Welcome!
The Drańcza Index is a genealogical database of the families of Drańcza Polska and the surrounding communities in Radziwillow, Volhyn and Brody, Tarnopol - former areas of Poland that are now part of present day Ukraine.
The Drańcza Index was created for the purpose of reconnecting surviving descendant families and documenting their history.
The index is compiled primarily from microfilms from the Roman Catholic parish of Radziwillow, scanned meticulously by Kori and Clayton Maleski and translated by Cezary Janczyn. The index is also supplemented from the Metryki Wołyn, a database of microfilms from many Roman Catholic parishes created and maintained by the welcome efforts of Danuta Wojtowicz.
The records of families contained within the Drańcza Index have been related based on the names documented, including those of witnesses and sponsors. There may be errors due to lack of information and there are missing records as some films may not be documented as of yet.
The family trees range from the 1700's to 1937, with a few descendant families to present day.
The main communities indexed are Drańcza, Gaje Lewiatyńskie, Sestratyn, Sarnowa, Baranie, Buhajówka, Stojanówka, Budki, and Leduchów.
History
The area surrounding Drańcza Polska was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the 1600's to 1772, when the events of the First Partition of Poland took place, where Austria occupied Tarnopol and created the province of Galicia. Drańcza Polska became a border town on the Polish side of the border. In 1795, Volhyn province was annexed to Russia and Poland would cease to exist as a state until after the First World War.
Following the war, these communities were part of the Second Polish Republic from 1918-1939. The events of the Second World War and rise of Ukrainian nationalists saw the communities depopulated as Poles were killed or driven away during the Volhynian massacres and genocide.
It was May 31st 1943, when the Ukrainian nationalists massacred 50 Poles in Drańcza Polska. More would have perished but for the actions of the local Orthodox priest Filyp Boreckyi who helped the Poles escape as well as for a warnings from a Ukrainian woman from the village of Kopanie whose daughter had married a Pole from Drańcza. The survivors fled to into the forests and made their way to Radziwillow, where they caught trains west to displacement camps. Some survivors made their way to Podkamien in Tarnopol where they took shelter in a Dominican monastery and were subsequently massacred in March 1944. These atrocities occurred in all of the surrounding communities.
There are many stories of death as well as survival.
Resources
Map of region - Google
Map of region - 1889 Small
Map of region - 1889 Large
Metryki Wołyn - 19th century parish books from Volhynia
Metryki Wołyn - Database Search
Volhynia Pages - The State of Towns in 1939:
- Drańcza Polska
- Gaje Lewiatyńskie
- Baranie
- Buhajówka
- Sarnowa
- Sestratyn
- Budki
- Leduchów
Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia
Volhynia Massacre Truth and Remembrance
The Book of the Righteous of the Eastern Borderlands 1939-1945