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the governor argued that many valuable historical monuments were being forgotten and announced
his plans to publish a photographic “memory album” of the “ancient portraits” that hung on the walls
of places of worship and manor houses (dwory). Since Józewski implored clergymen of all faiths to
notify the journal if they were responsible for historical objects in their parishes, this mission was not
narrowly Polish in an ethnic or religious sense. And yet it adhered to the idea that Volhynia’s culture
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was inextricably bound up with that of the old Polish nobility. Similarly, much of the content of the
second yearbook relied on tying Volhynian history to the fate of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, with the editors explaining that they provided practical examples of how Ukrainians
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and Poles “can live freely—loving one another—side by side.” In the same issue, Jakub Hoffman
and his wife Jadwiga wrote about the participation of Volhynians in the November Uprising of 1830
and the Kościuszko Rising of 1794 respectively, both canonical events in a certain version of Polish
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history that emphasized the heroic struggle for Polish-led freedom against imperial oppression.
Again, inclusive narratives that promoted Poland’s commitment to democracy betrayed class and
national hierarchies in which a certain version of Polishness remained dominant.
ACCEPTABLE JEWISH FACES
Poles and Ukrainians, Ukrainians and Poles. But what of the Jews who constituted ten per cent of the
province’s population? When one British foreign official argued that Józewski wished “to create a
Volhynian ‘Lokalpatriotismus,’ in which Poles and Ukrainians–Jews, too, for that matter–can share
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alike,” he implied that Jews were something of an afterthought. Regional publications certainly had
far less to say about the practical ways in which Jews might be integrated into the vision of Volhynia,
61 “Odezwa,” Rocznik Wołyński (1931), v-vi.
62 “Od Wydawców,” Rocznik Wołyński (1931), iii.
63 Jadwiga Hoffman, “Udział Wołynia w powstaniu Kościuszkowskim,” Rocznik Wołyński (1931), 67-87; Jakub
Hoffman, “Wołyń w walce 1831,” Rocznik Wołyński (1931), 149-192.
64 “Report by Mr Savery on a Tour of Volhynia” (1932), NAL FO 417/30/103.
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