Lemks as an ethnic group

Abstract

Asking today who the Lemks are we should remember that the postwar period and especially their native territories and deportations into strange environments influenced the present condition of the group. Up to 1947 Lemko people lived in Niski and Sądecki Beskid, both in Poland and Slovakia, in the region called by ethnographers Lemko Territories (Lemkowszczyzna). Lemks, the Carpathian mountaineers, constituted there an enclave of Ruthenian culture that was the most standing out to the west. Still nowadays when we wander along this mountain range, that is partly depopulated, even the eye of an unskilled observer can notice some traces of somebody’s presence: abandoned orchards, decayind farms, three-armed crosses hammered either in metal or stone, overgrown with weeds graveyards, and of course, Orthodox churches, both those remaining and the devasted ones. The specific character of the places was once fulfilled by Ruthenian speech that can be heard even today and the Orthodox liturgy in which native people praised Lord’s name. And although that kultural borderline non omnis moriar because Lemks still live there. Some of them came back to the old houses from compulsory deportations after 1956, few others managed by a miracle to survive in their places the stormy years of 1944—1947.