Huwniki Explained

Huwniki
Settlement Type:Village
Total Type: 
Subdivision Type:Country
Subdivision Type1:Voivodeship
Subdivision Name1:Subcarpathian
Subdivision Type2:County
Subdivision Name2:Przemyśl
Subdivision Type3:Gmina
Subdivision Name3:Fredropol
Coordinates:49.65°N 64°W
Pushpin Map:Poland
Pushpin Label Position:bottom
Population Total:677

Huwniki is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Fredropol, within Przemyśl County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship (also known as Podkarpackie Voivodeship), in south-eastern Poland, close to the border with Ukraine. It lies approximately 7km (04miles) south-west of Fredropol, 160NaN0 south of Przemyśl, and 660NaN0 south-east of the regional capital Rzeszów.[1] The name of the town in Ukrainian, Вугники, means charcoal.

Settlement in the village can be traced back to 1367 (when it was known as Uhelniki); royal records list King Casimir III the Great as entrusting the town to nobleman Stefan Wengzin. In 1507, tax records show there was already a Polish Orthodox Church parish there. During the 1800s until World War II, its population predominantly attended Eastern Catholic Churches.[2]

During World War II in Poland, Huwniki was occupied by the Nazi army briefly in September 1939 before being voluntarily ceded to the Soviet army, then occupied by the Nazis again from June 1941 until July 1944, when the Soviets recaptured it. The town's population of 18 Jewish Poles was enslaved in the spring of 1942, and mass-murdered by Ukrainian police on 25 November 1942 at the Wiar creek near Przemyśl.http://www.sztetl.org.pl/pl/article/huwniki/5,historia/ After the war, as a border town with a large Orthodox population, the population was decimated by the involuntary population exchange between Poland and Soviet Ukraine.

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Central Statistical Office (GUS) - TERYT (National Register of Territorial Land Apportionment Journal) . 2008-06-01 . Polish.
  2. Dmytro Blazheyovskyi - "Istorycznyj szematyzm Peremyskoji Eparchiji of wkluczennjam Apostolśkoji Administratury Łemkiwszczyny (1828-1939)", Lviv 1995,