Cerkiew zapamiętana. Wyobrażenia o dziedzictwie i tożsamości wśród mieszkańców Leżachowa
The Church Remembered. Imaginaries of Heritage and Identity among the Leżachów Community Members

Author(s): Igor Fedorowicz
Subject(s): Anthropology, Customs / Folklore, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Post-War period (1950 - 1989)
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Leżachów; Subcarpathia; heritage; identity; community; commemoration; Greek Catholic Church; Poland; Ukraine; Ruthenians; frontier; ethnic boundaries
Summary/Abstract: This work refers to the narratives found among members of the community of Leżachów, a village located in the Przeworsk District in south-eastern Poland, concerning their local identities and their perception of the importance of commemorating and preserving their experiences of both the Polish-Ukrainian and the Roman Catholic-Greek Catholic frontier. Data on different notions and imaginaries were collected through fieldwork: participant observation and individual and group interviews. Local discourse concerning ethnic boundaries between the inhabitants of Subcarpathia and different claims regarding their national identity (for example, Polish, Ukrainian or perhaps mixed) are viewed through the stories of the survivors of the Second World War and the postwar period – or their descendants. The main focus of the study was on the current renovation of the previous Greek Catholic Church of St. Nikita (and now the Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) in Leżachów, and how the overall local politics of managing public spaces – including secular ones – have impacted the community. The case of the Leżachów church serves as an example of how an ethnically-differentiated community inhabiting a liminal space of Polish-Ukrainian frontier views itself, and its place in Poland, a country (supposedly) uniform in terms of nationality and ethnicity of its people.

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