Peregrymka
The following is an excerpt of an article written by Mikhail W. Duzhiy during World War II.
Perehrymka is the loveliest village in all of Lemkovina. Of course, that’s what everybody says of his own village.
A person’s home town, the place where he was born, has lived, and was exposed to the world is the loveliest to everyone. So too, my Perehrymka is the loveliest village situated as it is in spacious valleys which border on the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains to the west.
Passing through the village is a national highway, which on market days is traveled by hundreds of farm wagons hurrying to the markets at Jaslo or Zmigrod.
It should be interesting to take a glance into the bygone days of the village of Perehrymka, Of course, we don’t know much of the village’s early history, but still a few fragments have been preserved.
The village was already in existence in the 15th century. It was then just a small settlement consisting of 15 lots assigned to local officials—nine guardsmen, five cottagers with livestock, and one with no stock.
Those were the residents of Perehrymka in the beginning. There is no record or legend of where they came from or whether there was anyone living there before them. All we know is what was preserved in the ancient church in the time of medieval Poland.
We do know that long ago the Lemkovina region belonged to Russian princes, in 1340, the polish king Casimir the Great annexed that region of Poland. And Lemkovina was ruled by Polish nobility until 1772. That was when the old Austrian monarchy acquired Lemkovina, which it held until 1918. When Austria fell in November of 1918, Lemkovina reverted to Poland and came under the tyranny of Polish novels until 1939. As is well known, in the fall of that year the Germans smashed the new aristocratic Poland, and to our sorrow, our lands came under German domination for a while.
Our 600 year bondage came to an end in 1940. We do not know how long our brothers and sisters will remain in German servitude. Nor do we know when the present war will end or what that will bring—more oppression, or the end of 500 years of bondage. We can only hope that this will be the end.
Now let’s take a look at what the records that have survived can tell us about our village.
The oldest records show that Perehrymka was in existence in the year 1500, and that it belonged to the Samokliask and Mrokow famiies, part of the “Sulima” coat of arms of the Hamratovs. Later it became the property of the Mnishkos. Yuri Mnisko’s daughter Maria maintained a large castle in Perehrymka, and she lived there with her husband Dimitri the Pretender. Later on she and her husband moved to Moscow were she claimed to be Empress. After her downfall, she sent the Perehrymka church two valuable chausables that had been kept in the Moscow Kremlin, These chausables have remained in our church to this day.
Also in the Perehyrnka church is a 1605 icon of the Mother of God, which is also supposed to have come from Moscow, In front of the church stands an old stone holy-water basin with the notation “Iwion Glodko. A.D. 1603” inscribed on it.
The present church in Perehrymka was built in 1870, and it is still in good condition. Many archival items from the ancient church are now in the museum of the Stauropegial Institute in L’wow.