Empty valleys · Atlas 059

V3 · Sonnet

Beskid Niski · Magura National Park (MNP) · schematic, not a map

Empty valleys of Beskid Niski

A fruit tree, a stone cross, a road along a stream. What may we say from them about the people who lived here, and where does the line of the valley have to be broken?

I want to state:

Without JavaScript you see the first claim, ‘People lived here’. The others (family, look of the house, boundaries) are described in the chapters below as ‘Pause’.

‘People lived here’ – result: can be described 6, only partly 0, pause 0, not applicable 0 (of 6 traces).

Here the sources speak plainly: we may describe the former life of the valley. All the further claims are already stronger.

Świerzowa Ruska

Świerzówka stream valley

Conventional profile of the Świerzowa Ruska valley Two ridges and a stream on the valley floor. The shape is conventional and does not correspond to the real terrain.

  1. Cemetery and former church site

    Can be described

    The former church site from 1894 and the neighbouring cemetery with stone three-armed crosses point to the village’s former religious centre.

  2. Orchard and trees

    Can be described

    Old fruit trees are a trace of former farmsteads; MNP protects orchards.

  3. Road, cellars, foundations

    Can be described

    Foundations, stone cellars, well curbs and wayside shrines by the road add up to a picture of the former settlement.

Żydowskie

Krempna stream valley

Conventional profile of the Żydowskie valley Two ridges and a stream on the valley floor. The shape is conventional and does not correspond to the real terrain.

  1. Cemetery cut by a stream

    Can be described

    The Greek Catholic cemetery in the valley is a trace of a former community; the guide does not establish its extent.

  2. Apple and pear trees

    Can be described

    Old apple and pear trees and plants left from gardens bear witness to the former use of the valley.

  3. Trade route

    Can be described

    A trade route ran through the village from Żmigród to Bardejov, Prešov and Zborov; the inhabitants were mainly Lemkos, along with Polish families and one Jewish family.

  • Solid: the sources allow this to be described
  • Solid, lighter: only partly
  • Dashed ochre: pause, the trace does not settle this
  • Dotted: the trace does not concern this question

A conceptual diagram, not a map and not a photograph. The profile of the ridges, the order of the traces and the spacing between them are conventional; gaps in the line mean unknown distances. The content comes from the V2 material and the MNP guides, not from fresh verification.

Chapter I · traces and the cause of change

Świerzowa Ruska

Świerzówka stream valley. Stops 1, 2, 3 and 5–6 of the MNP guide, according to the V2 material.

MNP · stop 2

Cemetery beside the former church site

The church of St John the Baptist was built in 1894. Today its site and the neighbouring cemetery help to recognise the former religious centre. The MNP guide describes stone, three-armed grave crosses.

May be describedThe village’s sacred layout is a lasting point of reference in the valley.

PauseThe surviving gravestones do not mark the full boundaries of the necropolis. We do not fill in the appearance of structures that have not survived. A cemetery is a place of remembrance, not a collection of stones.

MNP · stop 3

Trees left by farms

Old fruit trees are a trace of former farmsteads. MNP protects orchards: young trees are grown from the material of surviving specimens. Today the fruit also feeds animals; the orchard joins cultural heritage with nature conservation.

May be describedFruit trees point to former farming.

PauseThe presence of apple trees does not allow us to establish the boundaries of a homestead or the farmer’s name, and trees do not reconstruct the cottages themselves.

MNP · stops 5–6

Road, cellars, foundations

Along the valley there remain house foundations, stone cellars and well curbs. The guide points out crosses and wayside shrines by the road. These different traces help us see the former village as a whole.

May be describedStone cellars, foundations and wayside shrines along the road form the skeleton of the former settlement.

PauseA surviving trace of the road does not mean that every stretch of it is open to visitors today. Check MNP notices before you set out.

20 June 1945 · 1947

Displacement stands behind the emptiness

According to the MNP guide, on 20 June 1945 the inhabitants of Świerzowa were displaced to Ukraine. The nine remaining people were displaced in 1947 as part of Operation Vistula (Akcja ‘Wisła’).

Today’s silence is therefore not the whole history of the valley. A story of fields growing over should keep room for coercion, the loss of a home and the memory of the former inhabitants.

The dates and causes of the displacement were taken over from V2 and the MNP guide; they need consultation and checking against the source. MNP guide, Świerzowa Ruska (PDF, in Polish)

Chapter II · traces and no information about the change

Żydowskie

Krempna stream valley. The MNP guide ‘Kiczera’, stops 1 and 3, according to the V2 material.

MNP Kiczera · stop 1

Boundaries we do not know

An unnamed stream cuts through the Greek Catholic cemetery. The MNP guide stresses that the destroyed gravestones do not allow the exact extent of the necropolis to be established. Nor does it settle whether the stream divided a single cemetery or whether there were two here.

May be describedAn unnamed stream cuts across the area of the necropolis.

PauseThe absence of a gravestone is not proof that there was no burial in a given place. We treat the empty lawns in the stream zone with the restraint due to resting places.

MNP Kiczera · stops 1 and 3

Apple and pear trees without houses

The Kiczera guide describes old apple and pear trees and plants preserved from gardens. Fruit trees, crosses and wayside shrines remain by the former road. The vegetation helps to read the earlier use of the valley.

May be describedGarden plants and orchards outlasted the dwellings and mark zones of former farmsteads by the historic road.

PauseA plant can outlast buildings, but it does not reconstruct the plan of the buildings or the identity of the farmers.

MNP Kiczera · stop 1

A valley on a former route

A trade route from Żmigród to Bardejov, Prešov and Zborov ran through Żydowskie. The village in the Krempna stream valley was inhabited mainly by Lemkos, as well as Polish families and one Jewish family.

May be describedA trade route across the Carpathian passes along the floor of the Krempna stream valley.

PauseThe name of the former route describes the history of a connection, not a ready-made route for today’s walk.

Date and cause: absent from the material

What we do not know about the change in Żydowskie

The material this page works from describes the route and the inhabitants of the valley, but gives neither the cause nor the date of the change. We do not carry dates over from Świerzowa Ruska and we do not insert one of our own.

To be established from the Kiczera guide and the literature. Today the valley lies within Magura National Park; check the park’s notices before setting out on the trail. MNP guide, Kiczera (PDF, in Polish)

Document

A document we must not invent

The best shot for this page would be an ordinary one: our own photograph of a road or an orchard and one legally shared document about a single trace. This package contains neither. So instead of an artificial archive there is a diagram that says only as much as the guides say.

What we have in hand (links from V2)

  • Two guides to Magura National Park trails, as PDFs: Świerzowa Ruska and Kiczera (Żydowskie).
  • A description of research on former settlements in Beskid Niski (Jagiellonian University): archival search, Austrian cartography and LiDAR.
  • Two photographs on Wikimedia Commons, as links only: the cemetery in Świerzowa Ruska and a view of Żydowskie. The authors and licences (V2 gave Fallaner and Henryk Bielamowicz, CC BY-SA 4.0) have to be checked on the source pages. We do not embed the photographs: the page is meant to work offline, and photographs of cemeteries need context and confirmed rights.

Missing

  1. Our own photograph of a road or orchard scene, separately in landscape and portrait.
  2. A legally shared document for a single trace, for example an archival record or a cadastral map, with the right to publish it.
  3. Consultation on the dates and causes of the displacement in Świerzowa Ruska (1945, 1947).
  4. Any information at all about the date and cause of the change in Żydowskie.
  5. Confirmation of rights and context for the photographs of cemeteries.

A pause in the material remains a pause. We do not turn it into a zero, a date or an image.

Today’s context

How to look at the valley without adding anything

  1. Before you set out, check the notices and rules of Magura National Park. A surviving trace of a road does not mean that every stretch is open today, and this page does not confirm the accessibility of any route.
  2. Keep strictly to marked routes. A former track off the trail is not an invitation.
  3. A cemetery is a place of remembrance, not a collection of stones. Take nothing away and do not look for souvenirs among the remains of buildings.
  4. Do not mark out the boundaries of a cemetery or homestead in the field, and do not fill in biographies from the look of a place. The absence of a gravestone does not prove the absence of a burial.
  5. Publish a photograph of a cemetery only with known context and the rights to publish it.

Sources

Open the sources

The links were taken over from V2. They were not opened when this version was built, so the descriptions below are summaries of the material, not confirmation of its content.