The town's history goes back almost 1000 years when it was part of a medieval trade route.[2] The Museum of Folk Architecture as well as the refurbished Sanok Castle and Old Town are popular points of interest.[3] The region also features a 70 km trail for hikers and cyclists.[3]
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 (340 km or 211 mi away). It is located in the heartland of the Pogórze Bukowskie part of Doły (Pits), and its average elevation is 300 m (984 ft) above sea level, although there are some hills located within the confines of the city.
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.
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.[5] Germans settled in the territory of the Kingdom of Poland (territory of present-day Subcarpathian Voivodeship) from the 14th to 16th centuries (see Ostsiedlung), mostly after the region returned to Poland in 1340, when Casimir III of Poland took the Czerwień towns.
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 attributed to the Habsburg monarchy.[6] At that time the area (including west and east of Subcarpathian Voivodship) became known as the Galicia province. For more details, see the article Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria.
Main Market Square in Sanok
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).[7]
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.[8]
During World War I, the Russian army occupied the town from May until July, 1915 and significantly damaged the town.[according to whom?] The town was subsequently occupied by troops of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Mass grave of Poles massacred by the Germans at the Gruszka mountain
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.[9] In 1939–1940, the Germans imprisoned many Poles in the local prison, especially those who tried to escape occupation to take refuge in Hungary.[10] The Germans then massacred 112 Poles at the Gruszka mountain near Tarnawa Dolna.[10] 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,[11] while the Polish resistance movement established the secret Polish Council to Aid Jews "Żegota", which operated in the town.[12] 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.[13] 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.[13]
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.[citation needed] 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
Lusatian culture pots on display at the Sanok's archaeology museum
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.
The first traces of settlement in the area of modern Sanok date back to at least the 9th century. The following century a Slavic fortified town (gord) was created there and initially served as a center of pagan worship. The etymology of the name is unclear, though most scholars derive it from the Celtic river-name San.[14][15][16] Certain archaeological excavations performed on the castle hill and on Fajka hill near Sanok-Trepcza, not only confirm the written resources, but date the Sanok stronghold origin to as early as the 9th century. On Fajka hill, where probably the first settlement of Sanok was situated, some remains of an ancient sanctuary and a cemetery were found, as well as numerous decorations and encolpions in Kievan type. Also found were two seals of the Great Kievan Prince Rurik Rostislavich from the second half of the 12th century.
Sanok castle and Icon collection - one of the largest collections of this in Central and Eastern Europe.
Town square/Rynek
Parish Church dating to the 19th century
Franciscan Church dating to the 14th century.
Near the central town square and the previous Jewish ghetto, there is a valley where much of the Jewish population was murdered en masse by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Economy
Sanok bus station
Sanok has a strong industry base - home to Stomil Sanok[17] (established in 1932) and Pass Gummiwerke plants, producers of various rubber and metal-rubber seals, strings and laggings for automotive sector, construction industries and electrical household goods sector, PGNiG[18] and Sanok Bus Car Factory "Autosan"[19] (established in 1832), a producer of high capacity buses, cabins for the Polish Army and bodies for rail-vehicles. Stomil is next to the main train station in Sanok and Autosan is a 10-minute walk from the station, while the town centre is a 15-minute walk in the other direction.
The town has several public schools and a branch of the Polish High School of Technology. The town also has a football club called Stal Sanok and some other sport clubs (including volleyball, swimming, handball, ice hockey). The Sanok Castle near the centre of the old town houses a museum displaying over 300 fine icons. The Museum of Folk Architecture is one of the biggest open-air museums in Poland and show cases 19th and early 20th century life in this area of Poland.
Sport
The city has two professional sports teams. The local ice hockey team is STS Sanok,[20] which has won the Polska Hokej Liga league title twice, in the 2011/2012 and 2013/2014 season. They won the Polish Cup twice, in 2010-11 and 2011–12. The local football club is Stal Sanok, which competes in the lower leagues.
STS Sanok celebrating the Polish championship in 2014
There many sports facilities in Sanok and the main complex of those facilities is The Civic Sports and Recreation Centre, situated near the San River. The Centre includes: the artificial speed skating oval Tor Błonie, a complex of indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a hotel, a tourist hostel, a camp-site, a sports stadium with technical facilities, etc. There is also another artificial ice rink in the centre of the town, designed for ice hockey and managed by the ice hockey club STS Sanok. There are two more sports facilities at Stróżowska street: a stadium of sports club Stal Sanok, and a gymnasium of the Technical Schools Complex.
In winter, a ski-lift operates in the nearby Karlików.
In the mid-18th century, Roman Catholics constituted 48.7% of the population, people of Jewish faith 36.5%, and 14.7% of the inhabitants belonged to the Greek Catholic Church.[22]
In 1900, the town had 6123 inhabitants, 57% Polish, 30% Jewish, and the remainder of various Rusyn ethnicities (Boyko, Lemkos, etc.), and others. The town's large population of Jews were almost all murdered during the Holocaust.
^"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.
^Atlas des peuples d'Europe centrale, André et Jean Sellier, 1991, p.88
^Motylkiewicz, Jerzy (2005). "Ethnic Communities in the Towns of the Polish-Ukrainian Borderland in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries". In Hann, C. M.; Magocsi, Paul R. (eds.). Galicia: A Multicultured Land. University of Toronto Press. p. 37. ISBN978-0802037817.
^"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."Joly, Ernst (1922). "Dunajec-San, Battles of the" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 30 (12th ed.). London & New York: The Encyclopædia Britannica Company. p. 864.
^Wardzyńska, Maria (2009). Był rok 1939. Operacja niemieckiej policji bezpieczeństwa w Polsce. Intelligenzaktion (in Polish). Warszawa: IPN. pp. 58–59.
^Megargee, Geoffrey (2012). Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos. Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press. p. Volume II 569–571. ISBN978-0-253-35599-7.
^Datner, Szymon (1968). Las sprawiedliwych (in Polish). Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza. p. 69.
^ abMegargee, Geoffrey P.; Overmans, Rüdiger; Vogt, Wolfgang (2022). The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933–1945. Volume IV. Indiana University Press, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. p. 323. ISBN978-0-253-06089-1.
^"[...] San (lateinische Graphie wie bei Sandomierz, Santok usw. Vgl. altind. sindhu- "Fluß", den irischen GN Shannon und den Maizzufluß Sinn" [in:] Irena Kwilecka. Etnolingwistyczne i kulturowe związki Słowian z Germanami. Instytut Słowianoznawstwa PAN. 1987. ISBN83-04-02472-1 S. 64.
^"An adouci en san, eau, rivière; stach, sinueux, qui tourne. Allusion au cours sinueux de la Charente". op. cit. Antiq. de France. [in:] Revue des études historiques. Société des études historiques. 1835. p.242.; Senne, nom propre de rivière. - Scène, ». Le lieu où l'on joue. — Seine, sf, sorte de «lot. 17. Cen», sm, impôt. — San, np Sen», sm, jugement [...]". [in:] Dictionnaire de pédagogie et d'instruction primaire. Ferdinand Edouard Buisson. 1883. p. 980.
^Dokumentacja Geograficzna (in Polish). Vol. 3/4. Warszawa: Instytut Geografii Polskiej Akademii Nauk. 1967. p. 55.
^J. Motylkiewicz. "Ethnic Communities in the Towns of the Polish-Ukrainian Borderland in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries". C. M. Hann, P. R. Magocsi ed. Galicia: A Multicultured Land. University of Toronto Press. 2005. p. 37.
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