Postwar Violence in the Subcarpathian Countryside, Poland

An Uncomfortable History from Below

This paper examines vernacular memories of postwar violence in rural Subcarpathia, based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2016 and 2022. Although the fieldwork was undertaken across various local communities in the Przeworsk and Jarosław counties, the paper focuses on a particular case study, treated here as a synecdoche for the social realities of a state of exception and lawlessness in the postwar countryside. It explores the microhistory of the massacres that took place in the woods of Dębrzyna near Przeworsk between 1944 and 1947, carried out by individuals linked to the Railway Protection Guard and the Home Army, targeting people returning home, mostly from forced labour. These acts are situated within the complex social fabric of the village, highlighting the roles of community members from whose ranks the perpetrators emerged. By foregrounding local perspectives, the paper contributes to an understudied aspect of postwar violence, showing how neighborly and kinship relations shaped patterns of conflict and memory, while linking these findings to broader debates on local Holocaust experiences, the so-called “vernacular turn” in Polish historiography, and anthropological studies of memory and morality.

The lecture will be given by Magdalena Lubańska (University of Warsaw).

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This lecture is part of the Colloquium in Central and East European History