Sebechiv – the history of the village

Summary of the article

• The origin of the name Sebechiv
• The river Sebechivka and the pond-abyss that connects to the Z. Bug River.
• Economy of the village in the XIX century.
• The Black Way or “Cossack road” near Sebechiv. It is a shame that this place was destroyed during the construction of a new road to the village.
• A grave near Sebechev, where, according to legend, a Turkish sultan is buried.
• Khmelnytskyi’s oak tree
• The abolition of serfdom and the economic development of the village. Teachers and priests of Sebechiv in the nineteenth century.
• Sebechiv during the First World War. Famous Sebechiv residents in the UGA and their tragic fate after the war.
• Polish authorities after the First World War and the Polonization of the Sibechiv people.
• Sebechiv and the history of the UGA. Ivan Dyshkant and his struggle against polonization.
• The time of “enlightenment” – the interwar development of education in the village. The work of the Dorist organization and a branch of the women’s organization Union of Ukrainian Women.
• German occupation of Sebechiv
• The establishment of the Polish government in 1945. Mass graves near the church of St. Paraskevia. Expulsion of the residents of Sebechiv in 1946.
• The period after World War II.
• The history of the native land, the home of many people, is unknown. It is impossible to educate a patriot without forming a respectful attitude towards the historical past of one’s people, their culture, language, and destiny.

I am writing this material based on my own memories, the stories of my grandmother and my mother, who will soon be in her ninth decade. I also used some historical data. I am proud to have been born and raised in the village of Sebechiv. As I grew up, flowers bloomed, birds sang beautiful songs, the gentle sun warmed me, the rain watered me, “everything shone like a beautiful fairy tale.

I was born into the family of Stepan Korol, a national teacher at the Markiyan Shashkevych Ukrainian Native School in Zolochiv. The living conditions of private school teachers in Polish rule were not easy. The “Ridna Shkola” existed on voluntary contributions from the Ukrainian population. In order to prevent the Polish government from closing the Ukrainian school, teachers signed their salary statements for more money than they received. I was brought up in my native, at that time, picturesque village of Sebechiv by my grandmother Maria Kantor. She was the daughter of a serf named Tekla Stetsyshyn from Verbizhzy (now Verbove) and a Polish gentleman named Matviy Chrominsky from Mytseve (now a village in Poland). The lords disowned their son, who had married a Ukrainian woman. My grandmother’s father instilled in his peasant daughter a love of education. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, my grandmother passed on her love of education to her children, teaching them in gymnasiums (in Sokal and Zhovkva).

My memories go back to 1931. My grandmother told me about the raids of the Tatars, the great principality of Belz, the Cossack campaigns, rituals, customs, signs, and taught me poems and songs. Here is one story about the city of Belz. It used to be a big, big city. The city was surrounded by ancient forests. There were swamps and wild animals. Glorious princes lived in the city. One of the princes, whose name was Vsevolod (he was the Prince of Belz since 1195), went hunting with his wife and got lost in a dense forest. He wandered for a long time, fleeing from wild animals, and began to call for help from his soldiers.

His voice spread through the forest and echoed back to him. The prince heard himself. And so the small settlement that must have existed here, according to the legend, began to be called Sebe-chuv, and hence Sebechiv. In our district there are many villages with the ending -iv (Kary, Hlukhiv, Horobriv, Uhryniv, Horbkiv, and others). According to B. Sotsalski, a Polish ethnographer of the nineteenth century, in his book “Poviat Sokalski” (published in 1899), it is stated that towns and villages with the ending -iv appeared with the emergence of private property. Rich, noble people were called kmetas. Whose? The city of Kyiv is the city of Kyia. The city of Lviv is the city of the Lion (built by Prince Danylo for his son). And so is Sebechiv (what a comparison): the suffix and the ending -iv (Se-bech-iv) were added to the inverse form of Sebe.

The first written mention of Sebechiv dates back to 1419.

It is located northeast of Belz at a distance of 10 kilometers, and 16 kilometers from Sokal to the west. The territory is a gently undulating plain, a continuation of the Volyn Upland. The village is located in a wide valley above the Sebechivka River, which originates in the village of Verbizhi. The Sebechivka River received many tributaries from clean, pure springs with clear water. There were wells, ponds, and planting beds. In the wide valley, there were fragrant hayfields with tall grass, which was mowed not twice but three times during the summer. Old, old weeping willows grew above Sebechivka. Their branches reached the water, washing their long braids. It was as if they were crying over the fact that the evil hand would eventually destroy them, destroy the Sebechivka River and the fragrant hayfields. The village of Sebechiv stretches around the hayfields like a wreath. After leaving the village, the river flowed through the hamlets of Melnyky, Semeny, Shkromady. There were water mills there. There was an abyssal pond with unfrozen water. There were many legends about the abyss (according to my grandmother). It was said that once in the winter season a gentleman was traveling on a sled and drowned in the abyss, but surfaced in the Western Bug. From the point of view of geography, it is possible that this abyss was connected to an underground river, a tributary of the Bug. Another legend says that the Hungarian prince Ludwik was helping the Poles enslave the Ukrainian people, lost his way, and many horses drowned in the abyss. Now Chervonohrad takes water from there. And the river Sebechivka is unrecognizable. Reclamation work has changed its course, and its valley no longer grows tall grasses as it once did, but tall thistles. The flowering hayfields that used to be the village’s decoration have been turned into a huge pasture without shepherds.

The village of Sebechiv consisted of three parts

At the entrance to the village (from Belz) there was a manor house. One part of the village was located here (one side of the village was called) with its own streets: Panska (leading from the farmstead to the village of Zahat), Hora, Revni (named after the roar of cattle), where sheep, cows, and horses were driven to the public pasture between the hills and the sea. Behind the church was the second part of the village (the other side). Pivovshchyna was the third part of the village. The second manor house was located there. Both farmsteads were connected by an old stone road called “burk”. The road was built to bring in waste from brewing, and thus distillation, for fattening cattle. Brewing took place in Pivoshchyna (hence the name of the village street). The production of alcohol began later, in the second half of the nineteenth century (1865). Then a distillery was built. The Sebechivskyi farmsteads were managed by managers. The village had a new church built in the late nineteenth century. The old church was moved to Leshkiv, and the even older one burned down during the raids of the Turkish Tatars. In the village, there were two schools, an office and a plebeian.

From historical sources we learn that the territory of the Lviv region was settled in the third century BC. The Buzhan tribe lived over the Bug River. In the IX-X centuries the Buzhans became part of Kyivan Rus (under Volodymyr the Great). In the XI century, the lands of Sobychiv belonged to the Principality of Belz, and later to the Principality of Galicia-Volhynia. In 1340-1377, they were owned by Lithuanian princes, and then they were occupied by Hungarians. Later, Polish feudal lords seized our lands. And even the Swedes trampled on them. In 1772, our Galician land was transferred to Austria, and in 1867 to Austria-Hungary.

The Black Way or “Cossack road”

The second great disaster for our people, besides enslavement, was the frequent Turkish-Tatar raids. To the south of Sebechiv, along the village, at a distance of one kilometer, there is a historical path. It is called the Black Way or the Cossack Road. It started from Perekop and stretched across Ukraine. The Turkish-Tatar hordes used to raid our lands along this route. The legend of the Black Road was confirmed by historian and researcher Yaroslav Kis, a professor at the Ivan Franko State University of Lviv. The map about the Tatar paths shows that the branch of the Black Way was actually called the Black Way because the path was so trampled by horse hooves that grass could not grow. In our area, the Black Way starts from the village of Sharpantsi and leads along the Hanovka river to Sokal, turns west after Zhvyrka, passes near the villages of Boryatyn, Sebechiv, Tsebliv, Verbizh, Peremysliv, and then leads to Poland. One branch goes to Belz.

Western Europe traded with Kievan Rus via the Black Road.

In the eleventh century, Belz was the largest political and commercial center of Western Ukraine.

The Turks-Tatars (1241, 1499, 1502) invaded the Black Road, plundering our lands (burning, robbing, taking young people and children into captivity. And in captivity, children grew up to be janissaries. I want to mention a grave near Sebechiv, where, according to legend, a Turkish sultan is buried. In the middle of the grave stood a tall gray stone pillar. The grave was surrounded by stone pillars to which heavy, massive chains were attached. In May 1941, the Germans demolished the pillar so that there was no landmark, and the grave existed as late as the 60s. The story of my grandmother is connected with the fact that in this grave his soldiers, who stood for a long time during the siege of Belz, are buried with the Sultan. At that time, Sebechiv was burned. Our ancestors were farmers, craftsmen, and hunters, but they knew how to defend their independence. So, a group of peasants attacked the Turks who were besieging Belz. The Turkish sultan was killed in the battle near Belz. The fact that the Horde was buried in this grave is evidenced by the words of the former parish priest of Sebechiv, Yevstakhiy Harasovskyi, who forbade us children to bring flowers to the grave because “pagans” (not Christians) were buried there. I remember this from a religion class in 1934.

During the liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people under the leadership of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Cossack army passed this way, liberating Ukraine from the Polish gentry

Not far from the village of Sharpantsiv, an old oak tree grew on the Black Way (Cossack road). The locals guarded it and called it the “Khmelnytsky Oak”. An icon hung on the oak. Every spring (at Easter), church rites were held near the oak. According to legend, the Cossacks and their ataman used to rest near this oak. In 1951, the oak tree burned down from a thunderstorm, leaving only a stump and a young oak tree near it (I was working as a teacher at Luchytsia school, a kilometer away from Sharpantsi).

A Cossack grave is on the verge of destruction near the repair and transportation company. It was located near the “Cossack road” (the Black Road). My grandmother used to bring me here as a child, telling me about the exploits of the Cossacks. I used to put red poppies on the grave, they were blooming densely in the fields at that time.

It is very painful that people who did not know the history of the Sokal region, its ancient times, destroyed the beginning of the Cossack road. There is still a birch tree, a witness to where the “Cossack road” went. In front of the repair and transportation company, Cossacks were riding their horses to the west, up the mountain. The local collective farm had to correct its mistake by plowing up to 200 meters of the Cossack road. He fenced the territory, built a collective farm workshop, and drilled a “well” (as the workers called the stubble) near the Cossack grave. The workshop takes water from there. The grave became overgrown and full of holes. A gas station was built on both sides of the Cossack road, and an underground level was built. Further, beyond the so-called “well,” the Cossack road exists as far as Peremyshliv. It is in a state of disrepair. The Cossack grave needs to be RESTORED, and the road needs to be protected. I personally addressed this proposal on June 15 last year at a meeting on historical monuments in the Sokal region. Our future generation will not forgive us if the Cossack grave and the Cossack road are destroyed. No one else, but we, Ukrainians, are destroying our history, our past.

On the road leading from the Cossack road to Sebechiv, there were two crosses. Every year, in spring and summer, church rites and prayers were held here, and the fields were sprinkled with consecrated water and words:

“From hail, fire and war, save us, O Lord…

Parish priest Garasovskyi believed that this was also a Cossack grave (it is a pity that this place was destroyed during the construction of a new road to the village). There were Cossack graves near Tseblov, Peremyslov, Oseredov…

In 1848, the Austrian government abolished serfdom in Galicia. Half-freedom came to the people. The best lands were left to the lords’ farms, and the less fertile lands were given to the peasants. The division of land was equal for each person. A bigger family had more land and was called “train land”. Some people loved to work on their own fields, while others believed that it was better for them to work for the lord. The population was growing. There were large families then. The strips of fields became narrower, and parents divided the field among their children. And then the peasants were forced to look for a better life. Some worked for the lord, lived in barracks, others looked for a trade, and some went to work in Germany. France, and others seek a better life overseas. This is how emigration to foreign countries emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The men who worked for the lord (with horses) were called “fornali”, and the girls who
who were hired from early spring until the fall were called “bandokhy”. Sebechivska land yielded high crops, and the lord paid the peasants well for their hard work. In my memory, even children were willing to work. The lord paid 1 gold piece for one row of weeded beets, and 50 hryvnias for a bunch of ears (it took a long time to harvest because they were not thick on the ground). The management apparatus in the farmsteads was small. The manager Lobotskyi managed the estate and the distillery for a very long time, and the mill was run by Liatavets. There was a machine operator and a field miller. The second help for the villagers was the cloth factory in Leshkiv, which before the Second World War was the third largest in the landlord’s Poland. Young people worked at the factory.

After the abolition of serfdom, an awakening came to the village

The first to provide education in the village were the priests of Sayukia. Lavrovsky, V. Kovalsky, V. Viytozych. E. Garasovskyi. The latter was the village priest from 1920 to 1946 (he was a highly educated man who knew five foreign languages).

The teachers of the village of Sebecheva were (in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century) Hryhoshnevych, who worked for over 40 years as a teacher in the village of Sebecheva. Chernetskyi, Marian Yashuk, Mani Lobotska, Havlitskyi, Hryhorii Plikhota, Skopliak, Musii, Hlazovskyi, Mykhasiuk, J. Demchuk, Y. Lutsyk. S. Korol, D. Klymchak. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the first educated people of Sebechiv were considered to be the priest Senyshyn, his brother, the village clerk Mykhailo Sevyshyn, and the second brother, the sexton in the village of Sebechiv. The brothers were nicknamed Sykulovy in the street!

A Ukrainian peasant trains his son to become a priest or teacher, as these professions were the most respected at the time, and this is how both of them behaved in the village. Senyshyn’s son, Oleksa, worked as a teacher in the village of Boryatyn, and organized a church choir in his native village. The teacher Stepan Myhal, the father of the writer Taras Mytal, founded the Sich youth organization in the early twentieth century. In addition to boys, girls also belonged to the Sich. Maria Toporivska-Klmmchak was the most prominent activist. Maria Myhal (Horaleva). The teacher Dmytro Bas and the gymnasium student Theodore Kantor (before the First World War) spread education in the village. At that time, there was an organization named after Kachkovskyi in the village. Kachkovsky organization, whose members were called “Muscovites”. It existed until the end of the First World War.

In the twentieth century, five priests left the village of Sebecheva: Mykola Toporivskyi, Mykhailo Klymchak, Simeon Krut, Ivan Shpak, and Yaroslav Skopliak.

Teachers and students of the XX century: Dmytro Bas, Theodore (Fed) Kantor, Oleksa Senyshyn, Hryhorii Myhal, Mykola Mankut, Petro Mankut, Mykhailo Oliinyk, Dmytro Klymchak, Pavlo Bas, Pavlo Kantor, Ivan Hrynkiv, Semen Romaniv. Hryhorii Lahoda, Petro Bashuk, Vasyl Vavruk, Stepan Palka, Petro Kantor (first a thank-you man and then a teacher). brothers Petro and Pavlo Levochkon. Volodymyr Oliynyk. The Garasovskys: Maria, Andrii, Yevstakhii, Myhal Bohdan, Krut Bohdan, Kantor Mykhailo.

Between 1939 and 1946, boys and girls from Sobychiv studied at the gymnasium, trade and craft schools: Pavlo Fusik, Bohdan Romaniv, Halia Harasovska, Mykola Klymchak, Myron and Olha Klymchak, Maria Bryl, Maksym and Teklia Bryl, Mykola Palka and Parania, Mykhailo Pavlenskyi, Bohdan and Yaroslava Korol, Myroslava Stefaniuk, Liuba Bohuy, Yaroslava Myskiw, Marian Palka, and others.

I return to the First World War, which began on August 1, 1914.

The village of Sebechiv sent off its fellow villagers to the Austrian army. Almost on every date, husbands, sons, and brothers went to war in foreign, distant lands… And so, on one August day, my grandmother sent off her husband Ivan Kantor and two sons, Ivan and Theodore. The First World War ended with the collapse of the multinational Austro-Hungarian monarchy.

In November 1918, the West Ukrainian People’s Republic was proclaimed. Poland claimed Galicia as its own and wanted to enter the original Ukrainian lands. The Ukrainian Galician Army (UGA) was created for defense. Heavy battles took place in Galicia. And near us, for Lviv, Rava-Ruska, Uhniv, Uhryniv, Belz…
Later, Belz was captured by the Poles. The old and new channels of the Solokia River were the frontier. The UGA riflemen and volunteers from the surrounding villages did not allow the Poles to occupy the outskirts of Belz. The forces were unequal… even though it was a just war. The Entente (France and England) helped Poland by throwing in General Haller’s heavily armed 80,000-strong army, and the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic, without support from other states, was unable to resist:

The Sich Riflemen were saddened

As they crossed the Zbruch River,

That so many people fell for freedom.

There was no strength to resist.

The land of Sebechiv buried its fellow villagers who fell near Belz in the village cemetery. The people of Sebechiv carried the centurion Ivan Dakh in their arms, despite the bad weather. On this winter day, people slipped and fell, but in mourning they went to pay their last respects to the hero (according to my mother’s story). Mykola Myhal, a Sich Rifleman, was also buried with great honors in the village cemetery. UGA riflemen Hryhorii Hladyshok and Ivan Hrynkiv fell near Belz. They were buried in a mass grave in the yard of the Belz dairy. Many participants of the First World War did not return to their native village. Their graves are scattered in foreign, distant countries. But the graves of the Sich Riflemen are all over Galicia and Ukraine, and they were remembered.

Mothers did not meet their sons, women their husbands, sisters their brothers, children their parents, and brides their grooms…

A teacher, Sergeant Major Dmytro Bas, was killed near Berezhany, and in his pocket was an unfinished, blood-stained letter to his fiancée, Marichka Kantor. Theodore (Fed) Kantor, a chorunzha, UGA activist in Zolochiv, and the pride of the village of Sebechevo, did not think that he would give his young life for Ukraine so soon. He fought his last battle with the Poles near the village of Pochaly in the Zolochiv region. Here he spoke his last words to the Sich members: “Guys, hold on, there are not many of them” and was the first to rush into battle. An enemy bullet hit him in the heart. Blood flowed from the wound, and his blue eyes looked endlessly into the blue sky, the clear sun (according to Mykhailo Dubyn, a Sich member from Pnivshchyna who fought with Kantor). Many village patriots from Sobychiv died in 1918-20. These were Hryhorii Holub, Oleksa Holub, Andrii Ulyda, two brothers Dmytro and Pylyp Kovalchuk (Chepilev), Hryhorii Chmyr, Ivan Hrynkiv, Andrii Toporivskyi, and Oleksii Mankut. Fedir Romaniv, Petro Kalyni (a centurion), Luka Klymchak (Zatkhai), Mykola Maksnmlyak, Piskliak, and others.

In July 1919, Polish troops occupied western Ukraine.

Several Sich Riflemen of the UGA returned to their native village: Pavlo Bryl (instructor of the Sich), Vasyl 1 Hrynkiv, Ivan Kantor, Mykhailo Dubyk, Ivan Dyshkant, Andriy Bubela…

Polish rule came. At first, the new government dealt with the UGA riflemen.

With the help of a Polish man, Tadeusz Lobocki (whose father was the manager of the Sebechivsky manor), the gendarmes took the Sich members and sent them to camps for the so-called “internees” in Wadowice, Dąbier (Dęblin), and Lviv, where not everyone managed to survive the severe camp torment. In addition to moral and physical abuse, the “internees” were mowed down by typhus. Relatives were not allowed to help them. Twelve times my grandmother went to the Sokal district starost for permission to visit her son Ivan in the camp. After returning from the death camp, the handsome Ivan Kantor was unrecognizable. Camp bullying, beating him on the head with sticks, and contracting typhus in the camp undermined his health.

Photo by Yuriy Korin. sebechiv village Church of the Ascension….

 

In the villages, the forced polonization of the Ukrainian population began. Polish colonists settled on the best fertile lands (between Sebechiv and Boryatyn, over the “Cossack road”). An hour of religion was introduced at school for children of Polish descent. For centuries, Ukrainians and Poles lived side by side, regardless of nationality. The Poles went to church (there was no church in the village), married Ukrainian women, baptized their children in church, and with the advent of the new government, ethnic differences began. A Pole, Andrii Bubela, fought in the UGA, and at that time, as a counter to Polonization, a young priest, Vasyl Viytovych, worked in the village of Sebechevi. He did not live in the parish house, but in a modest wooden hut in the valley near the church. The young priest would invite men, women, boys, and girls to his house and tell interesting stories, read Kobzar, books, and newspapers. Priest Vasyl Viytovych (honor and praise to him) taught the people of Sobychiv “Who we are, who our ancestors are, and what our children should be like.” He was followed up by the Prosvita, organized by teacher Dmytro Bas and student Theodore Kantor, who did not return from the war. Subsequently, typhus reigned in the village and the young life of priest Vasyl Viytovych was cut short. Priest E. Garasovskyi continued the work he had begun. Thanks to the hard work of theology student Mykola Toporivskyi and village activists Kostia Myhal, Stepan Kantor, and Pavlo Bryl, in the summer of 1920 Sebechiv saw the first production of Nazar Stodoli. The first Sebechiv amateurs performed in it: Ivan Klnmchak, Mykola Krut, Ivan Mankut, Ivan Oliinyk, Tetiana Bryl, Maria and Anna Kantor, Ksenia Palka, the first “nightingale” of the village of Parania Haiokha. The old-timers remember the village teacher Hryhorii Plikhota with a kind word. He organized a village choir that was famous throughout the Sokal region. The choir was not afraid to sing:

For Ukraine, for its freedom, for honor and glory, for the people…

And so the spiritual life began to develop in a broad way. An anti-drunkenness group, the Revival, was gaining strength in Sebechiv. At that time, nine Jewish families lived in the village. They seemed to be helping the villagers. They owned a timber trade, an oil mill, and three taverns.

Ivan Dyshkant, a Dov-bush from Sobychiv, fought against the Polonization of the Ukrainian population and Jewish taverns. He fought in the ranks of the UGA near Uhnovo across the Zbruch in Greater Ukraine. In the fall of 1924, Ivan Dyshkant organized young men to fight. Three months later, the Polish government sentenced him to death (January 1925).

In Sebechiv, Prosvita did a good job.

Cooperatives (rural consumer and industrial shops) were organized in the village. With the help of students, self-education is developing, and a library is working. People celebrate the holidays of Kobzar, Markiyan Shashkevych, Ivan Franko, and national holidays. In 1927, the Sokoly Society was organized in Sebechiv.

The name of the society is the “Revival” circle in Sebechiv. Photo from 1928. The photo was provided by Yurii Korin.

Semen Romaniv (a student) and a young, energetic girl Olena Zharska from Belz were of great help in his work. The Falcons consisted of 64 boys and more than two dozen girls. Here is a short list of them: Ivan Bryl, Mykola Kantor (son of Hryhorii), Mykola Kantor (son of Dmytro), Yosyp Shopiak, Volodymyr Shopiak. Semen Ulyda, Ivan Bashuk, Ivan Romaniv, Semen Bas, Semen Poloyukh. Dmytro Klnmchak, Hryhorii Bryl, Andrii Krut, Pavlo Toporivskyi, Mykola Trachuk, Vasyl Kovalchuk, and others. In 1929, a former UGA centurion, Sahansky, took the position of sexton. He led the beautiful Sobychiv choir, which won first place at the county competition under his hard work.

The photo is by Yurii Korin. sebechiv village. 1928 The Bashuk family near their house

 

After graduating from the village school, boys and girls belonged to the Dorist organization. There was a branch of the women’s organization “Union of Ukrainian Women” in the village. It solved cultural and family problems.

Photo by Yurii Korin. The Bashuk family, the village of Sebechiv, 1928.

A major obstacle to the cultural development of western Ukraine was the pacification of the Ukrainian population by the Polish government.

In the fall of 1930, it did not pass by Sebechiv. Portraits of Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, and family photographs were destroyed in the houses. Books were trampled on. Grain in the barns was mixed with feathers and poured with tar. Having robbed a wagon full of lard, they instructed Vasyl Krut (Popyk) from Pivovshchyna to take it to Zhovkva to his military unit. For several days, the army was rampaging in the village, standing with their kitchen on the Gata. The youth hid in the neighboring villages. They were looked for there. And then, having driven them to the reading room, they beat the activists mercilessly. Ivan Bashuk was the most abused. He lost his health after the beating. Oleksa Kovalyk was found to be in possession of Kobzar and banned literature. For this, they tied him to a cart and dragged him through the village.

After his hospitalization, cultural and mass work was carried out in Sebechiv with renewed energy. There were choral, drama, music, and sports clubs in the village, and a library. Each part of the village built its own reading room. There were new organizers: Pavlo Bryl and Ivan Bryl in the Pivovske district. Vasyl Haloikh, and Lahoda, and on the first side of the village – Mykola Trachuk, Mykhailo Oliinyk, and Ivan Senyshyp. And in the center of Sebechiv, near the church, a two-story brick reading room was built at the expense of an amateur group and the help of villagers, which still exists today.

New stars of the stage appeared: Paranya Krut. Kormylo Krut. Anna Holub, Hryhorii Mankut, Olha and Kateryna Bashuk, Hryhorii Lahoda, Olha and Nadiia Palky, Vasyl Demidont, Stepania Bryl, Semen Lahoda, Vasyl Holoiukh, Onufrii and Teodozii Kantor, Petro Bashuk, Mykhailo Liashuk, Petro Kantor, Pavlo and Nataliia Klymchak, Pavlo and Vasyl Toporivskyi, Ivan Romaniv, Semen Shopiak, and Vasyl Senyshyn. Mykhailo Kantor.
Sebechev’s spiritual life was at a high level. With the help of the priest E. Garasovskyi, moral education did not decline here.

There was a communist organization in the village, headed by Kharko

In 1938, a Polish room was opened in the lord’s manor. There were not many Polish families in the village. After that, enmity began between Ukrainian and Polish children. Adults joined them. The enmity was caused by another event. I mentioned above the mass grave of the Ukrainian Galician Army riflemen who were buried in Bełża in the yard of the dairy. They died in 1919. This event took place on the eve of the opening of the room.

Maybe those older than me are still alive, those who did not allow us to dig up the riflemen’s graves on this festive day. Some of the bones were moved to the Belz cemetery. Activists and village boys dug up the grave again and put a cross on the same spot. The grave survived the Second World War, it existed until 1957-59. I’m ashamed to write about the then director. The director of the Belz dairy plant ordered the birch cross to be cut down. This was done. He also forced the tractor driver (I’m not mentioning his name because he is already dead) to open the grave. A resident of Zabolotia collected two skulls and a dozen bones scattered around the dairy yard and buried them in a lime pit under a poplar tree. They have remained there ever since. Thus, in an atmosphere of unfriendliness between Poles and Ukrainians, the Germans appeared in Sebechiv in the fall of 1939.

 

During the German occupation, life was not easy for the villagers

We had to hand over large “contingents” of grain, milk, and meat. We suffered from hunger, cold, and abuse. The Germans were looking for “their” nation among the Ukrainians. In 1940, there was already one family of “Volksdeutsche,” or Germans (Senyshyn-Kundzirovs). A delegation from Hrubeshev (during the German occupation it was a county town) came to visit my grandfather Ivan Kantor. I remember how the interpreter tried to prove to him that he was of German descent. That the name Kantor means “singer” in German, etc. At that time, my grandfather was one of the oldest residents of Sebechiv and the Kantor family. He did not agree to the promised “beautiful life,” saying that his father Mykhailo and his grandfather Pylyp were not Germans but Ukrainians. For this, he was retaliated against. For three years (1941, 1942, 1943), they swept the grain for the “contingent” from the barn and took two cows. The old people’s legs were swollen with hunger. The third son, Pavlo (an engineer), who did not accept German citizenship, died in the Second World War. Fedir, a UGA chorunzhy, died near Pochapy, Ivan, a Sich Rifleman, died after being interned and beaten in a camp, and Pavlo was tortured in an unknown place.

During the German occupation, ethnic hatred between the Ukrainian and Polish populations continued. On this piece of land west of the Bug and covering the Kholm region, the unrest did not subside.

In the fall of 1943, Polish “partisans” put forward their slogan of destroying Ukrainian villages in the Kholm region and about two dozen villages in Galicia.

And Ukrainian villages in the Kholm region began to burn, the flames coming closer and closer (fall 1943, winter-spring 1944). Some were burned, others were burned. Interethnic murder began. For example, on the Green Holidays of 1944, Ukrainians who had been barbarically murdered in the vicinity of Steniatyn in the Kholm region were brought to Belz. Among the dead were a disabled man without a leg, a pregnant woman with a stretched abdomen, and a young girl with her heart torn out. Delegates from the villages accompanied the tortured Ukrainians from the Kholm region on their last journey to the Belz cemetery. Among them was my mother from the village of Sebecheva.

Young patriots from Sebechev went to protect Ukrainian villages in the Kholm region from a terrible disaster. They remained forever on the Kholm land. So, my fellow villagers irrigated the Kholm land, where Grand Duke Danylo Halytskyi is buried, with their blood, and others shed it on the land of Sebechiv. These are Mykhailo Klymchak and Mykola Polikha, Pavlo and Mykola Klymchak, Tadei Bryl, Onufriy and Yosyp Kantory, Vasyl Toporivskyi, Hryhorii Melnyk, Mykhailo Zablotskyi, Yosyp Shopiak, Pavlo Hrynkiv, Vasyl Vavruk, Volodymyr Figas, Mykhailo Hrynkiv, Pavlo Fusyk, Ivan Zablotskyi, Bohdan Bashuk, Myron Bryl, Andrii and Semen Davydoky, and others.

The village suffered another grief. In February 1944, a tragic accident occurred in the Sebechivska distillery. More than 40 people were burned (1 of them fatally).

In July 1944, the frontline passed through the town. The Western Bug became the border, and Sebechiv was under Polish rule. From July 1944 to February 1945, there was anarchy. Sometimes the “border guards” from Sokal came to “get acquainted” with the residents of Sebechiv, Wutkiewicz, Levochko, and other village patriots. And my fellow villagers went to Siberia: 17-year-old Olha Kozachok, 12-year-old Maria Krut, Natalia Klymchak, Roman Bryl, Oleksii Krut, Vasyl Holoyukh, Maria Toporivska, and others. Volodymyr Oliynyk, a student of the Ksmyy gymnasium, suffered great hardships in prisons. His name is associated with the town of Krasne (“Prybuzka Tragedy”). We must mention the priests Mykola Toporivsky and Semeon Krut. For not changing their priestly rank, they had to work for a long time in the logging industry of the Siberian taiga.

Although in the fall of 1944 there was anarchy in our Zabuzhia land, children went to school. There was no money, and teachers were paid by the village (with grain, cereals, wool, yarn). A Ukrainian private gymnasium was also opened in Bełża. There were many intellectuals in the city, including teachers, and they needed to survive. Kozak was the director of the gymnasium. And the never-to-be-forgotten teachers Hryhorii Shulhan, Marykishko, Khudyk, Kohalevych, Maliutsa, Fedorovych taught us without proper textbooks, risking their lives. They were paid in kind (food).

In February 1945, the Polish government was established in Belz

“Our villages suffered a terrible fate. Once hordes of Tatar Turks invaded Ukrainian lands and enslaved people, and now Polish military cavalry was attacking our villages. It was already a government army, not a partisan army.

I want to dwell on a fact that is important for the history of our villages and towns. My brother Bohdan Korol and I studied at the Belz Gymnasium and lived near the cemetery (the house has been preserved). It was 3-4 meters from the cemetery gate. Almost every February and March night, the gates of the Belz cemetery creaked. The old white-coated gravedigger was not stingy about the young men who were tortured in the Belz prison, whom he buried without coffins. How can we now know who was buried at night in these leveled graves near the church of St. Paraskovia in 1945-46?

In the spring of 1946, the eviction of my native Sebechiv began.

Some people were able to stay in the village. Soon, the Poles evicted Ukrainians to the west and north of Poland. I have visited Olsztynczyna (modern Poland) three times and I know very well the conditions in which my fellow villagers live. Ukrainians without the Ukrainian language, that’s what I can say about their existence.

“In 1951, the USSR and the Polish People’s Republic exchanged territories. My village of Sebechiv became part of Ukraine (what a joy it was for us). There was a command and control system in place at the time that erased the names of villages from history and invented new ones, as if the village had just been built. Sebechiv was named Krasnosilia. Dmytro Bezzabotnov, a member of the governmental commission for the acceptance of the Zabuzhia (our) territory, said, “We did not understand those names – Varyazh, Opilsko, Sebechiv…”

In the 1950s, the village seemed to become numb

“In the spring of 1952 (on Easter), I traveled through the village’s country roads. At first, I couldn’t find my way around. There was no Zavada forestry, no Skorybis public forest. What was left in the village of Krasne? Are these burned houses, empty houses, destroyed and mutilated public buildings? Instead of festive singing, cheerful groves, only the crow cawed, adding to the sadness of the lost past…

It was not of our own free will that the evil fate tore us away from our home. It did not spare us, scattered us all over the continents of the world. The desire of each of us is the same – to visit the village, the village cemetery at least once in our lives, to worship our relatives and take with us a lump of earth watered with sweat and blood of our glorious ancestors.

We, the natives of the village of Sebecheva, fought for our existence, for obtaining a profession and education in difficult postwar conditions. My fellow villagers work as teachers, engineers, doctors, artists, agricultural specialists…

When we left the village, we tried to follow the glorious traditions of Sobychiv: “Doing good to people”. On May 13, 1989, the newspaper “Vpered” published an article by V. Havilei, the headmaster of the school, who was respected among my fellow villagers. I and my fellow villagers, who were scattered around the world, are grateful to her personally and to those who carried out such hard work in the village, such as restoration, reconstruction, and revival.

I ask the fellow villagers of Sebechiv, those who returned after the expulsion and those whom fate sent to Sebechiv, also not of their own free will, to take care of the spiritual beauty of the village. Our ancestors were excellent workers, in the summer – in the field, in the winter – at their crafts and books. Let’s continue their traditions!

I have not repeated what was written in the district newspaper by the dear V. Havilen, I have described the past, and the present and future are up to you.

The embroidered image from the village of Sebechiv (Belzshchyna) on the embroidered map of Ukraine represents Lviv Oblast. Culture and Tourism – Belzka community

Y. Voytyuk, member of the Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian Language Society. Taras Shevchenko, a member of the Ukrainian Language Society,
Vpered newspaper, April 7, 1990.

 

From the Editor.

In view of the tragic events of our time, certain emotional statements of the author have been edited. Many Ukrainians were killed not only by German fascists, Moscow NKVDists, and communists, but also by Poles.

The story was tragic from all sides.