The Belarusians are celebrating their independence. Podlachia is rediscovering its history

Wiera Matejczuk with her pupils. Photo: History of Belarusians in Podlachia

There was no Belarusianess here, repeats Aunt Luda. I had long been uncritical of what she was saying. The aunt was after all a treasury of family memory and knew everything. She once listed the birth dates of six siblings of her mother, my grandma Ola and their children. I noted it down in disbelief. When I checked it against the parish records, I found that everything was correct. So, I listened to this talk about the absence of Belarusianess with a degree of trust. Although, I should have known already then that it was a myth and not a fact.

Erased traces of the past

Aunt Luda lived in Kuźnica on the Polish Belarusian border. She was born and raised in Łosośna Wielka, a village five kilometres away in the direction of Sokółka. Local Polishness was emphasized by local publications and the location of monuments. Above the hill in front of Kuźnica was a Golgotha of the East. What used to be an everyday language for most inhabitants, both Catholic and in the Orthodox minority, was called “simple”. It was really a Belarusian dialect. Any symptom of Belarusianess was meticulously erased from the public space. Like the fact that Jazep Varonka, the first prime minister of the Belarusian Democratic Republic, was born in Kuźnica. The same Republic that was proclaimed on March 25th 1918 in Minsk which was under German occupation. It has become a symbol of the dream of independence for several generations of Belarusians. Despite this, few people from Kuźnica know about it. They probably will not learn about it. In 2014, when Podlachian Belarusians organized a meeting to discuss Varonka, almost none of the locals showed up.

When I ask my aunt about Belarusianess, I am not asking about Kuźnica, but rather Surażkowo, a small town in the Knyszyn Forest, next to Supraśl. That is where her mother and my grandmother Ola came from. It was known it is a “Orthodox area”. The villages feature wooden crosses with the signature ledge and people spoke Belarusian amongst each other. I knew the story of a local Belarusian teacher called Wiera Matejczuk-Masłowska from the magazines published by the Belarusian minority in Białystok. I had also heard about the Belarusian Peasants’ and Workers’ Union from 1926, which was delegalized by Polish authorities. “Maybe any of the six siblings of grandma Ola got involved in something?”, I asked my aunt once. She fiercely objected. Perhaps too fiercely?

Major Chomczyk

She spoke much about Józef Chomczyk though – the oldest brother of our grandmother, who was a major in the Polish army in the interwar years. A lot was said about him by his family and neighbours in Surażkowo. One of them, a man born in 1931, impersonated his parade walk and remembered his officer uniform. Józef served in Grodno, where he had a wife and two daughters. In 1939 he defended the city. According to testimonies of people who knew him, he was arrested by the Soviets and murdered in Katyń. Sometimes someone mentioned Bereza Kartuska or another prison, but then they stopped speaking and changed the subject. There was also bitterness that monuments were raised for other Katyń victims, while Józef was forgotten.

I researched this person a bit when I was writing a book on my family history. Józef Chomczyk did not feature in it in any distinct way, but for my own peace of mind I wanted to know more about his fate. At first, I looked through the Katyń lists, but his name was not there. Then, I took a look at the Central Military Archive. That was a surprise.

Józef Chomczyk, born 1895, began his military career in the tsarist army during the First World War. His family history was brushed over. His Polish peers did not have to hide that they served on the Russian side as subjects of the Empire. When it came to my great-uncle it was better to stay quiet. In the summer of 1915, when the Russian army was retreating eastwards, led by crowds of refugees (bezhentsy). Józef volunteered for the army. Before the war he had finished six years of primary and secondary school. In December 1915, he was sent to a cadet training school outside of St. Petersburg. Then he returned to the front and quickly rose in rank. Following the revolution, towards the end of 1917, he deserted with the rank of staff captain (a rank between poruchik and captain in the Russian army).

He returned to his birthplace Surażkowo. “On April 4th, 1919, I joined the Belarusian Commander’s Directorate for the position of recruiting officer”, he writes in a curriculum vitae he prepared for military purposes that I located in his file at the archives. I cannot believe what I am seeing. So, Józef joined the local Belarusian national movement that fought for a independent country! It starts to dawn on me why my family ferociously underlined that “there was never any Belarusianess here”.

Józef Chomczyk. Photo: Author’s archives

Education, language and one’s own identity

Józef arrived in a different Surażkowo than he remembered leaving from at the beginning of the First World War. The German occupation from the summer of 1915 had awoken Belarusian hopes of emancipation. The schools had introduced national languages, including Belarusian. Raising the status of the language meant that Belarusianess was also lifted to a full-fledged national identity. A real hindrance to development was the fact that so many Belarusian villages in the Białystok area had been depopulated. Their inhabitants were scattered deep in Russia and returned only between 1921 and 1922. The places where people had stayed behind were quick to spread the Belarusian notions around. Just like in Surażkowo and other local villages.

An important element of this movement were the schools. In the autumn of 1916, a Belarusian teachers seminary was created in nearby Svislač. It became an important centre for activists from the entirety of Podlachia. The first teacher’s course was completed by Wiera Matejczuk (later Masłowska and Karczewska after marriages) and her sister Żenia, both from Ogrodniczki near Supraśl. Some 350 Belarusian schools were created under German rule. In the autumn of 1917, when the graduates of the seminary were dispatched to their postings, Wiera was sent all the way to the Białowieża Forest, to Grabowiec. In Sokołda, four kilometres from Surażkowo, another Belarusian school was administered in 1918 by a graduate of the same course, Maria Jaroszewicz from Knyszewicze. It is possible that the Chomczyk siblings also went there, but like with most of the Belarusian past, such memories from family history have been erased.

Most of the graduates of this seminary, including Wiera Matejczuk and Maria Jaroszewicz, are born around the same time as Józef – 1895 or 1896. They were bound by many things: language, culture, Orthodox religion, hailing from wealthy farming families, and that they began their education before 1914. In 1918, they were about twenty years old when this great opportunity arose. Before the war they would not have been able to imagine it: their own state with their language, culture and identity. One that they would not have to leave behind for a better life. It is not surprising that the approached this with enthusiasm and wanted to follow their dreams.

Belarusian teachers. Photo: Private archives of the Jaroszewicz family

At the end of 1918 the fate of the war had been sealed. The Białystok region, however, did still not know its future. Poles and Belarusians believed it was theirs and some Jews argued for Białystok to become a free city. In November 1918, the city was within the borders Polish state for a short while. But on November 14th, the Germans took over again exercising full authority. They wanted to keep these lands so that they could evacuate their army from Ukraine to Eastern Prussia. Poles and Belarusians were mobilizing to prepare for when the German forces would leave. The government of the Belarusian Democratic Republic began forming their own military capacity with the support of the Lithuanian government. In mid-February of 1919, there were already some 80 officers. One of them was Józef Chomczzyk, who had been a recruiting officer for a month. Recruitment offices appeared in Białystok, Sokółka and Supraśl among other towns.

When the Polish army entered Białystok on February 19th,1919, taking over control from the retreating Germans, any form of Belarusian life was supressed. The representatives of the Belarusian Democratic Republic were interned and all its offices in the field dismantled. All the recruitment officers were arrested, among them my grand-uncle Józef Chomczyk. Two months later the Polish forces entered Grodno to disarm the Belarusian soldiers.

End of a dream and growing fears

Discussions soon began on the creation of Belarusian units within the Polish army, in exchange for promises of Belarusian autonomy inside the Polish state. These were bogged down by disagreements and arguments. In the summer of 1919, the Belarusian Military Commission was formed, and soon started to recruit officers. Józef Chomczyk came before it and filled out a form which I would later read from trying to learn about his fate in the Russian army and Belarusian movement. Being accepted into the Belarusian Military Commission, he became the adjutant of Hassan Konopacki himself – the commander of the Belarusian units in the Polish army, appointed in 1919 by Józef Piłsudski. This was right before the Polish-Bolshevik war. A lot points to Józef Chomczyk being a part of that fight alongside the Belarusian units. It is also possible that he was injured during that conflict, as the documents inform that he was a patient at the military hospital in Białystok in 1921. Despite fighting on the Polish side, the Belarusian cause was not heading the right way.

The Treaty of Riga that ended the war also split Belarusian lands between the Second Polish Republic and Bolshevik Russia. There was no talk about a Belarusian autonomy within the Polish state any longer. In spring of 1921, the Belarusian Military Commission was dissolved, with the officers and soldiers interned. They were also partly blocked from being recruited into the Polish army. The documents of grand-uncle Chomczyk clearly show that he was not accepted any longer.

The Belarusian school system did not exist anymore. Konstanty Srokowski, a public figure and politician, wrote following a trip to the eastern voivodships in 1923 that the “Polish military authorities had dissolved all schools and the seminary [in Świsłocz (today’s Svislač)] in a drastic manner in 1919. A significant number of teachers were interned in camps, while the rest were chased off. The equipment in the schools were partly destroyed and some of it confiscated for use in Polish schools.” The school in Sokołda became Polish and it became illegal to create or administer Belarusian education within the Białystok Voivodship.

The dream of having their own country was dented by the brutal reality. The enthusiasm that had existed up until then transformed into growing fears. Many of those that got involved in the Belarusian movement now sat behind bars. Wiera Matejczuk-Masłowska, who tried to move Belarusian activism underground was charged in 1923 of treason by a court in Białystok. The prosecutor demanded life in prison. Finally, she was sentenced to six years in prison. The teachers who recently graduated remained in their villages, terrified that they would face a similar fate. It is unknown what Józef Chomczyk did in the entire inter-bellum period. In the villages that not so long ago were dominated by a dream of a Belarusian state, one could now hear more often that “there was never a Belarusian movement here”.

This article was first published in Polish by NEW.org.pl

Aneta Prymaka-Oniszk is a Belarusian journalist and writer from Podlachia. She has published articles with Gazeta Wyborcza, Polityka, National Geographic, Pismo and Karta. She has received accolades for her book Bieżeństwo 1915 – Zapomniani uchodźcy (The forgotten refugees). In February 2024, her new reportage was published by Czarne titled Kamienie musiały polecieć. Wymazana przeszłość Podlasia (The stones had to fly. The erased past of Podlachia.

“We suport the Belarusian Awakening’24” is a project co-financed by Solidarity Fund PL within the framework of Polish development cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland in the amount of PLN 230,000.

This publication expresses the views of the author only and cannot be identified with the official position of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland.

Belarusian minority, Białystok, First World War, Podlachia, Polish-Belarusian relations, Second Polish Republic