The Activity of “Błyskawica” Partisans on the Polish–Slovak Borderland: Of Spisz and Orawa in the Years 1945–1947
The Activity of “Błyskawica” Partisans on the Polish–Slovak Borderland: Of Spisz and Orawa in the Years 1945–1947

Summary/Abstract: After the Second World War the Polish-Slovak borderland became a zone of serious tensions. Particularly controversial is the activity of the Polish partisan group “Błyskawica”, led by Józef Kuraś “Ogień”. The soldiers are responsible for takings of private property and acts of violence carried out in villages in South Poland that were inhabited mostly by Slovaks. This paper – based mainly on the query at the Archives of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance – aims to present the scale and circumstances of those activities. The work takes wider historical context into account and uses selected anthropological and sociological theories. In this perspective, it seems justified to explain the analyzed events through the mechanism of revenge, widespread in the post-war period of anomie and crisis. Sources indicate that the Polish partisans’ actions from the years 1946–1947 were not attempts to pacify the Slovak separatists (although some authors claim so) but rather repressions for the earlier actions of members of that nation. *The paper presents a part of the results of the research project “Józef Kuraś «Ogień» and his subordinates in social imagination: An anthropological study of experiencing the past”. The grant no. 2016/21/B/HS3/02921 was financed by the Polish National Science Center (Narodowe Centrum Nauki). The team consisted of the researchers from the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the Jagiellonian University: Monika Golonka-Czajkowska (coordinator), Vojtech Bagin, Kaja Kajder, Łukasz Łoziński, Dariusz Nikiel.

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