Changes in the national composition and symbols of Zhovkva’s urban space as a result of the Second World War

Abstract

Before the war, urban symbolic space of Zhovkva was divided between several national groups – Ukrainians, Poles and Jews, who created the culture and history of the city. The foundations for such cohabitation were laid during the construction of the city by the Field Crown Hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski, and survived until the start of the war, as evidenced by the memories of its inhabitants. Therefore, the article explains how the ethnic composition of the city’s population has changed and its further influence on the symbolism of the urban space. Subsequently of the dramatic events of the Second World War and the processes of resettlement of the population, two of the national groups disappeared from the urban space. The Jewish community was physically destroyed during the war, and the Poles were evicted from Zhovkva to Poland in 1944–1946. The destruction of the Jews meant the death of the whole subethnos with original culture and history. The resettlement of Poles from Zhovkva, from their homes, was extremely difficult psychologically, because they were saying goodbye to their hometown, where they lived for several generations, were deprived of their homes, property that belonged to the ancestors, they were allowed to take out only 2 tons of items social household consumption. Soviet soldiers and functionaries, peasants from the surrounding villages, who got used to living together and rebuilding Zhovkva, became “new” city dwellers. The “new” residents of the city, in cooperation with the Soviet authorities, changed the symbolic space of the city, starting with the change of name from Zhovkva to Nesterov, in honor of the Russian pilot Peter Nesterov, who died near the city in 1914. The city was built on the socialist urban model, which destroyed the historical and architectural environment of Zhovkva, founded in the XVI century. Architectural sights that testified to the multinational of Zhovkvа were destroyed or completely changed their purpose. Polish churches and monasteries were turned into warehouses or barracks for soldiers, and icons, paintings, statues, religious things were destroyed or exported abroad. Keywords Zhovkva, Stanisław Żółkiewski, Jan ІІІ Sobieski, socio-demographic processes, Poles, Jews, interethnic relations, symbolic space.