 5 days until the
16th. It can also be said that the UPA continued ethnic cleansing in the rural areas until the
majority of the Poles had fled the villages and were deported by the Germans to the West or
Murdered or expelled. For example, between the 1st and 3rd of August, 1943, a group of 8
fugitive carts from the village of Kudranka (Ludwipol commune, Kostopol canton, Luck
(Lutsk) voivodeship was destroyed in the Leonówka settlement. 10 waggons attempted the
exit and, after having been wiped out by two Ukrainian attacks on the Tuczyn road, was saved
by a Wehrmacht detachment and moved to Równe (Rivne), where the fugitives remained
protected by the German presence for two weeks The families accepted deportation to Breslau
where, after three weeks of staying at the yard, they found work and accommodation on the
farms in the region, which would be the first Poles to be repatriated before Time in the
territories given to Poland by the victors of Nazi Germany at the Potsdam conference in 1945.
A third group frightened by the news of the massacre Hid in the surrounding forests, meeting
Jews who had been living there for a year. The latter were "allowed" by Ukrainians of the
UPA to leave their hiding places to occupy the Polish houses. Recorded and forced to remain
there, the Jews of Kudranka and the surrounding area were massacred with the ax and knife at
55
the end of December 1943 by the Ukrainian peasant bands. Then the village was destroyed to
the foundations in order to leave no trace of the Polish presence there.
During the Christmas period of 1943, a new wave of attacks against the Polish population
took place in the powiat districts of Rówień, Luck, Kowel and Włodzimierz. Combat units of
the UPA with the direct aid of the Ukrainian civilian population attacked the Polish
settlements. After the massacres, the civilian groups (mainly composed of women) who
followed systematically plundered the homes of the victims.
Beginning in 1944, these actions faded in Volhynia and the wave of mass murders moved to
eastern Galicia, in the areas of Leopol, Stanisławów and Tarnopol, following the decision of
the OUN leadership.
Adam Kruchelek, the historian of the IPN (Institute of National Memory) publishing house in
Lublin, says that the 1943 massacres took place first in the eastern area of Volhynia, in
Kostopol and Sarny in March, traveling westwards in April in the Krzemieniec Wołynski
(Kremenets), Równe, Dubno and Luck districts, the high point of July being in the cantons of
Kowel, Horochów and Włodzimierz Wołynski Then in August in that of Lubomel. This
historian also writes that Polish scholars consider, among other things, that the Ukrainian
leaders first elaborated the plan to expel the Poles, but the events escaped them and they lost
control of them.
The German army and police forces almost always ignored these ethnic conflicts, although
there were reports that the Germans were supplying weapons to both the Ukrainians and the
Poles. These reports, however, are not based on incontrovertible evidence. Special German
units made up of Ukrainian or Polish police officers who collaborated with them were also
involved in the case and some of their crimes were attributed to the AK or the UPA.
The Ruthenians (Rusyns)
Total population: Up to 2 million people
Languages: Modern Ruthenian (Rusyn), Ukrainian, Slovak
Religion: Orthodoxy and Catholicism uniate
Associated ethnic groups: Ukrainians, Slovaks, Belarusians, Poles, Russians, other Slavic
peoples
56
The Ruthenians, also known as Carpatho-Ruthenians or as Rusyns (Русины, Rusyns in
Ruthenian, Pусини, Rusyny in Ukrainian, Pусины, Rusiny in Russian, Rusíni in Slovak,
Ruszinok in Hungarian, Rusini in Polish) In a region of Central-Eastern Europe to which they
gave their name, Ruthenia. According to Ruthenian American historian Paul Robert Magocsi,
the Ruthenians are a Slavic people found on the western slopes of the Carpathians, in the
Ukraine, in Slovakia, in Poland and even in Vojvodina, in the north of Serbia . They speak a
series of eastern Slavic dialects, use the Cyrillic alphabet and traditionally belong to the
Eastern Christian rite, whether uniate or orthodox.
The Rusyns are the descendants of the Ruthenians who, in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, did not adopt the "Ukrainian" ethnonyme. Constantly under foreign domination
since the fall of the Kiev Rus', the Rusyns have undergone either a policy of marginalization
or assimilation by the various governments. But in the 19th century a phenomenon known as
the "National Revival of the Ruthenians" took place. Some intellectuals, including Alexander
Dukhnovich, organized the defense of the local culture against the Magyar and then Austrian
authorities and clearly displayed a political russophilia.
Since the end of the Soviet Union, the cultures and the Ruthenian language have been
revived: today, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Croatia officially
recognize the Rusyns as a distinct ethnic group. In Ukraine, the situation tends to be more
complex because of the country's national situation.
1. Etymology.
2. History.
3. Contemporary Ruthenia.
4. Demographics.
5. Language.
6. Religions.
7. Status.
8. Ruthenian nationalism.
1. Etymology.
The name of "Ruthenes" comes from the Greek "Roussyn" designating a person who inhabit
the Rous (derived from the pronunciation of Roussénie, then from Russia), that is to say the
territories of the Prince of Kiev in the Middle Ages; The Ruthenians were called Russians and
then Russians. Then, in the Tsarist era, the Russians were named "Great Russians", the
Belorussians the "White Russians" and the Ukrainians the "Little Russians". But the
Ruthenians were never under Russian domination before the Second World War and the
Soviet annexation; They took the name Rusyn which has the same etymology as "Russian".
"Ruthen" is also the name of the mother tongue of the Ukrainian, Belorussian and modern
Ruthenian, which some advocate calling rather Rusyn (the name it bears for the Rusyns) in
order precisely to avoid confusion .
The general use of "Ruthenian" by all the Slavs of the East dates back more than 11 centuries,
so its origin goes back to Kievan Russia or Rus' of Kiev. The Russians, the Ukrainians
(Malorussians or Little Russians), the Byelorussians (Belorussians or White Russians) and the
Carpato-Ruthenians (Rusyns or Carpato-Russes) are the descendants of the people of the first
Rus' They form the Slavs of the East.
57
2. History.
- The first centuries
Over the centuries, the Ruthenians have developed different political and economic centers as
well as new identities. The inhabitants of the north of the Rus' became the Great Russians, the
people of the West the White Russians (Belarusians) and the Southerners became the Little
Russians. Then the rise of Ukrainian nationalism favored the use of the ethnonym
"Ukrainian". As early as the 19th century, a rusyn movement appeared, which was intended to
be distinct from the Ukrainian movement.
The Rusyns settled in the Carpathian region by different waves of immigration from the north
between the 11th and 17th centuries. Some archaeological finds suggest that in the 10th
century the region was inhabited and dominated by Varégues (who played a role in the
founding of the Kiev Rus').
The Carpato-Ruthenes were mainly shepherds, farmers, lumberjacks and hunters. The
mountaineering winter and the economic and political control of foreigners were unfavorable
conditions that they had to endure. These cumulative effects formed a first stoic and
introspective rusyn society.
In 1241, the Carpathians fell under the Tatar-Mongol yoke of which the leader, grandson of
Genghis Khan, was Batu Khan. Whole groups of the population are exterminated and many
villages are burnt. The Mongols entered the region via the Veretski pass.
In 1395, Prince Fyodor Koriatovich, son of the Duke of Novgorod, and soldiers from
Novgorod accompanied by their families came to take control of the uninhabited lands in the
Carpathians. The arrival of Koriatovich and his suite was an important step in the history of
the Rusyns. Administrative, ecclesiastical and cultural aspects are significantly improved.
This included the construction and fortification of Mukachevo Castle with cannons, a ditch,
workers' and craftsmen's houses and the founding of a monastery on the Latorytsia River.
- Under Austro-Hungarian domination
The Austro-Hungarian monarchy controlled the Carpathians from 1772 to 1918. In the 19th
century, the Russian Empire became a privileged destination for educated and intellectual
Rusyns. In the same century the Panslava ideology spread and the pro-Russian position
became popular.
The Russian military campaign of Tsar Nicholas I through the Carpathians in 1845 was of
importance to the local Rusyn population, who thus came into contact with a Russian army of
nearly 200,000 men. This interaction had an impact on the rusyn national consciousness. And
Alexander Dukhnovich (1803-1865), who is the author of the unofficial national anthem
Ruthenian ("I was, I am and I will be Ruthenian"), and who is considered the "George
Washington" of the Ruthenians, Recalled in his writings to "dance and weep for joy" at the
sight of the Russian Cossacks in the streets.
- Rise of nationalism, national revival and Ruthenian emigration
Ruthenian nationalism became particularly active following the Hungarian Revolution of
1848 and after what turned out to be the failure of the Hungarian War of Independence
against the Habsburgs of Austria. This revolutionary period of 1848-1849 brought about three
major changes: the abolition of serfdom, the arrival on the throne of a new emperor of the
Habsburg dynasty, Franz Joseph (who remained until 1916), and the beginning of The
Ruthenian national revival. This was largely the work of two characters.
58
One of them was the Uniate priest Alexander Dukhnovitch who did a titanic work for
Ruthenian culture, language and literature. The other was Adolf Dobriansky, a member of the
Hungarian parliament and representative of the Austrian government between 1849 and 1965
who attempted to create a distinct Ruthenian territorial entity in the Habsburg Empire.
However, these major changes in imperial political life also resulted in the Magyar national
revival which intercepted that of the Ruthenians. It is also a period marked by a wave of
assimilation, several Ruthenian villages adopt a national identity Slovak or Hungarian.
Despite the establishment of some factories from the 1870s onwards, and mostly related to
forestry and mining, the Ruthenian population continued to live in widespread poverty. The
situation grew worse as the population grew, with land shortages and an underdeveloped
industrial sector unable to provide jobs on a large scale. As a result, thousands of young men,
and in some cases entire families, were forced to emigrate in search of work. Emigration was
partly facilitated by the appearance of several new railway lines to connect the Austrian
province of Galicia with the upper Hungary with the capitals of Vienna and Budapest.
The first Ruthenian emigrants left for Vojvodina, where settlers began arriving as early as
1745. A larger number of Ruthenians, estimated at 225,000, left for industrial regions in the
northeastern United States between 1880 and 1914. Between 1899 and 1931, Ellis Island
recorded 268,669 Ruthenian immigrants. Today, researchers say 700,000 people have
Ruthenian ancestry in the United States. Smaller communities also exist in Canada, Brazil and
Argentina.
The cultural revival of the mid-nineteenth century, led by Dukhnovich and Dobrianski, has
preserved a Ruthenian national feeling. However, it could not obtain autonomy or any other
specific political status for the Ruthenians.
- WWI
Everything changed dramatically with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. For the next four
years, thousands of Ruthenians loyally served in the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army, where
many died.
These years of war also brought another type of tragedy, especially for the Ruthenians of
Lemkovie. In 1914-1915, Tsarist Russia occupied a large part of Galicia, Austrian officials
suspected the Lemkos of treason and deported close to 6,000 of them to concentration camps,
especially to Talerhof.
- Political autonomy
The end of the war also marked the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Ruthenian
immigrants to the United States had already begun to meet in late 1917 and early 1918 to
discuss the future of their homeland. And their leader Gregory Zhatkovitch finally supported
the idea of a fully autonomous "Ruthenian state" within Czechoslovakia. And this idea of
Ruthenian autonomy was favorably received by those who remained in the country.
The Ruthenians Lemkos had to join their brothers from the south, but the story lives
differently. In March 1920 they were integrated into Poland. And when the Ruthenians of
Pannonia incorporate the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
On September 10, 1919, the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye created the autonomous region
of Ruthenia within the Czechoslovak Republic. Article 10 of the Treaty stipulates that
"Czechoslovakia undertakes to organize the territory of the Ruthenians south of the
59
Carpathians within the boundaries established by the principal Powers and Associates in the
form of an autonomous unit within the" A State of Czechoslovakia, with the widest autonomy
compatible with the unity of the Czechoslovak State. "
The Ruthenians (Rusyns)
In Czechoslovakia the Ruthenians were granted autonomy: they had their own governor, their
elected representatives in the two chambers of the national parliament in Prague, and the
teaching in their own language. It was also a time when Ruthenian cultural life flourished and
nearly a third of the population left the Greek Catholic Church to "return" to the orthodox
faith of their ancestors.
But at the same time, this treaty confirms the division or distribution of Ruthenians between
three states. Those of Bukovina and Bessarabia were included in Romania, and they
eventually adopted the Ukrainian identity for the most part.
Although the Ruthenians were recognized as one of the three peoples of the state with the
Czechs and Slovaks, they did not really receive the political autonomy promised in 1919.
Moreover, Ruthenia was amputated by a considerable part of Its territory, in the present
region of Presov, where about 100,000 Ruthenians found themselves drowned in the middle
of Slovaks. Despite these political problems, aggravated by difficult economic conditions in
the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Ruthenians experienced a vast national revival and a
marked improvement in their education and culture under the Czechoslovak regime.
It was from this period that Ruthenian nationalism began to divide into several currents. The
currents "rusynophile", "russophile" and "Ukrainophile" appear. The former saw the
Ruthenians as an Eastern Slavonic people in their own right and on an equal footing with the
others, while the other two saw in the Ruthenians either Russians or Ukrainians.
In Poland, the Lemkos Ruthenes did not have a clearly defined political status, nor did they
have any recognition or hope for political autonomy. Nevertheless, in the 1930s, the Polish
government allowed lemko instruction in primary schools and approved the establishment of
Lemkos cultural and civic organizations. Moreover, in an attempt to counter the growing
conversion to orthodoxy, the Vatican created in 1934 a special Greek-Catholic apostolic
lemko administration so that the parishes of Lemkovie are no longer under the direct control
of the Greek eparchy- Based in Przemysl.
- The Second World War
At the time of the Second World War, the status of Ruthenia changed considerably. Following
the Munich Agreement of 30 September 1938, Czechoslovakia became a federal state. And
from the beginning of October, Ruthenia finally received the autonomy that had been
promised to him in 1919. His Prime Minister was Andrii Brodii. But in November 1938, a
second autonomous government was established, headed by two pro-Ukrainian leaders,
Avgustin Voloshin and Yulian Revai. Ruthenia then officially known as "Subcarpathian
Russia" is renamed "Subcarpathian Ukraine". In the same month, Hungary annexed all the
southern part of the Carpathian Ukraine which included its main cities (Oujhorod and
Moukatcheve).
When Hitler destroyed Czechoslovakia, Sub-Carpathian Ukraine declares its independence,
but it is then immediately invaded and almost immediately annexed by Hungary. During the
rest of the war, Ruthenia remained under Hungarian rule, while the Ruthenians of the Presov
region had the same fate as the Slovaks.
60
As for the Lemkos, they were under Nazi rule when Poland was defeated and the Lemkov
region was even directly annexed to the Third Hitlerite Reich.
Finally, in the wake of the invasion led by Germany of Yugoslavia in the spring of 1941,
Vojvodina with its Ruthenians of Pannonia was annexed to Hungary. Thus, during the Second
World War, the lands populated by Ruthenians were all under Nazi or fascist domination.
But it should not be mistaken, despite the war, the Ruthenian homeland remained essentially
protected from military damage and the economic situation remained relatively stable.
However between 1939 and 1940 40,000 Ruthenians, mainly young men opposed to
annexation by Hungary flee across the mountains and reach eastern Galicia, which is recently
Soviet. The Soviet authorities arrested them instead of accepting them as refugees. The
prisoners proclaimed their innocence of any attempted crime against the USSR, but they were
sent to concentration camps. Three years later, the survivors were allowed to join the
Czechoslovak armed force set up to fight alongside the Soviet army against Nazi Germany.
In Ruthenia, then called Low-Crarpates (Karpatalja) by the Hungarians, the Ruthenians
continued to have a minimum of cultural freedom. Ruthen continued to be taught, Ruthenian
publications and cultural societies were allowed as long as they were pro-Hungarian. No other
political opinion was tolerated. For the Jews of Ruthenia who were more than 100,000, the
war was particularly harsh. In the spring of 1944, under pressure from Germany, the
Hungarian and Slovak authorities deported almost all the Jewish inhabitants of the region to
the Nazi death camps, where they mostly perished. As a result, the Jewish presence, which for
several centuries had been an integral part of the Carpatho-Ruthenian environment, ceased to
exist. In 1989, the Soviet census counted only 2,700 Jews in Ruthenia.
In autumn 1944, the German army, with its allies, was expelled from all regions of Ruthenia
by the Soviet army. In September 1944, while fleeing the offensive of the Red Army, the
Nazis blew up all the bridges in Oujhorod, one of which dates back to the 14th century.
Among the victorious Soviet forces was the Czechoslovak Corps, with its large contingent of
Ruthenian soldiers.
- Incorporation in Ukraine & Red Diet
During the war, the Allied Powers (United States, United Kingdom, France and Soviet Union)
agreed that "Sub-Carpathian Russia" (Ruthenia) should once again be part of a restored
Czechoslovak state. In October 1944, however, Stalin suddenly changed his mind about it.
With the help of the Ruthenian communists, the Soviets laid the foundations for a "popular
attachment", which was anything but popular, to the "motherland of the Soviet Ukraine".
There was no plebiscite in the population in general. In June 1945, a provisional
Czechoslovak parliament (which did not include any Ruthenian representatives) ceded
Subcarpathian Russia to the Soviet Union, which incorporated it in the form of a simple oblast
to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSRU).
As regards the other lands inhabited by Ruthenians: the Presov region remained in
Czechoslovakia; The region of Lemkovie was part of a restored Poland; And Vojvodina
became a part of the Republic of Serbia within the framework of Federal Yugoslavia.
In the United States, in 1964, the Greek-Catholic Union convention adopted a resolution
calling on the UN to act "so that Carpato-Ruthenia be recognized and accepted by the free
nations of the world as an autonomous state". Despite the disputes the policy of the local
representatives of the Soviet Union led to a certain ukrainization of Ruthenian society. This
ukrainization was ordered by Stalin himself in 1946.
61
The communist regime had a particularly negative impact on the traditional Ruthenian life.
During the first years following the Second World War, the Greco-Catholic Church was
persecuted and forbidden; The peasants' lands are taken against their will, and the latter are
obliged to come to work on collective or cooperative farms; And Ruthenian nationality
disappears from the registers. Anyone who dared to claim the administrative recognition of
his Ruthenian identity was found by force in the official documents as a Ukrainian. The
Ruthenian language is forbidden to teach and any publication in this language is prohibited.
But that's not all. The 180,000 Lemkos living in Poland suffered an even worse fate. The
Soviet authorities encouraged the Lemkos to emigrate to the Soviet Ukraine and between
1945 and 1946 the Polish authorities forced the emigration of two-thirds of them. Then, in the
spring of 1947, the Lemkos remained in the Polish Carpathians (about 40,000 people) were
driven from their homes by the Polish security forces during Operation Vistula. The Lemkos
were forced to live in the former German lands of post-war West and North Poland
(especially Silesia). As for Lemkovie: many centuries-old Ruthenian villages are simply
destroyed while others are repopulated by Poles.
Yugoslavia brought peace to the Ruthenians it was counting. In Vojvodina, the Ruthenians
were recognized as a distinct nationality and the government supported the establishment of
Ruthenian schools, publications, cultural organizations, radio stations and television
programs. The Ruthenian Greek-Catholic Church was also spared the fate of the Soviet
Union. Finally, in 1974, when Vojvodina became a Serbian autonomous province, the
Ruthenians became the sixth official population.
In Poland, during the 1950s, the Lemkos began to return illegally to their Carpathian villages
where they formed the indigenous population. Some Lemkos have also tried to set up their
own organizations and publications distinctly from Ukrainians. But any attempt was blocked
by the Polish government.
In Slovakia, the Ruthenians protested against what they understood as a denial of their
identity. They refused to be recognized as Ukrainians and refused to send their children to
Slovak schools. But finally, the Ruthenians of the Presov region were assimilated on a large
scale. According to official statistics, their number has decreased by two thirds, in particular
after the policy of enforced Ukrainization applied in Slovakia from 1952 onwards.
During the Prague Spring of 1968, when the Czechoslovak leaders attempted a "socialism
with a human face", the Ruthenians of the Presov region demanded the return of their
nationality and the restoration of their cultural rights. These efforts were terminated by the
invasion of the country by the Soviet Union and its allies. And less than a year later, the new
communist and pro-Soviet Czechoslovak authorities again banned any activity that could be
linked to a Ruthenian identity distinct from the Ukrainian identity. Only the Greek Catholic
Church, which had been restored in Czechoslovakia in June 1968, is authorized to continue its
activities. But these activities went from a Ruthenian political orientation to an instrument of
Slovakia.
- From the end of communism to the present
The Ruthenians, like all the other peoples of the Soviet Union, were deeply influenced by the
reforms undertaken after Mikhail Gorbachev took over as head of the CPSU in 1985.
The first changes were felt for the Lemkos Ruthenes in Poland, who in 1983 were able to
organize a
cultural and folklore festival (Vatra) in their region which has since been new every year. The
political idea of the Vatra was to restore the idea among the Lemkos that they belonged to a
62
distinct people and that they were neither Ukrainian nor Polish but lemkos, a subgroup of the
Ruthenians.
However, the national renaissance of the Ruthenians really began only after the fall of
communism in 1989. Between 1990 and 1991 a multitude of organizations were created to
promote independent Ruthenian identity.
Below, these organizations:
- the Carpathian-Ruthenian Society in Ukraine
- The Ruthenian Renaissance Society in Slovakia
- the Lemkos Association in Poland
- the Society of Friends of Subcarpathian Ruthenia in the Czech Republic
- the Foundation of Ruthenian Culture in Yugoslavia
- the Ruthenian Organization in Hungary (a country where the Ruthenians were thought to
have disappeared by assimilation since the end of the 19th century)
In addition, for the first time since the Second World War, Ruthenian-language newspapers
and magazines began to appear, notably in Ukraine, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary.
Moreover, the freedom of travel gained after the communist collapse made it possible to weld
communities all over the world. Since the communities cooperate with each other. As a result,
in March 1991 the first Ruthenian World Congress was held, and in November 1992 the first
Ruthenian Language Congress was held, both in Slovakia. Since 1991 all the European
governments of the countries where Ruthenian communities are established are witnessing to
varying degrees the Ruthenian renaissance, with the exception of Ukraine.
From 1991, the Ruthenians are again recognized and registered as a distinct nationality
(ethnic) in Czechoslovakia. In the wake of the 1989 Revolution, the great majority of the
Carpathian Ruthenes of Europe found themselves living in new countries. In the summer of
1991, the Ruthenians of Pannonia were separated by a new border, that between Croatia and
the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. There, they were caught in the fires of the Wars of
Yugoslavia (1991-2001). At the end of 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the
Ruthenians voted overwhelmingly in favor of an independent Ukraine. Finally, in January
1993, the Czechoslovak state was abolished, so that the Ruthenians of the Presov region have
since lived in an independent Slovakia.
Today, the activities of Ruthenian organizations in each country focus on the preservation of
the group as a people apart by cultural activity, such as scholarly publications, school and
theater. In Transcarpathia (Ukrainian Ruthenia), emphasis was placed on political activity, in
particular on the attainment of autonomy.
In December 1991, at the same time that the citizens of Ukraine voted overwhelmingly for
independence, 78% (with a participation rate of 89%) of the people of Transcarpathia voted in
favor of autonomy Their oblast. To date, neither the government nor the parliament of
Ukraine have created the autonomy yet desired by a majority of the inhabitants of the
province concerned.
63
3. Contemporary Ruthenia.
The lands now populated by a Ruthenian ethnic majority are divided between Ukraine
(Transcarpathia) and Slovakia (Presov region), together they constitute the Ruthenia desired
by the Ruthenian independents.
- Prešov Region
Country: Slovakia
County town: Prešov
Population: 814 527 inhabitants (2011)
Ethnic composition: Slovaks: 90.7%
Roma: 4%
Ruthenes: 2.7%
Ukrainians: 1%
Czech Republic: 0.5%
Density: 88 hab./km²
Surface area: 8 998 km²
The Prešov region (Prešovský kraj in Slovak) is one of the eight administrative regions of
Slovakia and consists of 13 districts and 666 communes, 23 of which have city status. Its
capital is the city of Prešov.
The Presov region is often referred to as "Slovak Ruthenia" because of the presence of strong
Ruthenian minorities in some of its districts during the 20th century. However, the policy of
assimilation, known as Slovakization, was correct for most of the Slovak Ruthenians during
the communist era. In this region was born the famous Ruthenian social activist Alexander
Dukhnovitch.
- Transcarpathian Oblast.
Country: Ukraine
Capital: Oujhorod
Population: 1,254,393 (2013)
Ethnic composition *: Ukrainians (and Ruthenians): 80.5%
Hungarian: 12.1%
Romanians: 2.6%
Russians: 2.5%
Roma: 1.1%
Slovaks: 0.5%
64
Germans: 0.3%
Density: 98 hab./km²
Area: 12 777 km²
* Ukraine does not recognize the Ruthenians as a whole people and considers them as a
subgroup of Ukrainians.
The Transcarpathian Oblast (Закарпатська область, Zakarpats'ka oblast in Ukrainian)
corresponds roughly to the territory of the historical region of Ruthenia. It is an administrative
region located in the Ukrainian southwest. Its administrative center and also biggest city is
Oujhorod (116 000 inhabitants). Other major cities in the oblast include Mukachev (85,000),
Khoust (28,000), Berehove (24,000) and Chop (9,000).
The Transcarpathian Oblast was officially established on January 22, 1946 when
Czechoslovakia found itself obliged to cede Subcarpathian Ruthenia to the Ukrainian Soviet
Socialist Republic. In 1991 the inhabitants of the oblast massively voted for Ukrainian
independence but at the same time claimed three-quarters internal autonomy. And although
the vast majority of the premises were in favor of autonomy, the Ukrainian government
remained deaf.
4. Demographics.
In 1910, the lower Carpathians (the Hungarian name for Ruthenia) were populated by a
majority of Ruthenians: 472,000 Uniate Catholics and 7,000 Orthodox. But also by 247,000
united Hungarians, 121,000 united Romanian-speakers and 102,000 Slovak-Ruthenians.
Despite their assimilation and emigration, the Ruthenians have never ceased to see their
number increase in the present region of Transcarpathia. In 1810 there were 430,000
Ruthenians, in 1910 there were 482,000, and in 1930 there were 570,000. Finally, in 1979
there were 978,000 Ruthenians.
In the Presov Region, on the contrary, their number has decreased. In 1810 there were
153,000 Ruthenians, 83,000 in 1900 and only 47,000 in 1980.
According to the statistics of the Czechoslovak government, in 1921 the population of
Ruthenia was 600,697, of whom 373,234 were Ruthenians (53%) and 102,998 Magyars
(17%). It should also be noted that in 1919, 70% of the population of Ruthenia was illiterate,
down to 20% in 1938.
We estimate that there are as many as 2 million Ruthenians around the world. Between
620,000 and 700,000 Americans have a Ruthenian ancestry. According to researchers in
Ukraine there are between 700,000 and 800,000 individuals of Ruthenian nationality (ethnic /
people), mainly in Transcarpathia. But it is not easy to give good figures on the number of
Ruthenians present in Ukraine for the following reason: the Ukrainian authorities refuse to
concede the fact that the Ruthenians constitute a separate people.
It is also appropriate to speak of the multiple groups that make up the Ruthenian people.
There are the Rusyns (Carpato-Ruthenes), the Lemkos, the Ruthenians of Pannonia, the
Ruthenians of Presov.
Some figures :
- Ukraine: 700 000/800 000 Ruthenians (almost 100 000 individuals accounted for as
Ukrainians by the authorities) - Figures put forward by the autonomists / independentists –
65
- United States: 620 000/700 000 Ruthenians (according to ancestry)
- Slovakia: 88 951 Ruthenians (includes Carpato-Ruthenes & Lemkos)
- Poland: ± 61,638 Ruthenes (includes Carpato-Ruthenes and Lemkos)
- Romania: ± 32 000 Ruthenians
- Serbia: ± 25,626 Ruthenians
- Hungary: ± 10 000 Ruthenians
- Croatia: 2,879 Ruthenians
- Czech Republic: 1 109 Ruthenian
5. Language.
The modern Ruthenian, also known as Rusyn, is an Eastern Slavonic language, similar to that
of Russian, Belarusian or Ukrainian, of which it is so close that the debate about the
relationship between the two is not Not yet fully closed; Even if most linguists who have
studied the subject make Rusyn a language in its own right.
To date there are two forms of the language that have been codified:
-The rusyn carpatic (or western Ruthenian), in Slovakia where it is official in any town where
more than 20% of the population speaks it as first language.
-The Pannonian rusyn (or eastern Ruthenian), official in the Serbian province of Vojvodina.
These two official variants are both written with the Cyrillic alphabet.
The specialists have, once again, no precise figures as to the number of primary speakers of
Ruthenian. The pessimists speak of 600,000 ruthenophones, optimists more than 1,000,000.
In any case, the University of Philology of Kiev presented the following linguistic map in the
year 2009:
This is rather paradoxical when we know that the Ukrainian authorities refuse to recognize the
Ruthenians ...
6. Religions.
The Ruthenians are faithful to Eastern Christianity, either to the Uniate rite or to the Orthodox
rite. The moment when the Ruthenians converted in mass to Christianity remains a source of
debate, but it is certain that the date is prior to the Great Schism between the Catholic and
Orthodox Churches of 1054.
In 1646, 63 Orthodox priests of Subcarpathian Ruthenia (then an integral part of the Kingdom
of Hungary) decided to place themselves within the jurisdiction of the Church of Rome. This
decision is known as the Oujhorod Union. The Ruthenian Greek-Catholic Church, a Church
united to Rome by the Byzantine rite, was born of this Union.
66
Historian Paul Robert Magocsi wrote that there were approximately 690,000 Carpato-Ruthen
believers in the United States, including 320,000 Catholics, 270,000 Orthodox and 100,000
Protestants and others.
The Ruthenians are predominantly followers of the Greco-Catholic uniate rite, unlike the
Ukrainians, who are, at least generally, of the Orthodox faith.
7. Status.
In Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Serbia, the Ruthenians are officially
recognized as a national minority.
In August 2006 the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
recommended that the Ukrainian government consider the recognition of Ruthenians as a
national minority because there are "significant differences between Ruthenians and
Ukrainians".
On two occasions, in 1992 and 2002, the Transcarpathian Regional Council made a
suggestion to the central authorities to recognize the Ruthenians as a people in their own right.
The Ukrainian authorities replied by silence.
On 7 March 2007, the Transcarpathian Regional Council decided to recognize the Ruthenian
natives as a separate nationality. Ukrainian nationalists immediately put pressure on the
presidential power for direct intervention in local affairs.
At present, the Ukrainian authorities continue to believe that the Ruthenians constitute a
subgroup of Ukrainians. In Transcarpathia there are still no schools or universities teaching
the Ruthenian language (despite calls from Ruthenian organizations in this direction), but,
paradoxically, the Ruthenian press and literature are freely published.
8. Ruthenian nationalism.
For historical and economic reasons, the Ruthenian political movement was divided into
several currents. There are at least four of them:
- Rusynophile. For whom the Ruthenians are an Eastern Slavonic people to put on an equal
footing with the Russians, Ukrainians and Belorussians. He bases his thought on the good
experience of Ruthenian autonomy in Czechoslovakia. The Slovak Ruthenian political
movement particularly supports this trend because it recognizes the different Ruthenian sub-
groups (Carpato-Ruthenes, Lemkos, Ruthenes of Presov, Ruthenians of Pannonia) and wishes
to contribute to their development. Also, the Ruthenian diaspora actively supports this
ideological position. The main active figure of this movement is Paul Robert Magocsi, an
American professor (from the Ruthenian-American community) of history and political
science. He is the honorary president of the World Ruthenian Congress and is the author of
many books on Ruthenian history.
- Pro-Ukrainian. For whom the Ruthenians form a subgroup of the Ukrainian nation, but who
defends the need to save Ruthenian culture, language (which they say dialect) and identity.
This orientation actively cooperates with Ukrainian cultural organizations and government
agencies. Pro-Ukrainian Ruthenian representatives generally refuse the ethnonym
"Ruthenian" and self-identify as "Ukrainian".
- Pro-Russian. For whom all the Slavic peoples of the East are Russian. This movement bases
his thought on the Russophilia in particular displayed by Alexander Dukhnovich in his time
and desires the creation of a pan-Russian state gathering "All the Russias", "Carpathians in
Kamchatka".
67
- Pro-Hungarian. This movement bases its thought on a concept established during the
Hungarian domination of the Low Carpartes and according to which the Ruthenians would in
fact be Slavic Magyars. This political orientation sees in Transcarpathia a kind of "New
Hungary".
The Greek-Catholic and Orthodox religion
For our origins we must consider history at two levels:
1 religious history
2 the history of Central Europe
1. From a religious point of view:
The departure is the schism of 1054 between the separation of the Christian Catholic Church
and the Orthodox Catholic Church. This was the beginning of the Byzantine quarrels due to
the difference in language between East and West, Latin and Greek, and the lack of
understanding between the different rites and their interpretation.
So the Catholic Church obeyed the Pope in Rome.
While the Orthodox Church obeyed the Patriarch of Constantinople.
In the Orthodox Church there were several tendencies:
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church
The Greek-Catholic Ukrainian Church is one of the Eastern Catholic Churches. The head of
the Church bears the title of Major Archbishop of Kiev and Galicia, with residence in Kiev,
until 1945.
The Orthodox Church of Russia
The Patriarchate of Moscow and the whole of Russia, the Orthodox Church of Russia or the
Russian Orthodox Church is the autocéphale canonical jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church of
Russia and, in fact, part of the Russian Diaspora.
The head of the Church bears the title of Patriarch of Moscow and of all Russia (or of all the
Russias: this expression goes back to the time of the Russian principalities: there were then
several Russias in the plural, constituting the primary territory of the Patriarchy). His
residence is at the Danilov Monastery in Moscow. The holder since 27 January 2009 is
Patriarch Cyrille.
In 1964 Paul VI and the Patriarch of Constantinople met to put an end to this schism which
was done.
But meanwhile in 1945 Stalin decided with the head of the secret services of the time, Nikita
kroutchef to put an end to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. She rallied to the Russian
Orthodox Church.
68
The Orthodox Church of Poland
The Orthodox Church of Poland is an autocephalous jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church. The
Primate of the Church bears the title of Metropolitan of Warsaw and all Poland, with
residence in Warsaw
(Present holder: His Beatitude Sabas since 1998).
The Greek Catholic Church in Ruthenia
The Ruthenian Greek-Catholic Church is one of the Eastern Catholic Churches. The majority
of the faithful of this Church who emigrated from their region of origin in Ruthenia are in the
United States, in the Pittsburgh area. Since 1969, the Church in the United States has been a
self-governing metropolitan church, and its head has been, since 1977, the title of
"Metropolitan Archbishop of Pittsburgh of the Byzantines", with residence in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania William Skurla).
The Carpatho-Ruthene Orthodox Church
The American Orthodox Orthodox Orthodox Church Orthodox Orthodox Church is an
Orthodox Church born in the Ruthenian diaspora in the United States and Canada. It is
autonomous but canonically attached to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The
head of the Church bears the title of Metropolitan of Amissos, with residence in Johnstown,
Pennsylvania (present holder: Most Reverend Nicolas (Smisko) since 1997
The Uniate church which was a mixture of the Orthodox and Christian churches = Eastern
Catholic Church
Eastern Catholic Churches, more precisely known as the "Eastern Rite", are among the
Eastern Christian Churches. They are characterized by being in communion with the Bishop
of Rome (the Pope), whose primacy they recognize, and using the Eastern liturgical rites
(Coptic, Western Syriac, Maronite, Eastern Syriac, Byzantine, Armenian , Gueze). They are
defined in the Catholic terminology as autonomous Churches or "Churches of their own right"
in the juridical sense sui iuris and are considered to be fully Catholic, For churches that have
declared unity with Rome since the Nineteenth century, to place itself in the jurisdiction of the
Church of Rome had the advantage, for the faithful concerned, either to make full subjects in
the Catholic States such as Poland or the Empire of Austria where The Orthodox were
sometimes considered second-rate subjects, or placed them under European protection in
declining Muslim states such as the Ottoman Empire. This is why the Greek-Catholic
churches have been debated and criticized since their origin by the Orthodox churches, which
see them as dissent, responsible for their own weakening. These criticisms concern their
identity, in particular their level of autonomy, the conditions for their formation and
development, and the legitimacy of their allegiance, at a time when the official policy of the
Vatican is ecumenical dialogue and Respect for the Eastern Churches, especially after the
Second Vatican Council. Uniatism is now regarded by both Catholics and Orthodox as a
method of the past.
2 ° From a historical point of view
Without wanting to go back to the Greek calendars, Poland disappears in 1772, it is its first
disappearance.
69
It was then the Habsburg period from 1772 to 1918. Our family is then in Austria Hungary.
But the place was Galicia populated by Ruthenes, Lemkos de Boykos and Hutsoules:
There are Ukrainian Ruthenians, Polish Ruthenians and Galician Ruthenians
Galicia was attached to Poland in the 14th century
Galicia becomes Austrian in 1772.
At the University of Lviv the first hours between Polish and Ruthenian students began in
1772. Polish students consider that the University of Lvov was born of John Casimir II in
1661 and the Ruthenian students consider it to be Joseph II 1787-1809 who created it. So
some are Poles and others Ukrainians.
This led to a war between the Polish Ruthenians and the Ukrainian Ruthenians.
The Ukrainians wanted a separation and a partition between Poland and Ukraine, between the
east and the west.
It was after the Ukrainian-Polish war from 1918 to 1919 that the separation was made
between the two Galicias. Western Galicia was incorporated into Poland and Eastern Galicia
into Ukraine.
The Palubniaks are of Western Galician origin in Nowica, but churches can still coexist. In
Wysova Zdroj there are eight.
Some have chosen to emigrate to America, others to France, others to Australia ...
But in 1946-1947 there was Operation Vistula. The Polish government, aided by the Russians,
decided to move the populations of Galicia who were regarded as too warmongering.
They therefore sent part of the family to the occupied territories taken over from the Germans
near Poznań, the town of Stradun near Trzcianka. It was the family of Anna Brenia and
Gregorz Zuraw. The family is still there.
He sent to Ukraine another part of the Palubniak Wictor family to the mines in the north of
Ukraine near Lyebedin in the Soumis oblast. It is in this city that Palubniak Wictor died of a
heart attack in 1946.
The rest of his family was moved and is currently living in the south of Ukraine at Richtichi
next to the town of Drohobycz. There remains the daughter of André Palubniak, Melanie and
her descendants.
Mélanie Palubniak Bizko's brother was moved to Kazakhstan, near the Kyrgyz border, but we
do not know where where.
In France the Palubniaks are in the second generation, the children of Wictor Palubniak and
Teodora Brenia, that is Jean, Milka and Marie who are no longer here but the next generation
is very active.
In conclusion
The historical and religious aspects should not be mixed.
The Lemkos of Poland became Catholic and Polish.
70
The Orthodox churches of Prislov and Nowica are still there.
In 1921 the Ukrainian-Greek Catholic church really existed, but it was attached to the Russian
Orthodox Church and the Patriarch of Moscow in 1945.
It is not because we are Poles that we follow the rites of the Greco-Ukrainian church. And it is
not because one is a Ukrainian that one follows the Christian Catholic rites.
From the point of view of language, it should be pointed out that Ruthenian is the origin of
the Slavic languages and especially of the Polish. Russians and Ukrainians having opted for
the Cyrillic alphabet.
Orthodox wooden church in Przyslup, Beskid Niski, Poland
71
Thank you Kinga Palubniak for sending this.
Orthodox Church of Nowica
72
Chapter IV - A DIFFICULT 20TH CENTURY
In 1914, many regiments recruited from the Galician military districts were already mobilized
in the 4th Austrian Army stationed at the border of the Russian Empire. The general
mobilization completed the forces and many Poles and Ukrainians joined together the same
Austrian units.
Recruited in Stryj and Sambor, we find especially the infantry regiment KK Landwehr-
Infanterieregiment Stryj Nr.33 which was then composed of 73% of Ukrainians (Ruthenas as
it was then called) and 27% of various (Poles, Czechs ... )
As for the cavalry, in 1914 there were in the Austrian Army regiments of dragoons stationed
at Ternopol, Przemyśl, Stanislau, and regiments of uhlan at Lemberg, Krakau, Rzeszów.
The Polish Legions, in line as early as 1914, also had squadrons of cavalry. For military operations.
From August to November 1914, the Russian armies rejected the Austro-Hungarian troops as
far as the Carpathian passes and occupied the whole of eastern Galicia until April 1915. A
Russian administration was put in place which led to a policy of russification to the utmost.
Was there voluntary recruitment of soldiers for their armies? I can not say.
In April 1915, the Austro-Hungarian armies, aided by the Germans, began the reconquest of
the territories and routed the Russian armies at Gorlice (2 May 1915). This is not far from
home. From then on, the Russians had to leave definitively not only Galicia but also Poland
occupied by them, Courland
After the unfortunate Manchurian War, the announcement of a Duma was received with
enthusiasm at Warsaw. The Poles were widely represented in the first two Dumas. Their
number was then reduced to twelve in the third.
The minorities (Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Belarussians) worked by the copar- tant
governments, stood increasingly against the Poles. The Polish element itself was deeply
divided on the eve of the Great War. Some saw in Russia the only hope of Poland's salvation,
others were animated by a profound hatred against Tsarist Russia, and Pilsudski offered the
support of his legions, small paramilitary groups.
73
The war was a frightful nightmare for Poland. It was not only the field of battle for the
election of the belligerents, but saw its sons serving in all the camps and killing each other,
without their convictions pushing them to it; It lives its territory systematically stripped of its
wealth (food products, raw materials) and sacked by the various armies.
The kingdom of the Congress was divided into two zones of occupation; An Austrian general
ruled at Lublin and a German at Warsaw. The foreign yoke soon became very heavy, and in
1916 the two emperors, estimating eight hundred thousand men able to bear arms, thought it
clever to announce with a loud noise their will to transform the Polish territories torn from
Russia into A hereditary and independent kingdom, and consequently asked the young men to
enlist in the army.
This maneuver failed, for Pilsudski refused all military command and was interned at
Magdeburg. The legions refused to take the oath to the emperors, the recruiting offices
remained deserted. On the other hand, the partisans of free Poland scored points abroad.
For the first time, on 24 January 1917, in his message to the Senate, President Wilson spoke
of a united, independent, autonomous Poland, and the new Russian government promised in
turn an "independent Polish state" (March 29 1917). The Russian declaration did not convince
the Poles, who put all their hopes in the West, and formed in Paris a National Committee
which was recognized by the Allies.
A small Polish army was formed in France under the orders of Haller. The central empires, by
asking for peace, implicitly recognized the Polish independence included in the fourteen
points of President Wilson. The Republic was proclaimed in Warsaw in November 1918 by
the Provisional Government of Democrats and Socialists, which in effect gave power to
Pilsudski, the recently liberated national hero.
The Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918-1919
The weakening of the Empires, which had been torn apart during the First World War, led to
the generalization of national demands throughout Central and Eastern Europe; The victors of
the conflict, French, English and Americans, had to manage this multitude of rivalries
according to their own and sometimes divergent interests. Provided they were supported by
the Allies, national movements were able to develop and acquire the maturity necessary for
their action, especially on the military plane, with every chance of success. This was not the
case for the Ukrainians who had lived apart in two great groups for 150 years: one under
Austrian tutelage, the other under the Tsar's yoke. After the fall of the latter in 1917, the
Ukrainians of Central Ukraine had to defend their frail independence threatened by whites
(tsarists) and reds (Bolsheviks).
As for the Ukrainians in the West, the greatest threat came from the Poles, for whom Eastern
Galicia and the neighboring regions were historically Polish, and as such inseparable from
Poland.
The war of independence in Galicia, improperly called the "Polish-Ukrainian war", began
with the uprising of the Ukrainians in Lviv in November 1918; It ended with the withdrawal
in July 1919 and the dissolution of the Ukrainian Army of Galicia (UHA) in November. The
conflict between the Ukrainians in Galicia and the Polish forces must be distinguished from
the rest of the military actions carried out by the Ukrainians of the Democratic Republic of
Ukraine. Unlike the Galicians, the Ukrainians of central Ukraine saw Poland as an objective
ally against Russian expansionism.
74
On the other hand, how much even the Ukrainians in the western regions were won by the
idea of "Sobornist" (Unity) and consequently favorable to the creation of a powerful and
unified Pan-Ukrainian State, their only appearance On the political chessboard of Europe in
the midst of a recomposition, forced the allied powers to reconsider their plans, which, in the
face of the Bolsheviks launched on the assault of the West, obliged France to favor an
enlarged Poland, According to her to block the Russians.
In this context the attachment of Ukrainian Galicia to the People's Republic of Ukraine is one
of the most desperate and heroic enterprises in the long march of Ukrainians towards their
freedom.
When the Ukrainian National Council of Galicia, headed by Y. Petrouchevych, declared the
independence of all the Ukrainian territories included within the limits of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire on October 19, 1918, the formation of a regular army became the priority.
Disturbed by the progressive armament of the Polish minority, the Ukrainians of Lviv had
already formed a clandestine defense committee, capable at the moment of coming into
action. As for the embryo of the Galician army, it was composed of soldiers of the Great War,
the famous "Sitchovi Striltsi", a battalion of about 2000 soldiers engaged voluntarily, forming
a legion with the numbers cautiously reduced by the Poles of Vienna . And despite everything
famous throughout the Empire for his bravery; lesser formations from the imperial army had
also volunteered.
Nov. 1, 1918, the day after the refusal of the Austrian authorities to recognize the Ukrainian
power, the Ukrainian soldiers neutralized the imperial officers, escaped from their barracks
and seized the strategic infrastructure and positions of Lviv. Soldiers who were not of
Ukrainian nationality were disarmed. The same day, the yellow and blue flag floated over all
of Galicia. In Lviv, despite a policy favorable to minorities, an urban war began, the Jews
remaining neutral, the Poles rebelling (the latter were majority in Lviv). After three weeks of
bitter fighting the city fell to the Poles mobilized since November 4.
Rejected to the east of the city, the Ukrainians declare the general mobilization and lack of
means the volunteers flock. In December, the Ukrainian Army of Galicia already had 20,000
"striltsi" and some 60 pieces of light artillery (the Galician artillerymen were famous
throughout Eastern Europe). Ukraine then sends recovered ammunition to the Russian
garrisons. The attacks are concentrated above all on Lviv and on Drohobytch-Boryslav, which
was at the time an important oil basin. The Poles employ 12,000 soldiers in the sole defense
of Lviv, central point of their arrangements, waiting for the reinforcements that must flow
from Poland, especially those of the Haller army (500,000 men!), Trained, equipped in France
and framed by Many French officers. This army was destined for the anti-Bolshevik front, in
no case to that of Galicia, but the emotional charge which had been occasioned by the loss of
Lviv made it necessary to put an end to what appeared to the Poles as an umpteenth uprising
in the Ukraine, Although the UHA had all the characteristics of a modern (and well-
organized) army. Indeed, the reputation of "Haïdamaks" (rebellious peasants) that they stick
to the backs of the Ukrainians since the eighteenth century, reinforced the Poles in the myth of
a civilized and civilizing Poland. Walking on Galicia, Marshal Pilsudski had not understood
that this region had become the spiritual heart of the Ukraine, and that any Ukrainian uprising
would henceforth depart.
Ultimately determined to do battle, the Ukrainians have an artillery that they know how to use
miraculously, but this is their only technical advantage. To ensure the supply of Lviv and the
arrival of reinforcements, the Poles must imperatively protect the Lviv-Permemyshl railway,
to which they devote most of their efforts.
The Ukrainians were forced to attack without support, for lack of stewardship worthy of the
name: the five long years of war had bled the region which now has to maintain an army of
126,000 men, of which 55,000 on the front line.
75
In May 1919 the Poles succeeded in freeing Lviv from its encirclement. Demoralized
Ukrainian troops are tied beyond the Zbruch, a border river between ancient Russia and
Austria-Hungary, heavy with symbol. The army of Galicia then engages in a baroud of honor
under the orders of Gal Hrekov. The heroic charge took place not far from Chortkiv and
reached the suburbs of Lviv. Unfortunately, without reserves of ammunition the UHA must
retreat. One of the other causes of these military failures is the lack of cadres trained in
military art. Galician intellectuals in favor of Ukrainian independence were generally
influenced by ambient antimilitarism. Military service was considered with contempt.
More symbolic than effective, Ukrainian reunification took place on January 22,
1919,between UNR and ZUNR (West-Ukrainian Democratic Republic). However, in Paris,
Ukrainian diplomacy was a mess. There are several delegations, sometimes shared,
sometimes separated: the representatives of Western Ukraine and Central Ukraine speak in a
discordant voice and lack experience. While the Galicians are fighting for their survival, the
Central Government imagines to sacrifice Galicia and the West of Volynia in exchange for a
Polish support which would consequently entail that of the Entente. Little need him! The
Peace Conference will do everything to limit Polish losses: Pilsudsky even gets the green light
to occupy the Ukraine until Zbruch! In July 1919, Tarnovski, the new chief of the UHA,
crossed the river at the head of 50,000 fighters to join the Petlura Army. Galicia is lost.
After a few raids on Kiev and Odessa, the Galician army, decimated by an epidemic of typhus
that could have been enraged if the countries of the Entente had permitted the sending of
medicines, joins with the fortune of the weapons the Russian troops Of Denikin and then of
the Red Army (March 1920). The Petlura army, on its side, launched an offensive against the
Bolsheviks by defending the right flank of the Poles (part of the UHA joined it there); She
seized Kiev and was soon dislodged by the red cavalry of Budionnny, which soon threatened
Warsaw. In October 1920, when the Reds retreated and the Ukrainian nationalists were back
on their feet in Ukraine, Poland committed one of the worst betrayals in its history. Having
obtained Galicia, she signed an armistice with the Bolsheviks, leaving the Ukrainians left to
their own devices.
Without any other refuge than that of their traitor, the Ukrainians will be disarmed and
interned in Poland. None of the promises of Galician autonomy formed in Paris will be kept.
The irony of history will mean that today independent Ukraine embraces Galicia, not through
the Entente, of which it could have been the best ally, but by the will of Stalin, who was his
worst enemy.
If the nation were free, it was, socially and politically, very divided and its borders remained
uncertain. Pilsudski, running at the hurry, reorganized the army and the administration. In
January 1919, a cabinet was formed under the presidency of the famous composer Paderewski
and a constituent diet was elected, where the Socialists were in a minority. A "Little
Constitution" was promulgated on 20 February 1919. The Head of State was responsible to
the Diet and exercised executive power through ministers. The struggle to secure its borders
The treaty of Versailles rendered to Poland, in the west, its frontiers before the first partition
of 1772; Danzig (Gdansk) became a free city. The territories in dispute were to be submitted
to a plebiscite, and in Silesia the Germans prevailed. The territory of Teschen (Cieszyn) was
finally given by the Allies to Czechoslovakia. In the north-east, the territories liberated by the
Germans were immediately reoccupied by the Red Army.
76
So Pilsudski threw his troops into Lithuania, and occupied Wilno. But the Supreme Allied
Council, alarmed at the appetites of the new republic, fixed the new frontier on the Bug, that
is to say, along the old frontier of the kingdom of Congress. Similarly, despite the victory of
the Haller army in the south-east, Poland was denied the annexation of eastern Galicia, which
was entrusted to it for twenty-five years as a "mandate" (a plebiscite was to be organized at
The end of the latter). Pilsudski refused the decision of the Allies and resigned.
The chief of the republic of eastern Galicia, knowing the aims of Warsaw, preferred to cede to
him half of Volhynia, in exchange for his alliance against Russia. Pilsudski then launched
again against the Ukraine, but this time he was defeated by the Red Army, which arrived at
the gates of Lwow, Warsaw and Torun, where it was arrested and beaten, partly through a
maneuver Inspired by the French general Weygand.
The armistice of Riga, pushed back the 200km borders east of the Bug. Wilno was recovered
by a blow of hands. The diet of Central Lithuania voted annexation to Poland in January
1922. The Allies bowed to the fait accompli. Resurrected Poland had strong national
minorities.
The Constitution
The adopted constitution was of the French type; The President of the Republic was elected
by the Diet and the Senate together. After the legislative elections of November 5, 1922,
Pilsudski, promoted marshal, refused the presidency of the Republic. The elected Socialist
Narutowicz was assassinated and replaced by another socialist, Wojciechowski. The
successive cabinets were composed of moderates.
Whereas according to an agrarian law of 1920, the land was distributed, the country was
equipped, the port of Gdynia was built, the universities created in Poznań and Wilno. But the
Pact of Locarno alarmed the Polish public. Pilsudski, who had resigned from his position as
Chief of the General Staff, aroused the coup d'état of May 1926, in which the soldiers who
were partisans of the marshal, the populist radicals and the socialists collaborated. A revision
of the Constitution strengthened the executive and empowered the new government.
Pilsudski, inspector-general of the army, the real leader of Poland, assumed the presidency of
the council after having dissolved the chambers (1930). His dictatorship was marked by the
imprisonment or exile of the leaders of the opposition and by attacks on the regime. A few
months before the death of Pilsudski, the government adopted a constitutional revision which
would allow the "dictatorship of the colonels" to settle.
The Dictatorship of the Colonels
The Constitution gave the President the legislative veto, the right of dissolution, the choice of
a third of the senators. The ministers, except those concerning the economy, were entrusted to
officers. Beside Moscicki, General Rydz-Smigly, inspector-general of the army, became the
second personage of the State.
While the agrarian reform was bogged down, the external situation deteriorated. Colonel
Beck, Minister of Foreign Affairs, concluded non-aggression pacts with the Soviet Union in
1932, and with Hitler's Germany in 1934. Poland took advantage of Munich to seize the
territory of Teschen.
In March 1939, in the face of Nazi pressure on Gdansk (Danzig) and part of Polish
Pomerania, the Polish government turned to Great Britain, with which it signed a mutual
assistance pact. In May of the same year, a military agreement was signed with France. On 23
August 1939 the German-Soviet Pact was signed. The situation in Poland is considerably
exacerbated.
77
The Second World War and its consequences.
On September 1, 1939, Hitler's armies attacked the country by surprise, without declaration of
war, both north, west and south. The Polish army is submerged. The government and the
supreme command took refuge in France. On 17 September, the Red Army occupies the
eastern territories, populated by Belorussians and Ukrainians. On 27 September, Warsaw fell
into the hands of the Germans.
The years of the Nazi occupation (1939-1945) constituted the most tragic part of all Polish
history. All secondary and higher schools were closed. The Jewish population, enclosed in the
ghettos, was almost completely annihilated between 1942 and 1944. Extermination camps
were established on the territory (Oswiecim, more sadly known as Auschwitz, Maidanek,
Treblinka). Two million four hundred thousand people were deported to Germany for forced
labor.
We can find that in Vienna: Polish agricultural worker Johann Palubniak killed by the
Gestapo in Dachau at the age of 31 years.
Name: Palubniak
First Name: Johann
Date of Birth: 22.06.1909
There are also on the official lists of the dead in Auschwitz:
Palubniak Jozef (03/03/1915 - 05/04/1942) Place of birth: Mszana residence Mszana-Bas,
Religion: catholic
Palubniak Kornil (23/09/1917 - 09/02/1943) Place of birth: Fate, Residence: Fate, Religion:
catholic
For Warsaw it was the ghetto that was completely destroyed
Photos by Jean Palubniak
78
This looks a little like ruins
Two streams of resistance then emerged. On the one hand, the interior army (AK) subordinate
to the government of London (led by General Sikorski and after, its tragic death in 1943 in an
unexplained aircraft accident, by Stanislaw Mikolajczyk) By his mistrust of the Soviet Union.
On the other hand, with the help of Moscow, the Polish Workers' Party (PFR) led the popular
guard, transformed in 1944 into a People's Army (A.L). On 1 January 1944, Fr. Under the
impulse of Vladislav Gomulka, was transformed into the National People's Council (KRR),
which elected Boleslaw Bierut as its president.
On April 19, 1943, the heroic uprising of the Warsaw ghetto broke out, which was crushed by
the Germans only after four weeks of fierce struggle.
In 1944, as soon as the first Polish army had crossed the Bug, a National Liberation
Committee was formed in Lublin (July 22) and defined its goals: total liberation of the
territory, then a socialist regime with a primary objective Agrarian state affecting all the
properties of more than 50 ha.
The two heads of the provisional governments of London and Paris were pressed by Stalin to
come to an understanding; But this first conference (1 - 10 August) is disturbed by the tragic
and partly unexplained episode of the Warsaw uprising.
The population of Warsaw, called to Moscow by insurrection, which later rejected
responsibility for the Polish emigrants of London, rose up and stood up to the German troops
for sixty-three days. The Red Army assisted without interfering in the crushing of the city and
in the death or deportation of almost the entire population: at least 200,000 people perished.
79
In Yalta, on February 11, 1945, the Great Three set the Polish borders, east on the Curzon
line, west on the Oder-Neisse line. A government of "national unity" is constituted. The
government of London is no longer recognized.
In pink the lands taken back to Germany where our family was moved from Nowica to
Stradun. In gray land returned to Ukraine
In spite of the overwhelming success of the governmental bloc (the workers', socialist,
democrat and peasant parties), two tendencies will clash: that of the head of state, Bierut, and
his companions, following the authoritarian model applied by Moscow.That of Gomulka,
favorable to the search for an autonomous way towards socialism and which, suspected of
Titoism will be pursued.
As early as 1946, industrial enterprises were nationalized. After the commercial agreement
with the U.S.S.R and the adoption of a six-year plan, the Stalinist methods are applied:
primacy to heavy industry, stakhanovism, close control of the lives of citizens, purges and
imprisonments. In 1948, the Secretariat of the Workers' Party, which grew from the Socialist
Party, was entrusted to Bierut, who thus cumulated these functions with those of President of
the Republic.
The Catholic Church, so powerful in Poland, is persecuted. But a modus vivendi was adopted
in 1950, as the population as a whole remained faithful to its religion. Poland joined the
Communist bloc by joining Comecom on 25 January 1949 and by the Warsaw Pact on 14
May 1955.
The relaxation that follows Stalin's death gives rise to the hope of liberalization: Gomulka is
rehabilitated. The diet resumes its debates. The wave of freedom that raged in the country
resulted in a riot of the workers of Poznan on 28 June 1956. On 15 August a million people
gathered around the Catholic shrine of Czestochowa. While the Soviet divisions were in a
state of alert and the national army refused obedience to Rokosowski, Khrushchev went to
Warsaw. This is the ultimatum. Gomulka saves with skill an explosive situation; He spared
80
his country the fate of Hungary in revolt. Consequently, the country's internal and external
position is constantly consolidating. During the years 1956-1959 real wages increased by
29%. Poland was again elected to the Security Council of the United Nations in 1959. With a
particularly unfortunate experience, Poland today focuses on preventing what it calls the spirit
of revenge of Germany and relying on the Soviet Union encourages the consolidation of the
"iron triangle" Poland - Democratic Germany - Czechoslovakia. At the time of the
liberalization in Prague, it did not hesitate to join forces with those of the Warsaw Pact to
invade a country which it considers a strategic position of the "bloc" of which it is a part.
The events that took place in Gdansk, Gdynia and Szczecin thirty years ago are part of a long
series of Polish resistance against communism. It all began with protests against price
increases. They have turned into big demonstrations on the streets. The demonstrators were
attacked by the militia. The pacification of Gdynia was the bloodiest; Nobody knows how
many victims!
The least known side of December 1970 is the seed of self-organization. In the companies the
strike committees have formulated lists of postulates, among others, an independent union. In
Gdynia the strikers reached an agreement with the local authorities, moreover never
respected. The events of December formed Lech Walesa and his colleagues from the Gdansk
Shipyard. They took the lesson well and ten years later did not go out on the street. The lesson
of December was well engraved in the memory of Edward Gierek who in August 80 did not
give the order to use force to break the strikes. The December triumph was a few years later
the freedom acquired by Poland in 1989.
One of the witnesses of these events wrote a ballad. The text was reprinted and slightly
modified by Andrzej Wajda in the film "The Man of Marble".
The sequel you know, it is Poland now ....
81
82
Galicia in the 20 Th century
GALICIA’S HERALDS
In 1941, it was invaded and occupied by the German troops. With the help of Ukrainian
nationalist militias, Nazi commandos (the SS-Einsatzgruppen) systematically liquidate the
large Jewish population, unprecedented in history, by deporting them to concentration camps
and extermination camps .
In 1943, the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler ordered the creation of a Waffen SS Division
made up of Ukrainian volunteers from Galicia (SS Galizian Division).
In 1944, Galicia was conquered by the Red Army, which took over Lwów on 28 July.
In 1945 it was cut by the Curzon line (proposed by Lord Curzon during the Paris Peace
Conference on December 8, 1919) and adopted during the Yalta Accords, which originated in
Lithuania and moved east of Przemysl in Poland And west of Lviv (Lwów) in Galicia. The
eastern part of the Curzon line is attached to Ukraine, then one of the constituent republics of
the Soviet Union.
A history of trauma
From a remote province with no history of the Austrian Crown, Galicia was the scene of
heartbreaking clashes between the Polish, Ukrainian and Jewish communities during and after
the First World War.
At the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire a short National Republic of Western Ukraine was
formed in October 1918. The new Ukrainian army, the result of the collapse of the Russian
empire following the 1917 Revolution, faced the Polish troops who seized the capital and then
the entire region in July 1919. During the battle Of Lvov, the Polish soldiers engage in a
pogrom for three days. Galicia was then integrated into the eastern territories of Poland
freshly reconstituted by the Russian Revolution, forming one of the lands of the kresy,
frontier zone or buffer of the Second Republic, populated by colorful minorities. The province
lost its Austrian name and disappeared, with West Galicia, under the name of Malopolska
("Lesser Poland").
From the mid-1930s onwards, the ideals of a large multi-ethnic Poland of Pilsudski were
overtaken by an aggressive, openly anti-Semitic policy of imposition by violence of the
"pacification" of the Ukrainian villages.
83
In 1939, under the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement, while Germany invaded the
western half of Poland, the Soviet Union got its hands on its eastern part. This territory is
incorporated, following a rigged referendum, into the Soviet Republic of Ukraine. The Soviet
Union is pursuing a policy of Ukrainization, but also of forced collectivization and ideological
aggression, accompanied by violent repression (deportations, imprisonment, executions),
which affects in chronological order the former political and economic elites And Polish
intellectuals, then the Ukrainian nationalists. At the end of June 1941, the region was
conquered by the Wehrmacht.
Ukrainian nationalists welcome German troops as liberators. However, far from conferring
independence on Ukraine, the Nazis very quickly developed a policy of radical elimination of
the communists, but also ethnic and racial cleansing, backed by volunteers from the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) , Transforming this territory into a very
specific test area for killing on the ground and radicalizing "brutalization" of war violence,
with significant and voluntary participation by the local population. As soon as the Germans
arrived, the local Ukrainian population "took revenge" on the persecution of the NKVD by a
series of wild pogroms perpetrated against the Jewish civilian population (24,000 dead).
The Nazis integrated Galicia into the "General Government" of Poland and gradually put in
place the "final solution": the 500,000 Jews of Galicia (12% of the population of about 4
million), first gathered in ghettos And labor camps, are mostly shot at the edge of mass graves
or annihilated in Bełżec. In addition, 350,000 Poles and Ukrainians are deported to Germany
as forced or displaced workers to create a vital and economically viable space, as part of a
military and economic strategy that deliberately deliberately killed tens of millions of people,
Human beings in the Soviet Union.
The OUN and the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgency Army), which is now moving from
collaboration to resistance against the Germans while continuing its struggle against the
Soviets and the Russians, are taking advantage of the chaos Plunged the region to get rid of
the Polish population (50,000 died first in Volhynia and then in eastern Galicia), where the
terror imposed by the guerrillas of the Ukrainian "banditists" (supporters of Stepan Bandera,
head of OUN) Stalin set up a policy of deportation of the population at the end of the war.
Between 1945 and 1956, 800,000 Poles were "repatriated" , Of which 560 000 are from
Galicia, while about 600 000 Ukrainians from the other side of the border (Lemkos) are
deported to Ukraine (mostly to Galicia) or dispersed during the "Vistula Action" Akcj A
Wisła) in the territories that Poland has recovered from Germany.
Galicia, land of emigration and cradle of celebrities
Galicia has been a land of emigration since the middle of the nineteenth century. A
considerable proportion of the "Galicians" are today outside Galicia. Nearly one million
Ukrainian Galicians, known as "Ruthenians", emigrated at the turn of the century to the
United States, Canada and Western Europe, as did many Galician Galicians. Chicago,
Milwaukee, Philadelphia, New York have become major centers of Galician emigration. Of
the 800,000 pre-World War I Galician Jews, 200 to 300,000 fled pogroms and wars to the
western capitals and the United States between 1880 and 1914.
Because of the possibilities of education and social advancement offered by the Austrian
monarchy to all its minorities, the reputation of Galicia was also based on the fact that it was
the fertile soil for the constitution of a Intelligentsia (Austrian, Polish, Russian-Ukrainian or
Jewish). Galicia was the laboratory of modern national movements, Polish, Ukrainian and
Jewish. In view of the subsequent persecutions, the period of the Austro-Hungarian empire is
retrospectively an era of freedom.
Galicia has also benefited from the notoriety of its leading figures, who have often left it in
their social and cultural ascent, or have become key symbols in their respective national
84
cultures: the German-speaking Joseph Roth and Martin Buber, Polish-speakers Gerda Taro,
Joseph Wittlin and Bruno Schulz, Ukrainian-speakers Ivan Franko, Vasyl Stefanik and
Martovitch, plus Hebrew-speaking writers Shmuel Yosef Agnon and Aharon Appelfeld, and
Yiddish writers Moyshe Leyb Halpern, Melekh Ravitsh and Uri Tsi Grinberg, not to mention
the pleiad of the Galician Yiddish school of the beginning of the century.
There are also more exotic figures like politicians (Karl Radek, Isaac Deutscher, or
Maximilien Rubel), or authors who have been the subject of a more recent "re-discovery",
such as the German-speaking Galicia, multi-ethnic (certainly German-centered) Karl Emil
Franzos and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, and the post-war memorials Soma Morgenstern
and Manes Sperber, as well as Polish novelists Andrzej Kusniewicz and Julian Stryjkowski.
Andy Warhol was born to Ruthenian parents (who could be today the Czech Republic)
immigrated to the United States in 1921. Andy Warhola is actually called Andy Warhola
(actually after a lemko name which appears in 1785 in a Large number of villages).
Good and of course there are the PALUBNIAKS who have not been unworthy in the
notoriety.
These Galicians have carried the name of their "little country" throughout the world, while
singing multiculturalism before the letter, religious, cultural and ethnic pluralism, seen
through the lens of the extinct community. Thus, the Jewish shtetl, the large Polish aristocratic
landholding, the German-speaking or Polish-speaking colony or polonophone island in the
Ukrainian "sea", or the past splendor of the regional metropolises of Cracow or Lvov embody
a lost Arcadia of Childhood or Atlantis submerged by the onslaught of evil (war, communism,
Hitler's occupation).
Although the Ukrainian emigrant organizations in the United States and Canada, like the
Jews, have not suffered an attempt at total annihilation, they perpetuate a memory centered on
the persecution of Ukrainians by the Poles and Russians, The Soviets and glorify the UPA, or
even the SS-Galizian division, as a pole of anti-Soviet resistance.
In the Soviet Union, Eastern Galicia, divided into three oblasts (Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-
Frankivsk), formed with Transcarpathia the "Western Ukraine". Relegated to an eccentric
corner of the national territory which, with the cultural capitals of the Soviet world, now
extends to the East, it undergoes Sovietization.
85
Historical summary of those who reigned over Galicia to remember better
Vladimir le Grand (980-1015)
Boleslaw le Vaillant (1015-1031)
Rurikides
Iaroslav le Sage (1031-1054)
Rostislav le Brave (1054-1067)
Volodar (1084-1124), son of Rostislav
Vladimir (1124-1152), Founder of the principality of Galicia
Yaroslav I "Osmomysl", (1153-1187)
Vladimir I (1187-1188)
Roman le Grand (1199-1205)
Daniel (1211-1213) Prince
Daniel (1229-1264) king
Lev ou Léon (1269-1301)
Youri Ier (1301-1308)
André (1308-1323)
Maria (1323-1341) Wife of Trojden de Masovie
Kings of Poland
Piast
Casimir III, le Grand (1333-1370)
Anjou
Louis d'Anjou (1370-1382)
Jagellons
Jadwiga (1384-1399)
Wladislav II Jagellon (1384-1434)
Wladislaw III Jagellon (1434-1444)
Casimir IV (1446-1492)
Jean-Albert Ier (1492-1501)
Alexandre I (1501-1506)
Sigismond le Vieux (1506-1548)
Sigismond II Auguste (1548-1572)
Elected Kings
Henri de Valois (1573-1574) – Henri III
Etienne Bathory (1575-1586)
Sigismond III Vasa (1587-1632)
Wladislaw IV Vasa (1632-1648)
Jean II Casimir Vasa (1648-1669)
Michel Korybut Wisniowiecki (1669-1673)
Jean III Sobieski (1674-1696)
Auguste II von Wettin (1697-1704)
Stanislas I Leszczynski (1704-1709)
Auguste III von Wattin (1709-1733)
Stanislas II Leszczynski (1733-1733)
Auguste III von Wettin (1733-1763)
Stanislas Poniatowski (1763-1772)
1921 : Rattachement à la Pologne
1939 : Annexion par l'Union soviétique
1941 : Annexion par l'Allemagne
1945 : Rattachement à la République socialiste soviétique d’Ukraine
1991 : Oblasts de Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil
86
The situation of the Lemkos in Poland after 1956
In 1957-58, about five thousand families of Lemkos were able to return to their regions of
origin in eastern Poland.
While the Polish census of 2002/2003 shows only 5,855 Lemkos (each self-identified), there
are estimates of up to 100,000 Lemkos in total living today in Poland and up to 10 000 of
them in the Łemkowszczyzna. The biggest Lemko groups live in the villages of Łosie,
Krynica, Nowica, Zdynia, Gładyszów, Hańczowa, Zyndranowa, Uście Gorlickie, Bartne,
Bielanka and in the eastern part of the Łemkowszczyzna: Mokre, Szczawne, Kulaszne,
Rzepedź, Turzańsk, Komańcza. Also in cities: Sanok, Nowy Sącz and Gorlice.
Small note, I put in bold the villages where one finds the name of Palubniak
87
Second part
Chapter V - Family Apparitions
The parish registers
Novycja in Russian, Nowica in Polish
Gorlice District, now in southern Poland
Lemko Surnames quoted by Krasovs'kyj from 1787 Austrian cadastral records
1. Bieguniak / Bigunjak (3 families) Bieguniak / Bigunjak (3 families)
2. Byszko / Biszko / Byshko (2 families) Byszko / Biszko / Byshko (2 families)
3. Brenia / Brenja Brenia / Brenja
4. Haluszczak / Halusczak / Haluszak / Halushchak Haluszczak / Halusczak / Haluszak /
Halushchak
5. Holod / Golod (2 families) Holod / Golod (2 families)
6. Gulik / Gulyk Gulik / Gulyk
7. Kadylo Kadylo
8. Karlak / Karljak (5 families) Karlak / Karljak (5 families)
9. Kleczko / Kljachko Kleczko / Kljachko
10. Koltko (2 families) Koltko (2 families)
11. Kopcza / Kopcha (2 families) Kopcza / Kopcha (2 familles)
12. Krolewski / Krolevs'kyj (2 families) Krolewski / Krolevs'kyj (2 familles)
13. Machnicz / Makhnych Machnicz / Makhnych
14. Myczko / Mycko / Mychko Myczko / Mycko / Mychko
15. Michniak / Mykhnjak Michniak / Mykhnjak
16. Obuchanicz / Obuchaniec / Obukhanych Obuchanicz / Obuchaniec / Obukhanych
17. Palubniak / Palubnjak Palubniak / Palubnjak
18. Pelegryn / Pelegryn Pelegryn / Pelegryn
19. Potocki / Potots'kyj Potocki / Potots'kyj
20. Romanik / Romanyk (2 families) Romanik / Romanyk (2 familles)
21. Sembratowicz / Sembratovych Sembratowicz / Sembratovych
22. Sysko ( 2 families) Sysko (2 familles)
23. Suchyi / Suchiy / Suchy / Sukhyj Suchyi / Suchiy / Suchy / Sukhyj
24. Tyszkanicz / Tyshkanych Tyszkanicz / Tyshkanych
25. Tucza / Tucha Tucza / Tucha
26. Ferenc / Ferenz / Ferents Ferenc / Ferenz / Ferents
27. Feciura / Fetsjura (2 families) Feciura / Fetsjura (2 familles)
28. Hanas / Hanasz / Khanas Hanas / Hanasz / Khanas
29. Chowaniec / Chowanec / Howaniec / Khovanets' Chowaniec / Chowanec / Howaniec /
Khovanets '
30. Szwec / Szwiec / Szewc / Shvets' Szwec / Szwiec / Szewc / Shvets '
31. Jarosz / Jarosh (2 families) Jarosz / Jarosh (2 familles)
32. Jaceczak / Jatsechak (2 families) Jaceczak / Jatsechak (2 familles)
88
Parish of data: [de Blazejowskyj and Iwanusiw]
It was "Saint Paraskevija" [1843] [still standing]
The wooden church was renovated in 1927. It replaced an old church that already existed in
1791 when the presbytery was built and the priest had left PRYSLIP. There was also a
wooden chapel that was built in 1889. From 1967 services were only celebrated 3 times a
year, but since 1984 there have been regular services - even though the mountain roads are
barely usable in winter.
In 1785, the land of the village comprised 10.05 km ². It was composed of 385 Greek Roman
Catholics and Catholics and 5 Jews.
1840 - 719 Greek Catholics
1859 - 640 Greek Catholics
1879 - 663 Greek Catholics
1899 - 725 Greek Catholics
1926 - 675 Greek Catholics
1936 - 830 Greek Catholics
In 1936 there were 2 Roman Catholics, 3 Jews and 6 Protestants
The village was incorporated into the Lemko Apostolic Administration in 1934.
Branch church located 2 km away from PRYSLIP
The PALUBNIAK
A little bit of Genealogy
First appearances: the Palubniak
In 1797 was born Joannes Palubniak, brother of Theodor Palubniak and son of Andreas
Palubniak (1771 - 1831) and Tecla in Nowica.
89
On April 25, 1851 was born Andreas Palubniak son of Theodor Palubniak (1804) and Eva
Michniak in Nowica
It was the father of Victor Palubniak (1886-1946) our grandfather.
Between 1787 and 1872 a large number of Palubniak appeared in the registers of the Greek
Catholic Church of Nowica.
The first who appears is PALUBNIAK PAWEL on January 24, 1787, a 60 year old widower
who will marry a widow aged 30 named MARIANNA ROMASZKO. They will have no
children.
Then in 1794 appears PALUBNIAK DAMIAN who will become the godfather of many
children as well as ANDRZEJ.
In fact DAMIAN and ANDRZEJ must be the children of PAWEL from a first marriage.
ANDRZEJ married TEKLA and between 1817 and 1827 had a large number of children and
among these were noted:
JULIEN PALUBNIAK (dies in 1856)
BAZYLI PALUBNIAK (1867)
ROZALIA PALUBNIAK (dies in 1864)
PIOTR PALUBNIAK (dies in 1872) and will marry JULIANA JASZECZAK, they will have
a daughter in 1860 MARIANNA PALUBNIAK and TECLA in 1854.
ANDRZEJ PALUBNIAK (1771-1831) married with TECLA MADZYNIAK (1778-1828).
They will also have a son named BASYLI PALUBNIAK (1811) who will marry ANNA
HALUSZCZAK. They will have Andrzej who marries Anastasia RUSYNAK.
They will have a son PIOTR(1908-1963 )who will marry KATAZYNA PENKALA who will
have a son WACLAV(1930-2007) (he has lived in Bielanka) who will have a son who is no
other than PALUBNIAK STANISLAS(1954) currently living in PREMYSL in Poland and
who will confirm that everyone is from Nowica. This one has a son who is called
PIOTR(1976) married to Iwona LICHOTA (1980) they have a son PATRYK and a girl
MALGORZATA (1980) married to Pawel KRYZINSKI.
90
Here is WACLAV, STANISLAS, PATRICK and his son PALUBNIAK of BIELANKA
MARGARETTE is getting married (see photo on the right)
JAN PALUBNIAK born in 1865, son of TEODOR PALUBNIAK
PAWEL PALUBNIAK born in 1872, son of STEFAN PALUBNIAK.
Our origins on the PALUBNIAK side
As far as we are concerned, it is not very easy, the known ancestor is TEODOR
PALUBNIAK married to EWA MICHNIAK who had a son Andrzej PALUBNIAK.
In my investigation I find him married to Theodosia Chowaniec.
He is likely to have a daughter MARY PALUBNIAK.
Then another girl named EFROSA PALUNBIAK.
Finally our grandfather WICTOR PALUBNIAK
WIKTOR PALUBNIAK born 23 November 1886, son of ANDRZEJ PALUBNIAK and
THEODOSIA CHOWANIEC who married TEODORA BRENIA, 18 year old daughter of
LUKA BRENIA and LUKIA PAWLIK of NOWICA.
A confirmation is obtained in the documents of Ellis Island because Wictor PALUBNIAK
will join his brother-in-law Nicolas Sekelsky in 1904 who is married to his sister Mary in
1901 so she is already in New York before, then it is the turn of Efrosa PALUBNIAK who
went in 1906 to join his brother Wictor.
This information comes from the civic file of the town hall of USKIE GORLIKIE but they are
written in Russian and are often many mistakes.
Another source is the Mormon file, followed by a field investigation by Stanislas Palubniak
and information given by MARIUSZ PALUBNIAK.
91
THE BRENIA
A little genealogy
In 1786 appeared Joannes Brenia son of Hyacinth Brenia and Agatha Machnicz
In 1835 was born Andreas Brenia son of Joannes Brenia and Makrina Kopcza
It was the father of Lukasz Brenia who will be the father of our grandmother Theodora Brenia
We can see that André Brenia married Marianna Bihuniak and Joannes Bihuniak married
Marianna Brenia the same day on 3 March 1861.
There, the story begins in 1798 and even a little before, because we find JOANES BRENIA
born in 1798 and who died in 1859.
He is the son of JACOBIS BRENIA and ANASTASIA MACHNYCZ.
Nevertheless there would have been a BRENIA HIACINTH too but the traces are difficult to
find.
92
From the long line of BRENIA will follow:
BRENIA ANDRZEJ who will have many children:
BRENIA ORENA 1886-1966
BRENIA PETRUS 1877 -1955
BRENIA LUKAS 1874 - 1929 who marries LUCJA PAWLIC
In 1914 the Austrian authorities arrested and imprisoned 7 people from Nowica in an
internment camp in Thalerhof near Graz in Austria. Among them was Lukasz Brenia.
Talerhof was an internment camp in the Austrian province of Styria (now under the Graz
airport), operated by the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Government from 1914 to 1917. The
camp mainly welcomed Russian-speaking people and families of Galicia, among whom were
at least 1915 * Lemkos (some sources say 5,000) from 151 villages.
Among the incarcerated Lemkos, 168 died and many others had their health destroyed. In
September 1914 almost all Russian-oriented Lemkos,the intelligentsia was arrested by the
Austrian authorities.
Among them were priests (Havryil Hnatyshak, Teofil * Kachmarchyk, Dymytrii * Khyliak,
Vasylii * Kuryllo, Mykolai * Malyniak, Vasylii * Mastsiukh, Tyt * Myshkovskii, Ioann
Polianskii, Olympii Polianskii and Roman Pryslopskii) (Yaroslav * Kachmarchyk, Teofil '*
Kuryllo) and cultural activists (Nikolai * Hromosiak, Dymytrii * Kachor, Simeon * Pysh,
Metodii * Trokhanovskii, Dymytrii * Vyslotskii.
All were suspected of possible collaboration with the Russian Tsarist army which had invaded
Galicia at the beginning of the First World War.
In May 1917, the Talerhof camp was closed by order of the Emperor Charles I (1916-1918).
The barracks were not dismantled until 1936, however. The 1767 corpses which were
exhumed were buried again in a common grave in the neighboring Austrian village of
Feldkirchen.
In 1924 and 1934 days of Talerhof commemoration took place in Lviv. Four volumes of a
commemorative book were published, Talergofskii al'manakh (1924-1932, reed 1964) and a
Talerhof (1928) museum in Lviv under the direction of Adriian * Kopystianskii, containing
the physical artifacts of the camp’s detainees and archival documents (diaries, letters,
photographs, memoirs).
Extract of : Talergofsky Almanah (http://www.zaistinu.ru/old/ukraine/church/almanah1-
x.shtml)
п Новица. Устье Русское. = Nowica
Сембратовичъ Стефанъ
"Василій
о.Городецкій, теперь парохъ о. Дынова
,, Надежда
93
Ячичакъ Стефанъ = Yachichak stefan (Jaczeczak)
Бреня Лука = >Brenia Lucasz
Карлякъ Стефанъ, ум. 18. 1. 1915 = Karlak stefan died 18 January 1915
Прислопъ, п. Устье Русское. =Prislop
Пелехачъ Іоаннъ = Pelehach Іoann
Зватиканичъ Константинъ = Konstantin Zvatikanich
Крайнякъ Марко, ум. 23. 1 1915 = Kraynyak Marco died l 23 January 1915
.
Famine was permanent because they received only one meal a day, which consisted of a clear
soup with some added rice and a piece of bread.
The soup was thin, watery and served in bowls, but they received no spoons. As time passed,
they cut spoons out of pieces of wood that they found.
People die every day both of hunger and unsanitary conditions. They caught colds from
sleeping in the mud or on the cold earth. They started bleeding from the nose, mouth, fingers
and toes. Typhus made its appearance. They tried to clean themselves, but could only wash
with the rags they wore dipped in water only as there was no soap. A dozen people died
every day from hunger and disease. Women and children were forced to watch the men being
hanged.
94
.
Many people went mad and others committed suicide.
The bodies of all those who died were thrown into a common grave and the ground was
leveled so that no evidence remained. No memorial or prayer services were allowed on their
graves. In fact, none of the relatives or friends were allowed to accompany their loved one’s
body to the grave.
We were lucky, because Lukasz Brenia, our great-grandfather, is a survivor of this camp. The
chances of history allowed us to be here today...
And he will have 5 girls including TEODORA BRENIA who will marry W.PALUBNIAK.
ANNA –MARIA –TEODORA – PAULINA - ROZA
BRENIA
95
A little genealogy, here is my own ascending tree :
The nationality of our family until the beginning of the 20th century
1 ° POLISH until 1772
2 ° AUSTRIAN from 1772 to 1914
3 ° RUSSIAN from 1914 to 1915
4 ° AUSTRO GERMAN from 1915 to 1918
5 ° LEMKO from 1918 to 1919
6 ° POLISH from 1919 to 1939
7 ° FRENCH and POLISH since the 60s
In 1772, during the first partition of Poland, Galicia became Austrian and remained so until
1914.
Well then, Theodora BRENIA was Austrian because born on 3 May 1903.
In 1914, it was conquered by the Russian imperial army during the first military operations of
the First World War.
Then Theodora becomes Russian again.
In 1915, it was taken over by the Austro-German army.
96
Now she is Austrian and German.
In 1918 the Republic of the Lemkos was proclaimed but would last only one year.
In 1919, it was conquered by the Poles who encountered Ukrainian nationalist formations.
So when she gets married, she's Polish
In 1921, by the Treaty of Rīgas, it was declared a Polish land and remained so until 1939.
Hey! Daddy got away with all this, being born in 1922, he is Polish.
In 1939, after the crushing of Poland, it was annexed by the Soviet Union under the German-
Soviet Pact.
It should also be remembered that in this remote period when we were Austro-Hungarian
there was no border between Galicia and Slovakia and that PALUBNIAK could also be
written PALUBNJAK and that Nikolaj Sekelski (brother-in-law of VICTOR PALUBNIAK
our grandfather) has its origins in Slovakia today.
There is still research to be done on this side.
Our grandmother had 4 sisters: Anna who stayed in Poland and who died in TRZCIANKA
and three other sisters MARIA, PAULINA and ROZA.
These last three were "evacuated" in Ukraine (diplomatic term used).
BRENIA MARIA, elder sister of our deceased grandmother died in RYCHCICE
Her offsprings would be about a hundred kilometers from DROHOBYCZ.
BRENIA PAULINA (Pawlina in Ukrainian) ,younger sister of Teodora our grandmother.
This is Pawlina Lukianivna BIHUNIAK (daughter of Lukacz Brenia).
She was born in Nowica on 7 April 1908 and died in Rychice at the age of 93 on 10 October
2001.
She leaves two daughters and a son.
- HELENA who had 4 children: Sergiej, Wolodia, Swiata and Nadia
- METRO (1932-2003) who had 2 children Bogdan and Petiat
- ANTOSIA (13/11/1939) 3 children Wolodia, Helena and Stepan, this same Stepan had 3
children, Igor Witalij and Wiroczka (deceased)
Paulina’s daughters:
Helena Antosia
97
Helena Pawlina Antosia
BRENIA ROZA ,last younger sister of Téodora born in Nowica and died in Rychcice in
1950
Her husband Seman Bihuniak is said to have died in 1947 in Rychcice
Roza leaves 3 sons and 2 daughters
- Bihuniak Stefania born in Nowica in 1933
Stefan had many children including Michailo who died 22 years ago, Igor who lives in
Estonia, Halina, Lesia, Onpt and Stepan
- Bihuniak Maria born in Nowica who has 2 children, Halina and Ruslan
- Bihuniak Andrzej who lives in Rychcice
- Bihuniak Stepan died in 2009
- Bihuniak Ivan born in Kurhan near Lebedyn in northern Ukraine
Roza’s daughters:
Maria Bihuniak Stefania Bihuniak
THE AMERICAN GETAWAY OF OUR GRAND FATHER
WIKTOR PALUBNIAK leaves for America on 21 FEBRUARY 1904
On board the Chemnitz (it is the real one in this picture) he is 17 years old then.
98
He embarks from Bremen for Ellis Island.
Apparently, he went there to join his brother-in-law, Nicolaj Sekelsky in Newark 142 Hudson
Street.
Nicolaj Sekelsky married his sister, Mary Palubniak on 25 August 1901 in Manhattan, New
York.
His boat left Bremen on February 6, 1904 and arrived at Ellis Island on February 21, 1904
99
Of course these houses are not one hundred years old, but this is the actual street (it has
completely changed).
100
Here is the original manifesto at Ellis Island - line 21 - we're already on file ...
101
Wiktor Palubniak our grandfather who will join his brother-in-law Nicolas Sekelski who
himself married Mary Palubniak his sister.
If the proof of the same father is easy to establish, it is otherwise FOR maternal filiation.
For Mary would be the daughter of Andrzej Palubniak, our great-grandfather and Justina
Chovanec.
Our great-grandfather would have had three women so far.
Nicolaj and Mary will have two daughters Pauline (1914) and Betty Sekelski
This girl Pauline will marry Frank Stolarczuk as Betty becomes Russel, which is much harder
to find
They will have a daughter Pamela Stolarczuk who will marry Paul Vitkus
Pamela and Paul Vitkus will have a son, Brandon Vitkus
In this kind of voyage, we can see that PALUBNIAK EFROSA will travel with people of
Nowica: MICHNIAK TEKLA, MACHNICZ
Arrived on December 29, 1906 in New York departing from Bremen with the boat CASSEL
The CASSEL
102
On this manifesto it will be noted that PALUBNIAK EFROSA will join her brother WIKTOR
PALUBNIAK
103
BACK TO POLAND
WICTOR PALUBNIAK will return to Poland like many of his compatriots.
In the meantime, he was a soldier in the Austrian army with a uniform that could look like
this:
Thanks to Mr. Maksimowitch for the photo.
He will marry his first wife Marie PALUBNIAK and will have three children
ANDRZEJ will marry MARIA MICHNIAK on November 26, 1932. They will have a son
DYMITR who was born on September 27, 1932 and a daughter MELANIA.
Andrzej will remarry with ANNA KRIL in 1945. They live in RYKHTYCHI near
DROHOBYCZ in Ukraine.
ANDRZEJ PALUBNIAK (1908 – 1948) AND MARIA MICHNIAK
104
MELANIA PALUBNIAK (1937-2017) and ANDRII BICHKO (1931-1997)
MARIA BICHKO VITUSHYNSKA YVAN VITUSHINSKI (1955-1982)
ALINA VITUSHINSKA IVANNA VITUSHINSKA
STOPIA PAUBNIAK was born in Nowica and died in 1994, this one will have a daughter
ALICJA who would be a pediatrician and who has a daughter Wiera ...
METRO PALUBNIAK or Dimitri born in Nowica, he will have 3 sons ANDRZEJ,
SERIOZA AND WALERY. They would be living in Ukraine.
SEMAN or Szymon (Simon) born on 29-07-1911 who lived in a neighboring village named
RYCHWALD at the time and who took its Polish name today from OWCZARY. He was part
of the trip to Ukraine in 1946 where one finds descendants.
Namely, HALINA, LENA, MARUSSIA, LUDA
His children live in different parts of Ukraine
LUKASZ born on 11-04-1913 and baptized on 20-04-1913, died on February 21, 1937 from
tuberculosis in Huta Wysowska, however, he will have a son named WLADISLAW who was
born on 2 February 1935 who still lives with his family in WYSOVA, a small village close to
the Slovakian border.
105
LUKASZ PALUBNIAK will marry in WYSOVA on 28 February 1935 a first time with
PAULINA OKARMA this will be the mother of WLADISLAW.
Anna Sycz - Paulina Palubniak born Okarma - Wladislaw Palubniak
After the death of Lukasz Palubniak, Okarma Palubniak, mother of Wladislaw will marry
Andrezej Sycz and will have a daughter, Anna
Wladyslaw Palubniak 1970 Juin 2011
THE FOLLOWING GENERATIONS IN POLAND
Wladislaw Palubniak will have three children:
Palubniak Mariusz, here with Kacper and Kinga.
106
Conversation on SKYPE in July 2011
Who has three children:
DAWID PALUBNIAK : 20 years old
KINGA PALUBNIAK :17 years old
KACPER PALUBNIAK :14 years old
107
The whole family of Palubniak Mariusz.
Mariusz still lives in Wysova, Poland.
Palubniak Elzbieta Rubis, 51 years old
108
Who has two children HENRYK ,25 years old and RENATA,23years old.
HENRYK RENATA
THANKS TO FACEBOOK for this 21st century advance.
Palubniak Tomasz 37 year old
Who has two children : JULITA ET
JUSTYNA
109
World Historical Reminder
In Germany it is William II (1888-1918)
In France, it is the Clémenceau ministries
In Britain it is Edward VII
In Belgium it is Albert I
In China it is Sut-Yat-Sen and the Chinese Republic
WIKTOR PALUBNIAK built two houses in 1918, one of which was to be used as a store
selling spirits.
Pascal Palubniak and Mariusz Palubniak outside the house of our grandfather Victor Palubniak
Photo by Stanislas Palubniak
110
AFTER THE DEATH OF MARY, HIS FIRST WIFE:
Marriage of Victor PALUBNIAK and Theodora BRENIA on September 28, 1921
Wiktor Palubniak was the leader of Nowica, maybe the mayor (this would be the equivalent
today)
We can also note for the village of Nowica and its church that donations were made by:
Petro Palubniak 10 dollars
Lukasz Brenia 5 dollars
Tedora Bihuniak 5 dollars
Iwan Palubniak 5 dollars
House of Mélanie Zuraw in Nowica where Jean Palubniak stayed before 1939 .
Birth of Jean Palubniak on 6 July 1922 in Nowica, Galicia, Poland
Birth of Marie Palubniak in Nowica, Galicia
Birth of Milka Palubniak in Nowica, Galicia
111
Here is the map of Poland in 1922
For the time being, Wictor Palubniak and Teodora Brenia sell spirits in Nowica and that is in
the directory of 1929.
112
WIKTOR PALUBNIAK IS ALSO A LOCAL CHARACTER, HE IS IN THE TOWN
COUNCIL OF NOWICA.
It is also with this directory that we learn that:
The Zuraw are cart makers
The Bieguniak are shoemakers
The Potocki are millers and brush makers
And that the landowner is called Goldman Dawid
DURING THIS TIME JEAN PALUBNIAK IS STUDYING.
FIRST IN PRIMARY SCHOOL WITH A NICE HAT
113
THEN TO SECONDARY SCHOOL
114
Life in Poland
Manufacture of wooden spoons - The 2 Stefans (Zuraw and Zimowski) and Mary Zuraw
115
THE DEPARTURE FROM POLAND FOR UKRAINE
A. DEATH OF WICTOR
While WIKTOR PALUBNIAK had gone to LEBEDYN in the SOUMY Oblast in UKRAINE
he died in 1946 of a heart attack. He is with his last son of the first bed, Andrzej.
He was in a sort of Kolkhoze but we do not know any more about it.
DEATH OF LUKASZ PALUBNIAK, SON OF WIKTOR PALUBNIAK, CHILD FROM A
FIRST BED IN 1944.
In the region of Nowica near Gorlice it was a somewhat cloudy period in 1946. This
document is a public notice for the district of Gorlice which recalls the agreement of 9
September 1944 on the exchange of population between Poland and Russia.
These include the Ukrainians and the "Rusini", in other words the Lemkos, who must be
deported according to a certain schedule and according to their villages.
All resistants will be deported by "administrative route".
116
Wictor Palubniak must have been part of the trip and for this reason he must have found
himself in the Ukraine mines near Lebedyn .
B. THE DESCENDANTS OF ANDRZEJ PALUBNIAK
Andrzej Palubniak gives birth to Mélanie Palubniak who marries Bichko
They have three children
- Maria
- Volodimir
- Mihailo
C. Soviet deportation to Kazakhstan of Palubniak Dymitr, brother of Melania who will
have three children: Andrej, Serozia and Walery
The second wave of forced exile of Poles to Kazakhstan began in the thirties of the 20th
century. Following the delimitation of the eastern border of the Second Republic of Poland
(Rzeczpospolita), more than 600,000 Poles or citizens of Poland found themselves within the
borders of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. In 1926, the Soviet authorities established an
autonomous Polish district (as well as in Belarus), with the administrative center Marchlevsk
(Dołbysz). This district was maintained until 1934-1935, when the collectivization of the
Polish peasants began, calling them "enemies of the people" according to the nomenclature of
the NKVD, and later, "Catholic opponents".
In 1936, Stalin took the political decision to deport the "anti-revolutionary" Poles in Central
Asia, a repression that affected them very strongly in 1937-38, on the sidelines of the
preventive strategy against the Nazi attack on the Volga Germans , The Tatars, the Koreans
and the peoples of the Caucasus to prevent any collusion with the enemy. It included a total of
some 70,000 people in the Ukrainian Republic alone, of which 36,000 were sent to
Kazakhstan. The 35,000 Poles who were exiled to Uzbekistan came mainly from the region of
Perm and the Autonomous Republic of the Maris.
117
After several weeks of travel by train, they were deposited in an uninhabited and deserted
steppe where nothing had been planned for their reception. The degree of mortality among the
deportees, given the very difficult geographical and sanitary conditions was therefore
particularly high. While many Poles have survived, it is only thanks to the help of the
indigenous Kazakh people, according to the testimony of the survivors.
These political deportees are now subject to constant monitoring and control by the NKVD,
who are obliged to report regularly to the militia and are limited in their movements. With
their only status as specposelenia (special settlement) or politemigranty (political emigrants),
their fundamental rights are not recognized and they are subject to various prohibitions such
as contacting their families in Poland, communicating in Polish Or practicing the Catholic
religion, punishable by internment in the camp, some of which will be located in Kazakhstan
(in Karaganda, for example), placed directly under the supervision of the political police
A third wave of Polish displacements took place following the investment of the Polish
eastern border by the Soviet army on 17 September 1939 and the German-Soviet Pact. The
Soviet authorities then launched a series of very rapid and well-organized arrests. This time,
besides the specific operation against the Polish soldiers, the target is more particularly
constituted by members of the Polish intelligentsia, landowners, representatives of the
Church, officers of the Polish army, The wealthiest, but also the most influential, layers of
Polish society at the time. This wave of repression will last until January 1941. According to
O.A Gorjanova of the Russian Memorial Association, 108,000 people will be arrested in East
Ukraine and Belarus as "counter-revolutionaries". Transfers of population took place in
February, April and June 1940, the last transport in June 1941. According to another study,
between 1940 and 1941, a total of 260,000 Polish citizens were reportedly deported to the
east, where they would have enjoyed the special status of "evacuees", which distinguished
them from other populations collectively stigmatized by Stalin.
The results of the survey conducted by Mémorial in 1993-94 diverge on the figures. Thus,
180,000 Poles or Polish nationals would have been affected by the repressions before
September 17, 1939 and between 510,000 and 540,000 after that date. Among them, some
190,000 Poles from the eastern regions of Poland and Ukraine were reportedly sent to Central
Asia, with some of them having a more enviable status than that reserved for "counter-
revolutionaries" or "traitors to the fatherland".
The first returns to Poland: the post-war years
On January 23, 1942, the signing of the treaty between the USSR and the Polish government
in exile, called the Sikorski Treaty, would change the fate of thousands of Poles in
Kazakhstan. This bilateral treaty would partly resolve the issue of the return of the "evacuees"
of the third wave. A part of the Polish civilian population in Kazakhstan was able to return to
Europe, mainly in England, via the Persian Corridor, backed by the army of General
Władysław Anders, who formed the Polish Second Corps based in Yangiyul, Uzbekistan, and
worked for the return of Polish evacuees to their homeland. Other groups returned after the
signing of the Polish-Soviet agreement of 6 July 1945 and then in accordance with the joint
declaration of 18 November 1956.
However, all Polish citizens who had been interned in the 1930s remained in Kazakhstan and
who, claiming Soviet citizenship, were not covered by the force of the aforementioned
bilateral conventions. In the winter of 1943, ex-deported or evacuated Poles, some of whom
had even freely regrouped in Kazakhstan, were able to find employment there, especially in
the kolkhozes, because they had a Soviet passport, unlike many Soviet citizens, including
collective farmers.
118
However, the situation of Poles remaining in Kazakhstan did not really develop until 1956,
after Stalin's death and above all the abolition of the status of specposelinia at the 20th
Congress of the CPSU. The Soviet authorities then removed the extraordinary control and
allowed the distribution of identity cards, which is not without a certain number of problems
of recognition of identity. However, as early as 1955, the Polish priests who had been freed
from the camps had settled in Kazakhstan and were clandestinely serving in place of the
women who had replaced them in their absence. In 1959 their civil rights were reinstated,
some of them decided to return to Ukraine, others stayed in Kazakhstan, where they
concentrated in cities such as Kokchetav, Tselinograd (future Astana) and Karaganda where
the Polish language gained the status of Language of instruction at the local university.
119
THE DEPARTURE FROM POLAND FOR FRANCE
But it is time to leave the country, the war threatens and TEODORA is already in France to
prepare the ground.
JEAN PALUBNIAK left Poland around 1930 with a group of eleven children for whom he
was responsible during the train journey via Austria.
Here are the vintage photos for school and passport.
His two sisters MARIE and MILKA are already in France.
120
Chapter VI - The end of the twentieth century is calmer
In France
From Nowica to Dammarie-les-Lys
Dammarie-les-Lys, because it seems to be a Polish immigration city.
First in 1830 and then in 1848, then between the two wars, that is us and finally after the war.
This town is a working town where there are steel factories like Delattre and Frouard or
Everitube Ideal Standard.
Beautiful youth for these young exiled Lemkos
Palubniak jean (3rd from left )- beautiful team in antique swimsuits
In 1942 during the war, Willi Lezoch, a Pole dressed up by the German army to occupy
Dammarie-les-lys.
121
What a charmer !
So classy !! Unequivocal
Looks like the sisters. And here is mom!
And of course I did not put all the pictures ...
122
Business in Dammarie les lys
Here is the first shop of Teodora Palubniak arriving ain Dammarie-les-lys
In addition it was necessary to work at Delattre and Frouard At the American camp
Rooms for rent - later
123
Teodora Palubniak with her latest fiancé behind the house - he was young once too and had a
beautiful Polish military suit. He was a little fiery, he told me that when he was a prisoner of
the Germans in Dammarie-les-lys , he was unloading a coal truck, and as the Germans asked
him to go faster, he threw shovels of coal at them right on their heads, which earned him a
few days' imprisonment. That's what grandmother probably liked about him.
The shop of Téodora Palubniak kept by John.
124
IN 1949 WEDDING OF JEAN PALUBNIAK AND SUZANNE SITNIK.
Group photo with everyone
Official Photo Suzanne was 16 years old once too
125
Dad drank MOSS PILS at the bar with Jean, let’s say the last fiance of Theodora
There has even been times when Granny agreed to a photo with Mom
PALUBNIAK JEAN (3 generations) SUZANNE PALUBNIAK SITNIK
126
MARIE PALUBNIAK VINCENT MILKA PALUBNIAK PREDKO
Marie gets married to Mr Vincent Milka marries Mr Predko
As time goes ................
127
The second generation
THE PALUBNIAK
First we were small like everyone
We even had a dog (Michka) There were still trees in the street
Weren’t we cute then, as little rascals ?
128
And then we grew up, and the world changed, too....
It was necessary to bite into life in music
And finally it did not turn out too badly but it was necessary to have a haircut, resume one’s
studies and find a job.
Pascal (12-05-53). Here it is me with my wife Colette Dehandschoewercker in Prague.
I told you 425 years ago that it would happen.
129
Michel Palubniak born 06-08-1950 did not have a military career despite a service in
Germany
Michel -- there too
Nicole Palubniak had no career in show business…
Yes, this is the same one
… despite promising beginnings, but a career at the courthouse is nearly the same.
SINCLAIR VOURIOT (Mayor of St Thibault des Vignes and Departmental Councilor of
Seine and Marne)
130
The VINCENT : The children of Mary Palubniak
ANNICK VINCENT AND HER HUSBAND ANDRE MIGOT
CHRISTINE VINCENT AND HER HUSBAND
Well , OLIVIER AND HIS WIFE ARE MISSING
The PREDKO : The child of Milka Palubniak
JEAN MICHEL PREDKO AND HIS WIFE
131
FINALLY THE FOLLOWING GENERATIONS the second generation born in France
The PALUBNIAK - VOURIOT
Charlotte Karen Johanna
The PALUBNIAK - PALUBNIAK
Alexandre (often globe-trotting and designer at the same time)
AND THE FOLLOWING and this is the third generation
Maya, Timoté, Noa and many more to come.
ANTOINE 15 November 2010, son of JOHANNA VOURIOT
132
It’s getting crowdy...
Happy New Year 2006
So much for the Palubniak in France, that’s a lot of people... Even in 2008 ... how time flies!
133
Family in Poland from Nowica to Stradun
Operation Vistula
Operation Vistula (in Polish: Akcja Wisła) was the code name given to the deportation in
1947 of Ukrainians, Boykos and Lemkos who lived in south-eastern Poland. It was executed
by the Polish Army. More than 140,000 people, mainly of the Ukrainian ethnic group, who
resided in these territories, were often forcibly relocated to the Recovered Territories in the
north and west of the country. The operation took its name from the Vistula, the great river in
Poland.
The official aim of the operation was to put an end to the exactions of the Ukrainian
insurrectionary army which, it was claimed, terrorized the Poles of these territories since
1944.
The direct pretext was the assassination on 28 March 1947 of the Polish general Karol
Świerczewski. He was killed in an ambush in Jabłonki, near Baligród in the Beskid
Mountains, as he was heading for a military post in Cisna. The ambush was attributed to the
Chrin of the IAU and to the sotnias of Stach. However, nothing has ever been proved, and
some historians assume that the assassination was organized by the Soviet NKVD.
Only about a dozen hours after the incident, the Polish communist authorities took the official
decision to deport all Ukrainians and Lemkos living in south-eastern Poland. It is known,
however, that Operation Vistula had been planned many months in advance in order to
disperse the remaining Ukrainian minority in Poland.
The Ministry of Recovered Territories gave this order: "The first goal was the resettlement of
the" W" settlers, it was their assimilation into a new Polish environment. Every effort should
be made to achieve this. Do not use the term "Ukrainians" to refer to settlers. In cases where
elements of the intelligentsia would arrive in the territories recovered, they should by all
means be installed separately and at a safe distance from the communities of settlers "W".
The operation was carried out by the Wisła Operational Group, which consisted of about
20,000 men under the command of General Stefan Mossor and which consisted of soldiers of
the Polish Army and the KBW (Internal Security Corps), as well as civil servants The Milicja
Obywatelska and the Polish Ministry of Internal Security. The operation began at 4 am on 28
April 1947. There were 140,000-150,000 exiles, the Ukrainians and the Lemkos still
remaining after the expulsions to the USSR from 1944-1946 and lived in Polesia as well as in
the territories of Roztocze, Pogórze Przemyskie, Bieszczady, Beskid Niski, Beskid Sądecki
and Ruś Szlachtowska.
The members of the intelligentsia, including clergy (both Uniate and Orthodox), were sent
from gathering points to the Jaworzno concentration camp called the Central Labor Camp. In
the latter camp, nearly 4,000 people were detained, including 800 women and a few dozen
children. The prisoners, 200 of whom died in the camp, were brutally interrogated and beaten,
while none of the active members of the Ukrainian Nationalist Resistance or the Ukrainian
Insurrectionary Army the camp. For the latter, parodies of lawsuits were made in the courts
specially created for Operation Vistula or before regular military tribunals; More than 500
defendants were sentenced to death and executed.
The rest were resettled in Warmia and Mazuria in the north, or in the Territories recovered in
the west. The last resettlement took place again in 1952, in Polesia.
Operation Vistula officially ended with a grand ceremony at the Polish-Czechoslovak border,
with decorations being given to the Polish soldiers who were deemed the most deserving.
134
A consequence of Operation Vistula was the almost total depopulation of the regions of
Pogórze Przemyskie, Bieszczady and Beskid Niski. The displacement of the population put
the IAU in a difficult position: deprived of human and other resources, the inferior Ukrainian
partisans were incapable of holding up against the Polish communist army. The IAU
continued its struggle for several years. After the last resettlement, IAU's activities in Polish
territory ended, while some Ukrainian insurgents fled to Western Europe.
Operation Vistula ended on July 31, 1947.
Repatriation and resettlement after the Second World War in the new Polish territories
of the West and North
Population displacements took place in three stages.
The first date of the end of the Second World War when Poland and the Soviet Ukraine
engaged in demographic exchanges - the Poles who lived to the east of the new Polish-Soviet
border were expelled to Poland (about 2,100,000 people ) While the Ukrainians who resided
to the west of this border were expelled to the Soviet Ukraine. This last evacuation took place
from September 1944 to April 1944 (about 450,000 people). Some of the Ukrainian-Lemkos
(about 200,000 people) voluntarily left Southeast Poland (between 1944 and 1945). Bilateral
agreements were signed between Poland and the USSR on September 9, 1944 and on August
16, 1945, after which about 400,000 Ukrainians were deported to Ukraine while about
300,000 managed to stay in their native regions, within the borders of Poland. They lived in
the former rusyn territories like the regions of Lemkowszczyzna and Chełmskie and in
Podlasie.
The second stage took place in 1947 on the occasion of Operation Vistula in Poland. The
Ukrainian population, which had always lived in south-eastern Poland, was forcibly relocated
to Western and Northern Poland. Resettlement in western Poland took place between 28 April
1947 and 31 July 1947. 130,000 to 140,000 people lived in districts such as Rzeszowskie,
Lubelskie and Małopolskie. This time no one was sent to Ukraine.
A third deportation of Ukrainians and Poles took place in 1951, when Poland and the Soviet
Union settled their frontier problem in the Upper Valley of the San and in the region of Belz.
In the south of Poland Przemyśl received territory to the east of the San and the Soviet
Ukraine received Belz, which was in Poland, with a territory to the west of that city. The
people were exchanged.
135
Stradun
Stradun. In 1964 there were Grzegorz Zuraw, Jaroslaw Zuraw, Stefan Zimowki, Michel
Palubniak, Maria Zimorska, Maria Zuraw, Sofie Zuraw, Teodora Brenia, Pascal Palubniak
and Vassil
Fieldwork Maria Zimowska
Teodora – Grzegorz – Maria Zimowska
136
It was at this time in 1947 that our cousins ZURAW and ZIMOWSKI were moved to
STRADUN in the region of POZNAN (GRZEGORZ ZURAW having married ANNA
BRENIA, the sister of our grandmother TEODORA BRENIA)
GRZEGORZ ZURAW LUCJA PAWLIK BRENIA
GRZEGORZ ANTONINA PAULINE ET TEODORA BRENIA PAULINE BRENIA
STEFAN ZURAW MARIE ZURAW STEFAN ZIMOWSKI ZURAW S
137
Yes, that’s her.
ANTONINA ZURAW ADAMCZYK
Well, as long as we are young and we have a Citroen car and wood to work…
The Stradun generation in Poland.
They were young once too.
On the bank of the lake What a house front!
138
STRADUN Everyone is out in town
STRADUN IN THE YEARS 1963 OR 1964
And everyone grew up too.
IRENA ZURAW IRENE ZIMOWSKI (France) DOROTHE
ETC….
YULEK ZURAW ALINE ZURAW
The house has changed too.
What about the people once standing there?
139
Emigration to America
At this point it's time to talk about our American cousins.
It is especially on the side of the BRENIA that this is happening. These are the children of
ANDRZEJ BRENIA (1835-1910) married to MARIANNA BIHUNIAK who are going to
leave.
There is first ORENA BRENIA (LENA) (1888-1966) who leaves for America in 1907.
Line 21 it will be noted that she leaves with ROMANIK EWA of NOWICA
140
She will marry KARL FISHUM and will have 6 children PAULINE, SADIE, PETER,
DOROTHY, HELEN and MARY
USA ->1907
25/05/1888 - 1966
BRENIA ORENA (LENA)
KARP FISHUM
1888
BRENIA PAULINE 1912 VINCI DONALD
VINCI FRANCIS VINCI DENNIS
VINCI MARK
1937 CROTEAU GARY CROTEAU GLEN
JEANETTE BUROWS CONROY NORA CROTEAU DANIELLE
CROTEAU ROCHARD CROTEAU JACQUELINE
BRENIA SADIE -19-11-1915 28-08-1931 - 16/08/1988 CROTEAU CHRISTOPHER
BUROWS JESS CROTEAU LAURA GAYDA JONATHAN
24/11/1914 - 11/11/1963 GAYDA MARK
FISHUM PETER
BREAULT BERTRAND BREAULT CHRISTOPHER 1979
FISHUM DOROTHY
BREAULT BERTRAND 1924-1967 BREAULT BARBARA ECHURRIA CHRISTOPHER
ECHURRIA DULIDIO ECHURRIA JESSIE
FISHUM HELEN 1926 CULIK JOHN CULIK MARIE DANIELLO
CULIK CHARLES CULIK MARSH
BRENIA MARY 1918
141
Then PETRUS BRENIA (1877-1955), the brother of LUKASZ BRENIA, uncle of Teodora
who is the mother of PALUBNIAK JEAN, our own father.
25/12/1877-26-05-1955
BRENIA PETRUS
ANNA TURATURA
21-06-1888/7-12-1952
CHILDREN OF PETRUS BRENIA
BRENIA RICHARD 1979
1919-2001
BRENIA CAROLYN 1974
BRENIA WILLIAM BRENIA BRUCE
THOMAS BRETT
HELEN SCHWARCENBERG JEANNE ST GERMAINE BRENIA JACQUELINE 1988
SCANION STEVEN 1963 ROBINSON DAVID 1977
BRENIA MARYANNE-1936 THOMAS G, ROBINSON 1942
BRENIA ANDREW 1906-1960 SCANION JOHN 1930-1992 SCANION SUZAN 1960
MARY NOVINSKY 1915-1994 PEDIN ALEXANDER HOWIE
JOSEPHINE ANCHURUK SCANION HELEN 1957
ALEXANDER PEDIN - 1976
BRENIA WALTER
BRENIA MARY
BRENIA ROSE
BRENIA STEVE
BRENIA JOHNATHAN 1988
BRENIA STEVEN
SIRICO LESLI
BRENIA TAYLER - 1991
BRENIA JOHN
FETZKO DOROTHY BRENIA MELANIE
SOKOLSKI RAY DAVID
BRENIASARAH -1976
BRENIA PETER
BRENIA KATHERINE +1980
GOMEAU LORAINE
BRENIA ELIZABETH -1982
15/06/1915 - 30/03/1946
DUBUC MICHELLE 1967
BRENIA ESTELLE DUBUC ARTHUR 1935 PETERSON JAMES 1964
DUBUC ARTHUR MAILLE PATRICIA 1942
DUBUC LISA
AUTERI ANDREW
DUBUC RONALD 1938
URSULLA VOSS 1936 DUBUC DONA 1961
RIELLY CAROL 1943 DUBUC CARON 1970
JEAN KELLY 1941 DUBUC MARIANA
142
He will marry ANNA TURATURA and will have many children: WILLIAM, ANDREY,
WALTER, MARY, ROSE, STEVE, JOHN, ESTELLE .
Brenia Petrus Turatura Anna
Brenia William
Bruce Brenia , Attorney
Son of WILLIAM BRENIA who is the son of PETRUS BRENIA ,Uncle of Teodora
Palubniak
JACQUELINE BRENIA and her brother
RICHARD
The daughter and son of Bruce and Jeanne Brenia of Naugatuck.
143
WALTER BRENIA WORLD WAR II
Let us not forget PAUL STEVE BRENIA of LOS ANGELES in
CALIFORNIA who has made a lot of genealogic research.
He is a very distant cousin because he separated from our branch in 1794.
IN FACT ! THERE ARE MORE THAN 2,000 BRENIA IN THE WORLD.
Another daughter EFROZA BRENIA will marry KARLAK SIMON.
It is nonetheless true that there are many PALUBNIAK in America, in all fields for example
JERRY PALUBNIAK in the art of photography.
In fact it is necessary to refer to my website
http://palubniakwold.free.fr
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/palubniak
For fun………….
Finally, here is NICOLE PALUBNIAK of NEW JERSEY.
144
And BRITTANY PALUBNIAK of NEW JERSEY.
Thank you FACEBOOK !!!!!!!
Here are the AMERICAN PALUBNIAK. They are all in New Jersey
name birth date death place of residence
PALUBNIAK, MARIA
12 Aug 1884
Oct 1967 83 12180 (Troy, Rensselaer,
NY) (none specified) New York
PALUBNIAK, PETER
22 Mar 1888
Jun 1972 84 07307 (Jersey City, Hudson,
NJ) (none specified) New Jersey
PALUBNIAK, WALTER
27 Jun 1898
21 May 1995
96 07011 (Clifton, Passaic, NJ) (none specified) New Jersey
PALUBNIAK, LESTER
25 Jan 1900
Apr 1971 71 07026 (Garfield, Bergen, NJ) (none specified) New Jersey
PALUBNIAK, ANNA
24 May 1903
Sep 1981 78 07011 (Clifton, Passaic, NJ) 07011 (Clifton, Passaic,
NJ) New Jersey
PALUBNIAK, MICHAEL
21 Jul 1904
21 Jul 2001 (V)
97 18503 (Scranton, Lackawanna, PA)
(none specified) Pennsylvania
PALUBNIAK, MARY A
20 Sep 1906
30 Nov 1995
89 12052 (Cropseyville,
Rensselaer, NY) (none specified) New York
PALUBNIAK, ANN 25 Aug 1907
Apr 1968 60 18447 (Olyphant, Lackawanna, PA)
(none specified) Pennsylvania
PALUBNIAK, TILLIE
24 Sep 1907
28 Jan 2001 (V)
93 18433 (Jermyn,
Lackawanna, PA) (none specified) Pennsylvania
PALUBNIAK, STEVE
03 Jan 1908
08 Oct 1987 (V)
79 12180 (Troy, Rensselaer,
NY) (none specified) New York
PALUBNIAK, ANNA
31 Oct 1910
27 Dec 1997 (V)
87 07026 (Garfield, Bergen, NJ) (none specified) New Jersey
PALUBNIAK, JERRY
20 Jun 1912
13 Dec 1998 (V)
86 07047 (North Bergen,
Hudson, NJ) (none specified) New Jersey
PALUBNIAK, ANNA
02 Jun 1913
27 Jun 2001 (V)
88 07047 (North Bergen,
Hudson, NJ) 07047 (North Bergen,
Hudson, NJ) New Jersey
PALUBNIAK, SAMUEL
26 Jul 1913
16 Apr 2005 (V)
91 48316 (Utica, Macomb, MI) (none specified) New York
PALUBNIAK, WALTER
21 Mar 1914
22 Aug 2003 (V)
89 12180 (Troy, Rensselaer,
NY) (none specified) New York
PALUBNIAK, JOHN 15 Sep 1915
Aug 1983 67 07922 (Berkeley Heights,
Union, NJ) 07922 (Berkeley Heights,
Union, NJ) Connecticut
PALUBNIAK, SAMUEL
15 Sep 1917
25 Feb 1992
74 10952 (Monsey, Rockland,
NY) (none specified) New York
PALUBNIAK, PETER
01 Sep 1919
14 Apr 2008 (V)
88 12817 (Chestertown,
Warren, NY) (none specified) New Jersey
PALUBNIAK, BERNICE
15 Jun 1920
May 1987 66 07922 (Berkeley Heights,
Union, NJ) (none specified) New Jersey
PALUBNIAK, METRO
31 Mar 1922
15 Oct 1999 (P)
77 (72) (none specified) New Jersey
145
The distant cousins of America
Gregori Palubniak was born on 15 December 1869 (Gregorian calendar) on 3 December 1869
(Julian calendar) in the files of Przemisl from Stephan Palubniak and Anastasia Jaczecsak.
Anna Czap, Gregori Palubniak
Anna Czap or Cap or Sap was born in Pryslop.
Question: Would Gregori Palubniak born in Nowica on December 15, 1869 be the same as
Gregory Palubniak emigrated in 1888 and declared born in 1870?
Our common ancestor would be Palubniak Andrzej.
146
The descendants of Palubniak Hryc (Gregori)
Marriage of Jerry Palubniak in 1938 in America as shown in this marriage certificate. , his
witness is Steve Brenia, his cousin (right).
Meeting in August 2012 of Jerry Palubniak's son in Paris
Jerry Palubniak and Pascal Palubniak
147
Meeting in New York of Dan Palubniak, Pascal Palubniak and Jerry Palubniak
in April 2016.
148
VII. Conclusion
So, if we sum up everything, it's hard to know where we really come from since prehistoric
times. We must be a mixture of Thracians, Venedes, Ruthenians, Lemkos, Austro-Hungarians
and others. Nevertheless, there is a certainty that most of the time, our origins come from
today's Poland, although we should not neglect the fact that some of our ancestors were on the
Slovak territory, which has taken on different names over the years.
The dispute between Poland and Ukraine can not make us forget that Nowica has been in
Poland for a very long time and that the names of the regions have changed and not the
inhabitants who remained stable until the beginning of the 20th century.
The people of the small Carpathians, certainly very isolated in these low mountains, adopted a
language close to Ruthenian, Slovak, Polish and Ukrainian.
It is true that today many Americans, of Ruthenian origin claim their Ukrainian origins but it
depends on the region of origin, east or west.
I hope that this booklet will have brought you, if not a bit of culture, at least some idea of our
past and our origins. In any case, it gives something to remember like a photo album and
maybe one day a young person will pass on the torch to complete it and then I will be very
very old.
Pascal Palubniak
149
Table of contents
PREAMBLE .......................................................................................................................................................... 5
CHAPTER I - DEEP ORIGINS THROUGH TIME (PREHISTORY) ........................................................... 7
THE POLGARIANS .......................................................................................................................................... 8 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ......................................................................................................................................... 9 THE WALLACHIANS ............................................................................................................................................ 9 THE VENEDES: .................................................................................................................................................. 10 LANGUAGES ...................................................................................................................................................... 12 THE ORIGINS OF THE WORD SLAV...................................................................................................................... 12 ORIGIN AND EXPANSION OF THE SLAVS (5TH-10TH CENTURIES) ....................................................................... 14 THE PROBLEM OF KOSOVO CONCERNING THE SLAVIC ORIGINS ......................................................................... 15
CHAPTER II - FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE GREAT SHARING IN CENTRAL EUROPE (920
- 1772) ................................................................................................................................................................... 17
THE GRAND DUCHY OF GALICIA WHEN IT WAS NOT YET POLISH ...................................................................... 17 THE ATTACHMENT TO THE KINGDOM OF POLAND (1323-1386) ......................................................................... 20 SHORT HISTORY OF POLAND – (965 – 1815) ................................................................................................... 21
FEUDAL POLAND ..................................................................................................................................... 22 THE JAGELLON ......................................................................................................................................... 24 RUM BABA .................................................................................................................................................. 29 STANISLAS PONIATOWSKI ....................................................................................................................... 30 "Drunk like a Pole" ..................................................................................................................................... 32
CHAPTER III - THE ETHNIC ERA (1772 - 1900) ......................................................................................... 34
POLAND'S CONGRESS ........................................................................................................................................ 35 THE RUTHENIANS ............................................................................................................................................. 39 THE LEMKOS ..................................................................................................................................................... 43 THE REPUBLIC OF LEMKOS ............................................................................................................................... 48 THE POLISH-UKRAINIAN WAR .......................................................................................................................... 50 MASSACRES OR WHY WE ARE NOT VERY GOOD WITH UKRAINIANS ................................................................... 53 THE GREEK-CATHOLIC AND ORTHODOX RELIGION........................................................................................... 67
CHAPTER IV - A DIFFICULT 20TH CENTURY ......................................................................................... 72
THE POLISH LEGIONS, IN LINE AS EARLY AS 1914, ALSO HAD SQUADRONS OF CAVALRY. ................................. 72 THE POLISH-UKRAINIAN WAR OF 1918-1919 ................................................................................................... 73 THE CONSTITUTION .......................................................................................................................................... 76 THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE COLONELS ............................................................................................................. 76 GALICIA IN THE 20 TH CENTURY ....................................................................................................................... 82
A history of trauma ...................................................................................................................................... 82 Galicia, land of emigration and cradle of celebrities .................................................................................. 83 The situation of the Lemkos in Poland after 1956 ....................................................................................... 86
SECOND PART .................................................................................................................................................. 87
CHAPTER V - FAMILY APPARITIONS ....................................................................................................... 87
THE PARISH REGISTERS ..................................................................................................................................... 87 THE PALUBNIAK ........................................................................................................................................... 88 THE BRENIA .................................................................................................................................................. 91 THE AMERICAN ESCAPADE OF THE GRAND FATHER ......................................................................... 97 BACK TO POLAND ...................................................................................................................................... 103 THE FOLLOWING GENERATIONS IN POLAND ..................................................................................... 105 THE DEPARTURE OF POLAND FOR UKRAINE ...................................................................................... 115 THE DEPARTURE OF POLAND FOR FRANCE ........................................................................................ 119
CHAPTER VI - THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY IS CALMER ......................................... 120
IN FRANCE ...................................................................................................................................................... 120 From Nowica to Dammarie-les-Lys .......................................................................................................... 120 The second generation ............................................................................................................................... 127
FAMILY IN POLAND FROM NOWICA TO STRADUN ........................................................................................... 133 Operation Vistula ...................................................................................................................................... 133 Repatriation and resettlement after the Second World War in the new Polish territories of the West and
North .......................................................................................................................................................... 134 EMIGRATION TO AMERICA .............................................................................................................................. 139
VII. THE CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................ 148
150
151
FAMILY HISTORY OF PALUBNIAK AND BRENIA
PASCAL PALUBNIAK
Pascal Palubniak was born on May 12, 1953 in Melun in Seine and Marne, he studied in
Dammarie- les-lys and then in Melun. There he studies the sociology of the inhabitants under
the bridge of Melun and the habits of beverages of its inhabitants.
Then he left for Paris, then devoted himself to the joys of capital and began studying law and
succeeded brilliantly by obtaining a master's degree in business law. Then he will make a
brilliant career at the bank as a manager. It will come out after eight years to create companies
whose president it will be for 25 years.
A great traveler, he will go around the world and climb the highest volcanoes on the planet
and go to see the greatest monuments in the world.
A great sportsman, he will participate on several occasions at the Paris marathon and several
major regional races.
A great Epicurean, he specialized in the tasting of the great wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy,
which he made a fleeting collection.
With a desire to tell stories, he will embark on the historical and family writing of this book,
which will not be crowned with any price, but it will have pleased him and very fond of
remembering all these memories.
Noisy le Grand June 13, 2017