Page 158 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

Attempts to deploy non-Polish populations in order to remove perceived Jewish influence in

Volhynia’s towns found echoes across the province. In April 1932, by which point Łuck alone had

received a decree determining its exact borders, Józewski directed his county heads to ascertain the

legal status of their towns, particularly in light of the upcoming town council elections. In his yearly

report, the governor also detailed recommendations for the regulation—and, in most cases, the

simultaneous expansion—of town borders that were submitted to the Ministry of the Interior in

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Warsaw. The initiative was largely successful. By mid-December 1933, the list of towns whose
borders had been regulated by ministerial decree featured not only larger settlements like Równe and

Włodzimierz, whose populations exceeded 20,000 inhabitants, but also much smaller miasteczka

such as Bereźne and Dąbrowica, each of which was home to just under 3,000 people and had an even

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larger proportion of Jews. The archival files show that many of the people who took part in debates
over individual town expansion plans—although by no means all—made explicit reference to links

between increasing the wellbeing of all urban inhabitants and limiting Jewish influence.

One such town was Rożyszcze, a settlement that was located around 30 kilometers north of

Łuck along the river Styr. Its population of just over 4,500 inhabitants was considerably smaller than

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that of the provincial capital, but it included a higher percentage of Jews—estimated at 83 percent.

If debates about the correct location of the town’s administrative borders dated back to the beginning

of the interwar period, the archival material shows that disputes flared up in the fall of 1931. At the

end of that October, the administrative unit (gmina) of which Rożyszcze was a part resolved that the

four settlements surrounding the town—the villages of Załobowo and Jurydyka and the colonies of

Nowe Załobowo and Wełnianka—had an “urban character” and should be included within the town’s

64 “Sprawozdanie Wojewody Wołyńskiego o ogólnym stanie Województwa działalności administracji państwowej
w r 1932-ym i ważniejszych zamierzeniach na przyszlość,” AAN MSW (Part 1) 111/772-775.
65 For the list of towns, see “Ustalenie obszaru administracyjnego miast wołyńskich,” Wołyń, December 17, 1933, 4.
66 According to undated statistics in the archival files, Jews made up 83 percent of the population. The remainder
was made up of Poles (9 percent), Germans (4.5 percent), Ukrainians (1.5 percent), and Russians (1.5 percent), as
well as six Czechs and a Belarusian. AAN UWW (Part 1) 298 [no pagination in file].

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