See? Ukrainian!
letter from the polish consulate
“Consulate General of Poland enclosed is returning your application and money order for 40 USD for retrieving a birth certificate of your grandfather due to the face that the village of (MEDWEDOWCE) MEDVEDIVISTI is located in Ukraine district of TERNOPIL not in Poland.
Please contact American consul in Ukraine for assistance in that search for a birth certificate.”
Some interesting facts:
From RootsWeb:
From late 18th century to 1919 wies/village Medwedowce was predominantly a Ruthenian/Ukrainian village with its own Greek Catholic Church. The filial Roman Catholic Church was in Buczacz. Buczacz was both the POWIAT (administrative district /county) and the GMINA (judicial/tax district)
Tarnapolskie wojiwodstwo > Historical Province of Galicia, administered by ethnic Poles for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the Interwar Period (1919-1938) this region came under Reconstituted Poland’s domain. Technically Poland had not existed as a geopolitical entity for the previous 125 years. Post World War 2, this region became a part of SSR Ukraine under Soviet domain until 1991, when Ukraine became independent.
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My grandfather was born there in 1914, and the area apparently bounced back and forth between Germany, Austria and Russia. In 1918, it became part of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic.There was a Polish-Ukrainian war and the city remained under Polish control. The Polish army said there would be no peace with the Russians without creating a Ukrainian state. The Soviets and Poles partitioned Ukraine and then Ternopol stayed under Polish control.
Then there’s some crap about the Soviets crashing the border and taking the area back. It was then incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
THEN, our good buddies the Soviets made it their first priority to destroy the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and exterminate its leaders. There were mass arrests, torture, executions - good times.
AND as if that weren’t illuminating enough, in 1941 the Germans continued to kill Jews and sent Ukrainians to Germany as forced labour.
My mother was born in Germany in 1946.
After the Nazis had their asses handed to them, the Polish were deported to a former German territory as part of a Soviet ethnic cleansing of modern day Ukraine.
Since 1991, Ternopil has been a part of independent Ukraine.
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FASCINATING
What a fucked up piece of history my grandparents lived through… I with they were alive to tell me their story.