- summer (DST) CEST (UTC+2) Local time Wednesday 2:45 AM | Area 8.8 km² Mayor sołtys Jan Hołomek | |
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Wola Piotrowa [ˈvɔla pʲɔˈtrɔva] (Ukrainian: Воля Петрова, Volia Petrova) is a village in East Małopolska in the Bukowsko Upland mountains, Bukowsko rural commune, Latin parish in Bukowsko, Protestant parish in loco.
Contents
- Map of Wola Piotrowa Poland
- Forcible Deportation Ethnic Cleansing of Lemkos
- Twin cities
- Literature
- References
Map of Wola Piotrowa, Poland
Wola Piotrowa is about 17 miles from Sanok in southeast Poland. It is situated below the main watershed at the foot of the Słonne Mountain, and has an elevation of 340 metres. Situated in the Subcarpathian Voivodship (since 1999), previously in Krosno Voivodship (1975-1998) and Sanok district, (10 miles east of Sanok), located near the towns of Medzilaborce and Palota (in northeastern Slovakia).
Forcible Deportation (Ethnic Cleansing) of Lemkos
The history of Wola Piotrowa, which had been a mostly Lemko-Ukrainian village prior to 1946, is inextricably linked to long-standing Polish/Ukrainian ethnic disputes over the territories of Galicia and Volhynia. Soviet and Polish communist collaborators were responsible for population exchanges that occurred between 1944 and 1947. Those population exchanges, intended to achieve an ethnically cleansed post-war order in the expanded Soviet Union and in Poland, included the forcible expatriation of ethnic Ukrainians from Wola Piotrowa and other villages in Galicia. (This was part of a larger population exchange arrangement with the Soviet Union between 1945 and 1946. That agreement also involved deporting ethnic Poles from Western Ukraine, and deporting Ukrainians and Rusyns from the Lemko Region in Southeast Poland to deprive support to UPA.) After the final expulsion of ethnic Ukrainians in Wola Piotrowa in 1946 (the expulsion and burning of this village pre-dated Operation Vistula), Polish communists burned down this village (and many others) likely for the purpose of deterring the expelled Lemkos from resettling in the village. According to "Church in Ruins" by Oleh Wolodymyr Iwanusiw, Wola Piotrowa established a Greek Catholic church (tserkva) in 1921 named "St. Michael the Archangel." The church was a filial parish to the church in Karlykiv (Karlikow), St. Paraskevia (est. 1840.) According to Iwanusiw, the church in Wola Piotrowa was destroyed during the post World War II period: "The tserkva here was taken apart and the materials used for the erection of Polish collective farm facilities. Only a cross marks the spot where the temple once stood."