On June 28–29, 2024, a group of employees of the Department of Computer Science: prof. Jerzy Montusiewicz, prof. Marek Miłosz and dr Elżbieta Miłosz, as well as Jerzy Warakomski, conducted a field survey of wooden Orthodox church architecture in the area of Southern Roztocze. The field work was preceded by a library search, an internet inquiry, and several interviews with people who are specialists in this field. Obtaining current information about the condition of objects, their availability, affiliation to local parish, administrative or museum structures will enable planning 3D scanning of selected objects in the future. The religious buildings visited originally belonged to the Greek Catholic Church. Greek Catholics, also known as Uniates, are Christians who joined the Union of Brest in 1596 within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This meant that they accepted the authority of the Pope while maintaining the liturgy in the Eastern rite. In the area of Southern Roztocze, the history of these churches in the Polish People’s Republic, after Operation Vistula in 1947, i.e. the resettlement of Ruthenians/Ukrainians mostly to the west of post-WW2 Poland, followed one of two scenarios. If there was no Western rite church in the village, the Eastern rite one was used by the Westerners. If the Western rite followers had their own temple, the Eastern rite one was turned into a warehouse for the newly established state-owned collective labour farms. In the 1990s, with regulation relaxation, Western Catholic communities usually built new, larger, brick churches, leaving wooden Eastern Catholic or Orthodox ones without proper care. Many of them were degraded, some were taken over by emerging museums in the 21st century.
The carefully planned route made it possible to visit 10 wooden churches, 2 brick churches and 1 synagogue, as well as several old Uniate cemeteries.
The places visited were:
- branch church of Saint Michael the Archangel from 1719 in the village of Moszczanica,
- parish church of Saint Demetrius from 1842 in the village of Cewków,
- parish church of Saint Demetrius from 1904 in the village of Dzików Stary, made of brick; the interior served as location for scenes from the Kozielsk camp in the film “Post mortem. The Katyn Story” by A. Wajda (inside there are still the wooden bunk beds from the film set),
- ruins of a brickwork synagogue from the turn of the 19th/20th century in the village of Dzików Stary,
- parish church of Saint Demetrius from 1843 in the village of Ułazów,
- parish church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary from 1813 in the village of Kowalówka,
- parish church of the Protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary from 1586 in the village of Gorajec, the oldest wooden church in Poland,
- parish church of the Protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary from 1888 in the village of Chotylub,
- branch church of Saint Paraskeva from 1713 in the village of Nowe Brusno,
- Eastern church complex in Radruż, Eastern church of Saint Paraskeva from the end of the 16th century,
- Eastern church of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker from 1931 in the village of Radruż,
- parish church of Saint George from 1910, brickwork, in the village of Werchrata,
- branch church of the Protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary from 1755 in the village of Wola Wielka,
- parish cemetery in the village of Nowe Brusno,
- crosses commemorating the abolition of serfdom in 1863 in the village of Dąbrówka,
- cemetery in the village of Radruż,
- cemetery of Austrian soldiers fallen in 1914–1918 in the village of Werchrata.
The direct impulse to carry out the inquiry was the intentional burning of the 17th century wooden church of St. Helena in Nowy Sącz along with historic equipment on June 16, 2024 (https://www.rmf24.pl/regiony/zakopane/news-pozar-zabytkowego-kosciola-w-nowym-saczu-podpalacz-zatrzyman,nId,7594050#crp_state=1).
