Przemyśl at the Turn of the Century: From the Notes of Feliks Mantel

Below is a translation from Polish of the article Przemyśl na przełomie wieków …z zapisków Feliksa Mantela Feliks Mantel (1906-1990) came from a family of Przemyśl Jews. His father, Józef Mantel (1875-1920), was a lawyer and a close associate of [lawуer and socialist politician] Herman Lieberman. Józef Piłsudski, who stayed in […]

Historical Manhole Covers: Przemyśl

In the part of Galicia that is today Ukraine, dating certain remnants of the past can be relatively easy due to the language of the inscription — anything in Polish dates from before WWII. On the other hand, in a city like Przemyśl where Polish was and still is the […]

Boot Scrapers: Przemyśl

It was in Przemyśl, a small Galician city situated today in Poland near the Ukrainian border, that I first discovered what a boot scraper was and where my love for these remnants of the past began. I had first seen these odd metal objects in Lviv, but hadn’t given them […]

Ghost Signs of Przemyśl

Today a small city in eastern Poland, Przemyśl (Peremyshl in Ukrainian transliteration) was once one of the major cities in Galicia. Przemyśl’s population consisted of many nationalities, including Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Germans, and Czechs. According to the Austrian census of 1830, the city was home to 7,538 people of whom […]

Orienting Us through the Past: Historical Street Signage in Przemyśl

It is not uncommon in Przemyśl, Poland, to find two, three, or even four different street signs on one building—dating to different periods and regimes: the Austrian Empire, interwar Poland, Communist Poland, and modern Poland. This is because in Poland there was never a campaign to remove Polish inscriptions from […]

Zakopane Style Architecture in Przemyśl

Zakopane Style (Styl zakopiański) architecture is inspired by the folk art and architecture of Poland’s highland region known as Podhale. The style was conceived in the 1890s by architect Stanislaw Witkiewicz and named after the region’s main town — Zakopane. The Zakopane Style combines wooden framing and reinforced stone structures, […]

The Ukrainian Girls’ Institute in Peremyshl

After coming under Austrian rule, Peremyshl (Przemyśl) became a major Ukrainian political, cultural, religious, and education center. By the 1880s the city had become the second-largest center (after Lviv) for Ukrainian secondary education in Galicia. It was home to a number of vocational, elementary, and boarding schools as well as […]

Old Postcards of Przemyśl

The small city of Przemyśl (Peremyshl in Ukrainian transliteration) now lies a few miles west of the Polish-Ukrainian border. Under the Austrian Empire, Przemyśl was one of the major Galician towns. Like nearby Lviv, the city’s population consisted of many nationalities, including Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Germans, and Czechs. According to […]

The Galician Railway

By Iwona Dakiniewicz The journey to America was long, costly, and tedious. The majority of emigrants came from remote villages. Peasants began their journey with teams of horses or on foot, to get to the nearest railroad station. This article gives you a possibility of locating the railroad station from which […]

‘The Polish-Ukrainian Border Ran through the Marriage Bed’: Interethnic Marriages in Prewar Galicia

Interethnic marriages are common on territories where together with the indigenous population live representatives of other ethnic groups. Most often they are between ethnic groups that have close religious, linguistic, and cultural characteristics. “In interwar Galicia the largest number of such marriages was between Ukrainians and Poles, especially on the border of […]