Sanok, in full the Royal Free City of Sanok, is a town in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship of southeastern Poland with 38,397 inhabitants, as of June 2016. Located on the San River and around south of Przemyśl, Sanok lies directly by the Carpathian Mountains.
The town's history goes back over a thousand years to when it was part of a medieval trade route. The Museum of Folk Architecture as well as the refurbished Sanok Castle and Old Town are popular points of interest. The region also features a trail for hikers and cyclists.
Geography The city of Sanok is the capital of Sanok County in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship in Poland. Previously, it was in the Krosno Voivodeship (1975–1998) and in the Ruthenian Voivodeship (1340–1772), which was part of the Cherven Cities/Red Ruthenia region, and in wider sense, of the Lesser Poland Province (not of Lesser Poland proper). Historically, it was part of the Land of Sanok.
This historic city is situated on the San River at the foot of Castle Hill in the Lesser Poland (Małopolska) region. It lies in a wooded, hilly area near the national road number 28, which runs along southern Poland, from Ustrzyki Dolne to Wadowice ( away). It is located in the heartland of the Pogórze Bukowskie part of Doły (Pits), and its average elevation is above sea level, although there are some hills located within the confines of the city.
Sanok is located on the bank of the river San. The area surrounding mountain range stretches between the Wisłok, Osława and San Rivers in the Salt Mountains (Central Beskidian Piedmont), in the inland with temperateness climate. The hills of the Bieszczady mountain range are typical for this countryside. Sanok County is bordered by Krosno County to the west, Brzozów County to the north, Przemyśl County to the north-east and Lesko County to the east. It also borders Slovakia to the south. Before World War II, the Oslawa and San Rivers line was designated the wild frontier between Poles and Lemkos.
The city is a member of Carpathian Euroregion, which is designed to bring together the people who inhabit the region of the Carpathian Mountains and to facilitate their cooperation in the fields of science, culture, education, trade, tourism and economy.
History Middle Ages
The earliest mention of the region where Sanok is located comes from Nestor the Chronicler, who described how in 981, the surrounding areas, along with several Cherven gords, then inhabited by the West Slavic tribe of Lendians, was made a part of Red Ruthenia, when Vladimir I of Kiev invaded the land and took it over from the Duchy of Poland. In 1018, the settlement along with the surrounding region returned to Poland, and in 1031, was again recaptured by Rus'. Sanok and the region then again returned to Poland in 1069, only to be made part of Rus' in 1085. In 1339, the town was given the Magdeburg law by Boleslaw-Yuri II of Galicia.
Sanok was mentioned in the Ruthenian Hypatian Codex chronicle, where one can read that in the year 1150: The Hungarian King Géza II of Hungary crossed the mountains and seized the stronghold of Sanok with its governor as well as many villages in the Przemyśl area. The same chronicle refers to Sanok twice more, stating that in 1205 it was the meeting place of a Ruthenian princess Anna and a Hungarian king, and that in 1231 a Ruthenian prince made an expedition to "Sanok - Hungarian Gate".
During the Galicia–Volhynia Wars, Sanok was seized by King Casimir III of Poland, who reconfirmed its municipal status on 25 April 1366, and made it a royal city of the Polish Crown. At that time Sanok became the centre of a new administrative district called Sanok Land, a part of the Ruthenian Voivodeship. Several courts of justice operated in the town, including the municipal and rural courts of lower instance and also the higher instance court for the entire Sanok Land, based on the German town law."Thus the region adjoining the Carpathians and extending to a line Tarnów–Rzeszów–Jarosław, the hithero almost uninhabited regio pedemontana was settled by German-speaking Silesians and soon abounded in large Waldhufendorfer with Frankish hides and in towns whose German names were in many case identical with place-names in Silesia (Landskron, Grunberg, [...] Göttinger Arbeitskreis. Eastern Germany. Holzner-Verlag, 1961. p. 79. Germans settled in the territory of the Kingdom of Poland (territory of present-day Subcarpathian Voivodeship) from the 14th to 16th centuries (see ), mostly after the region returned to Poland in 1340, when Casimir III of Poland took the Czerwień towns.
Marcin Bielski states that Bolesław I the Brave had settled some Germans in the region to defend the borders against Hungary and Kievan Rus', who later turned to farming. Maciej Stryjkowski mentions German peasants near Przeworsk, Przemyśl, Sanok, and Jarosław, describing them as good farmers. The region was also traditionally inhabited by subgroups of the Rusyn people: Lemkos and Boykos.
Modern period
As early at the 17th century, an important trade route went across Sanok connecting the interior of Hungary with Poland through the Łupków Pass. As a result of the First Partition of Poland (Treaty of St-Petersburg dated 5 July 1772), Sanok was annexed by the Austrian Habsburg monarchy.Atlas des peuples d'Europe centrale, André et Jean Sellier, 1991, p.88 At that time, Sanok and the surrounding region (including west and east of Subcarpathian Voivodship) became known as the Galicia province, within the Habsburg Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria.
In the mid-18th century, 47.7% of the town's population was Roman Catholic (Polish), 36.4% Jewish, and 14.7% Greek Catholic (Ruthenian). The Galician peasant revolt took place in the region during the revolutions of 1848.
The course of the river Dunajec and that of the San, both in West Galicia, marked the two successive stages in the breakthrough battle which initiated the Austro-German offensive of 1915 on the eastern front. An attempt to hold the line of the Wisłok river and the Łupków Pass failed before renewed Austro-German attacks on 8 May 1915. Wisłok Valley was one of the strategically important Carpathian rivers bitterly contested in battles on the Eastern Front of World War I during the winter of 1914–1915."The Pursuit and Battles at Sanok and Rzeszów (May 6).—After his severe defeat, Radko Dimitriev's plan was to hold the Łupków Pass with his left wing, and, supported upon this, to bring the pursuit to a stand on the line Nowotaniec–Besko-right bank of the Wisłok, where there were positions favoured by the lay of the ground, and then, between the Vistula and the Wisłok, on the line Wielopole-Rzeszów–Mielec. Here he proposed to reconstitute his units, which had fallen into great disorder, and to strengthen them by bringing up reserves. Troops were sent to him from other fronts, and by the 8th he could again dispose of 18 inf. divs., 5 cav. divs. and 5 Reichswehr bdes. The orders were that the offensive was to be continued with all possible vigour. Mackensen's army was to push forward over the stretch of the Wisłok between Besko and Frysztak on Mrzygłód and Tyczyn, and the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand on Rzeszów, while Boroevic was to roll up Brussilov's VIII. Russian Army in the direction of Sanok. Bohm's II. Austrian Army was to join up corps by corps from the left wing in proportion to the progress of the attack."
During World War I, the Russian army occupied the town from May until July, 1915 and significantly damaged the town. The town was subsequently occupied by troops of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In 1918 Poland regained independence and control of the town and within the interwar Second Polish Republic it was the seat of the Sanok County in the Lwów Voivodeship. Sanok was known as a centre of Ukrainian movement in Galicia, and of cultural heritage of the Lemkos and other Rusyns.
World War II
The Jewish population of Sanok may have comprised nearly 30% of the total population in the early 20th century. During the joint German–Soviet invasion of Poland, which started World War II, in September 1939, it was invaded by Germany, and the Einsatzgruppe I entered the town on September 25, 1939, to commit various atrocities against the populace. In 1939–1940, the Germans imprisoned many Poles in the local prison, especially those who tried to escape occupation to take refuge in Hungary.Wardzyńska, p. 258 The Germans then massacred 112 Poles at the Gruszka mountain near Tarnawa Dolna. The victims are buried at the Central Cemetery in Sanok. At the beginning of the German occupation during World War II, the Jewish population was around 5,000. During the occupation, most of the Jews were either executed or killed in Nazi death camps or Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. Some of the actions against the Jews were assisted by local auxiliaries and hundreds of the deaths occurred in Sanok itself, while the Polish resistance movement established the secret Polish Council to Aid Jews "Żegota", which operated in the town. Buildings that had been owned by Jews were taken over by the local population. The local Jewish cemetery still exists. Several hundred Jews are thought to have survived, most of whom fled to the Soviet Union at the beginning of the war. Some of the Jews emigrated to Canada and the United States in the early 1900s with Sanoker Burial Societies spreading throughout New York and other regions where they settled.
In 1942, Sanok was the location of the Stalag 327 prisoner-of-war camp, following its relocation from Jarosław and before its further relocation to Przemyśl. Afterwards the present-day district of Olchowce was the location of a subcamp of Stalag 327, in which some 7,000-10,000 POWs died.
In 1943 the foundation of the Waffen-SS Division Galizien took place among the Ukrainian minority in Sanok, with many locals volunteering in the ethnic Ukrainian Waffen-SS. Because of material support and assistance provided by the Ukrainian minority to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which was waging a battle for Ukrainian separatism against the Polish state, new Soviet-installed communist authorities deported the Ukrainian (and Lemko) population of Sanok and its region to the Recovered Territories attached to Poland after World War II during Operation Vistula (1946–1947). Some of the Lemkos expelled returned to Sanok in 1957-58 and others after 1989.
Sanok contains an open-air museum called a skansen in the Biała Góra district, where examples of architecture from all of the region's main ethnic groups have been moved and carefully reassembled in a skansen evoking everyday rural life in the 19th century.
Archaeology
Settled in prehistoric times, the south-eastern Poland region that is now Subcarpathia was overrun in pre-Roman times by various tribes, including the Celts (Anarti), Goths and Vandals (Przeworsk culture and Púchov culture). In the Middle Ages, the area was inhabited by the Polish tribe of Lendians, and the area was also invaded by Hungarians, before it eventually became part of the emerging Polish state in the 10th century.
The region subsequently became part of the Great Moravian state. Upon the invasion of the Hungarian tribes into the heart of the Great Moravian Empire around 899, the Lendians of the area declared their allegiance to Hungarian Empire. The region then became a site of contention between Poland, Kievan Rus' and Hungary starting in at least the 9th century.