Phantom Pain, or about Greek Catholic Churches Demolition and Divine Justice in the Bieszczady Region after 1947

After the year 1947, as a result of displacements of Ukrainian population, cultural landscape of the Bieszczady Mountains has undergone major transformation. They left behind their homesteads and temples of foreign ceremonies, which represented and labeled unfamiliar values, without giving the new area a chance for complete customization. Thus its demolition or transformation into churches was for Communist authority, and new residents of those lands, psychologically needed to create the Bieszczady world from the beginning. Since the devastation of the Sanctuary often contradicted with Christian values, thus very often people from outside were employed to perform those tasks. Everything was taking place to the ambient reaction of the people, according to the principle of not mixing in the Will of God. Inscribed by me records from several Bieszczady town residents show however that phantom pain resulting from deeply hidden sense of guilt is not alien to them, and the story of a penalty of God, which affected the perpetrators, adopted the “absolving” function.
 

After the year 1947, as a result of displacements of Ukrainian population, cultural landscape of the Bieszczady Mountains has undergone major transformation. They left behind their homesteads and temples of foreign ceremonies, which represented and labeled unfamiliar values, without giving the new area a chance for complete customization. Thus its demolition or transformation into churches was for Communist authority, and new residents of those lands, psychologically needed to create the Bieszczady world from the beginning. Since the devastation of the Sanctuary often contradicted with Christian values, thus very often people from outside were employed to perform those tasks. Everything was taking place to the ambient reaction of the people, according to the principle of not mixing in the Will of God. Inscribed by me records from several Bieszczady town residents show however that phantom pain resulting from deeply hidden sense of guilt is not alien to them, and the story of a penalty of God, which affected the perpetrators, adopted the “absolving” function.