Huwniki is a

village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...

in the administrative district of

Gmina Fredropol __NOTOC__ Gmina Fredropol is a rural gmina (administrative district) in Przemyśl County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south-eastern Poland, on the border with Ukraine. Its seat is the village of Fredropol, which lies approximately south of Prze ...

, within

Przemyśl County __NOTOC__ Przemyśl County () is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Subcarpathian Voivodeship, south-eastern Poland, on the border with Ukraine. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish lo ...

Subcarpathian Voivodeship Subcarpathian Voivodeship is a Voivodeships of Poland, voivodeship, or province, in the southeastern corner of Poland. Its administrative capital and largest city is Rzeszów. Along with the Marshal, it is governed by the Subcarpathian Regional As ...

(also known as Podkarpackie Voivodeship), in south-eastern

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

, close to the border with

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

. It lies approximately south-west of

Fredropol Fredropol is a village in Przemyśl County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south-eastern Poland, close to the border with Ukraine. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Fredropol. It lies approximately south of Przemy� ...

, south of

Przemyśl Przemyśl () is a city in southeastern Poland with 56,466 inhabitants, as of December 2023. Data for territorial unit 1862000. In 1999, it became part of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship, Subcarpathian Voivodeship. It was previously the capital of Prz ...

, and south-east of the regional capital

Rzeszów Rzeszów ( , ) is the largest city in southeastern Poland. It is located on both sides of the Wisłok River in the heartland of the Sandomierz Basin. Rzeszów is the capital of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship and the county seat, seat of Rzeszów C ...

. The name of the town in Ukrainian, Вугники, means

charcoal Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents. In the traditional version of this pyrolysis process, ca ...

. Settlement in the village can be traced back to 1367 (when it was known as Uhelniki); royal records list King

Casimir III the Great Casimir III the Great (; 30 April 1310 – 5 November 1370) reigned as the King of Poland from 1333 to 1370. He also later became King of Ruthenia in 1340, retaining the title throughout the Galicia–Volhynia Wars. He was the last Polish king fr ...

as entrusting the town to nobleman Stefan Wengzin. In 1507, tax records show there was already a

Polish Orthodox Church The Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church (), commonly known as the Polish Orthodox Church, or Orthodox Church of Poland, is one of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox churches in full communion. The church was established in 1924, to accommodate O ...

parish there. During the 1800s until World War II, its population predominantly attended

Eastern Catholic Churches The Eastern Catholic Churches or Oriental Catholic Churches, also known as the Eastern-Rite Catholic Churches, Eastern Rite Catholicism, or simply the Eastern Churches, are 23 Eastern Christian autonomous (''sui iuris'') particular churches of ...

.Dmytro Blazheyovskyi - "Istorycznyj szematyzm Peremyskoji Eparchiji of wkluczennjam Apostolśkoji Administratury Łemkiwszczyny (1828-1939)", Lviv 1995, During

World War II in Poland The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique, while others talk of a "plu ...

, Huwniki was occupied by the Nazi army briefly in September 1939 before being voluntarily ceded to the Soviet army, then occupied by the Nazis again from June 1941 until July 1944, when the Soviets recaptured it. The town's population of 18 Jewish Poles was enslaved in the spring of 1942, and mass-murdered by Ukrainian police on 25 November 1942 at the Wiar creek near Przemyś

After the war, as a border town with a large Orthodox population, the population was decimated by the involuntary

population exchange between Poland and Soviet Ukraine The population exchange between Poland and Soviet Ukraine at the end of World War II was based on a treaty signed on 9 September 1944 by the Ukrainian SSR with the newly-formed Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN). The exchange stipul ...

References

Villages in Przemyśl County {{Przemyśl-geo-stub