Pikulice

Pikulice. The view from the fort, "Łuczyce".

The village of Pikulice is located 5 km south from the district court and postal office of Przemysl. The village’s former name was Biliwka or Zelene. It is located by the stream Wisla that enters the Wiar River, just to the northeast. The village reveals the oldest traces of human habitation in south-eastern Poland, dating from 40,000-30,000 years ago.

The countryside of Pikuliczi (now Pikulice) originally belonged to Przemysl as part of one hundred fiefs donated in 1389 to the city by King Wladyslaw Jagiello. In the 15th century the village was incorporated by the starosta of Przemysl, this according to a document dated 29 October 1408. Wladyslaw Jagiello freed the residents of the village from all taxes and weights. In 1418, Ivan of Obuchow, the Rus starosta and the castellan of Szremsk, carried out royal orders to distinguish between the city outskirts and the villages Pikulice, Grochowce, Witoszyńce, and Koniuchy. Part of the village belonged to the Roman Catholic bishop of Przemysl up to the twentieth century. In 1565, there lived in Pikulice: 36 peasant families, one miller, two innkeepers, and one Orthodox priest. The oldest mention of a local parish church dates from 1507. In the sixteenth century there was also a Basilian monastery located there.

After the partition of 1772, the Austrian government sold Pikulice along with other surrounding villages to Count Ignacy Cetner (of Bakończyce). In 1785, under the Austrians, the population numbered 330: 291 Greek Catholics (88%), 25 Roman Catholics (8%), and 14 Jews (4%). To the south of Pikulice are the buildings which once were part of the manor estate owned by Princess Karolina Emilia Lubomirska, who was the last owner of the local assets.

For years, Pikulice had a manorial farm. By 1880, the population the village had nearly doubled, rising to 672 residents, including 105 Roman Catholics, and the remainder Greek Catholics. 29 residents were associated with the manorial estate. The Roman Catholic parish was in Przemysl, and the Greek Catholic parish was in Nehrybka. The village had a Greek Catholic church, and a one-room schoolhouse. The Greek Catholic church was originally a wooden structure built as early as 1830. The church was replaced by another wooden structure in 1841, and a masonry building in 1903. The church was named the Nativity of the BVM in 1879. It was demolished in the 1950s. The Roman Catholic neo-Gothic stone church and belfry were erected in 1912. It is the only church that remains today. On its facade is an emblem of the Polish eagle, the crest of the Lubomirski family, and the figure of Saint John the Baptist, who is the patron saint of Przemysl.

Artillery Barracks in Pikulice (early 20th century)

There is a monument erected in Pikulice honouring the memory of the soldiers of the Ukrainian Galician Army who, interned as prisoners of war by the Poles, died in 1919 to 1920 in the nearby camp. The former Austrian barracks in the years 1919-1924 served as detention center for Ukrainian soldiers from the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic. In 1921, the camp held 557 officers, 1,874 enlisted men, 100 women, and 35 children. The village itself included 151 houses and 875 inhabitants: 607 Greek Catholics (69%), 199 Roman Catholics (23%), and 68 Jews (8%). Several thousand of the prisoners died as a result of a typhoid epidemic and were buried in four mass graves in the Austrian war cemetery in the northern part of the countryside. In Communist times, the cemetery was destroyed, but reconstructed after 1990. In 2000, at the Ukrainian military cemetery, were buried 47 former UPA soldiers, previously exhumed from mass graves in Bircza and Usznej.

On a wooded hill south of the Pikulice are the ruins of the main fort GW-IV “Optyn”, built in 1880, and belonging to the outer ring of fortifications for Przemysl. To the west of the fort, are the remains of the auxiliary fort W-IIIa “Hermanowice”.

In 1938, the population of Pikulice numbered 747 Ukrainians.

When the German Army arrive in Przemysl in September 1939, the first mass executions of Jews took place between the16th and 19th of September, at several places in the city outskirts, including Pikulice.

The Ukrainian population was deported in the summer 1945 to Ukraine. On 15 November of that year Ukrainian partisans burned down most of the buildings. The remaining Ukrainians, some fifteen, were resettled in Western Poland in May 1947.

Ukrainian War Cemetery in Pikulice