Tracing 700 Years of Armenian Heritage in Poland

Tracing 700 years of Armenian heritage in Poland

Cemeteries, khachkars, churches and bakeries all point to the Armenian presence in Poland which stretches far back to medieval times. Though often overlooked, Armenian communities once played a vital role in trade, diplomacy and culture, traces of which remain in cities dotted around Poland. A new wave of Armenian migration is mixing with the ‘Old Polish Armenian’ communities, adding a fresh influence to the enduring legacy of Armenian heritage in Poland.

If you want to glimpse a country's multicultural heritage, a cemetery is a good place to start. On a snowy winter's afternoon in Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery, I read scraps of evidence relating to Poland's ethnic compositions, links to empires, wars and border shifts. Dr Zahorowski (1802-1878) was born in Vilnius and died in Warsaw (all cities named are using the contemporary spelling - author’s note); Leopold Kronenberg (1812-1878) was a Jewish banker in the Russian partitioned territory of Poland; Daniel Sztyber (1987-2022) fought in the Ukrainian International Legion: 'For your freedom and ours,' his stone declared. I wandered on, winding through the cemetery's grids, past mock ancient Greek columns and angels, lanterns and fake flowers which decorated these silent testimonies to the past. Some graves used Cyrillic; some had Polish and Ukrainian national ribbons. My cheeks had solidified with cold by the time I asked a gardener where the Armenian graves were. 'There aren't any.' He replied and made it clear that our conversation had ended.

          

My search for Armenian traces in Poland began last summer when an apricot-coloured stone in Zamość caught my eye. From experience, such a colour is associated with Armenia and this small city in southeast Poland is far removed, or so I assumed, from the South Caucasus. Yet, on closer inspection, it was indeed an Armenian khachkar, a monument to Polish-Armenian friendship, similar to many such orange-brown stones with intricate carvings found in central and eastern European cities. Close by lies Ulica Ormiańska (Armenian Street), which runs to the central Renaissance square, Rynek Wielki. Here Armenian tenement houses proudly stand, lavishly coloured and decorated like bars of iced marzipan. On that hot afternoon in July, I wondered more about Zamość’s Armenian population, why Poland's former eastern provinces had so many Armenian communities and what had happened to them.

The trip to the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw did finally reveal Armenian traces. Paschalis Jakubowicz (1736-1817) was from Tokat, Anatolia, and made a roaring trade in Kontusz silk belts. Metaxian Szełkownikow Sergiusz (1871-1929) directed the Warsaw Opera; Leon Ter-Oganjan (1910-2002) was a prominent activist, born in St Petersburg, lived in Kharkiv and died in Warsaw. The unmistakable Armenian '-jan' ending gave away some surnames while others were Polonized beyond distinction. Further research revealed repeated words like 'trade', 'merchant' and place names like 'Lviv', 'Riga'. A pattern seemed to be emerging.

The Armenians of Lviv and Zamość

The Armenian presence in Poland can be concretely traced from 1356 in the Foundational Charter of Lviv - where the largest Armenian group put down roots - though some scholars trace their settlement to the 11th century in Red Ruthenia, now part of western Ukraine and southeastern Poland. The Lviv Charter granted minority rights to its citizens of multiple faiths, languages and ethnicities who had moved to this newly founded city and were attracted by its position on the transcontinental trading routes. The Armenians were allowed to freely operate their own judicial system, build churches and conduct services in their own liturgical rite.

Although people lived side by side, they were strictly segregated along religious and ethnic lines. Polish kings favoured the dominant German Catholic community and the non-Catholic minorities such as the Armenians, Jews, Ruthenians and Tatars were kept separate topographically and economically in the city. However, while the non-Catholics had restricted economic opportunities and were banned from entering artisanal guilds, Armenians quickly filled an economic niche trading with the East and soon trade items such as carpets, gold embroidery, decorated weapons, spices and exotic fruit became known as ‘Armenian goods’,  infusing Polish culture with Eastern elements. Moreover, their knowledge of languages like Kipchak and Persian made the Armenians invaluable for diplomatic relations. For these reasons, Polish kings like Casimir the Great (1310-1370) granted protection to their communities.

As connectors of East to West, the Armenians of Lviv amassed extraordinary wealth from the 14th to 17th centuries, even surpassing the city’s affluent Polish burghers. They owned 62.5 per cent of specialist guild shops despite only making up 19 per cent of the city’s population. The Catholic patricians saw additional efforts to buy houses in the central market square as a threat to Catholic authority in the city.  Appeals to have equal civil and economic rights with the Catholics, however, were repeatedly rejected by Polish King Sigismund II (1520-1572).

Criticism also sprang up among the Catholics in 1682 when Stanisław Karwowski, the city prosecutor, filed a lawsuit against Jan Jaśkiewicz, an Armenian, for hosting an excessively lavish wedding for his daughter. The bride’s husband, Mr. Borykowicz, an Armenian from Kamjaniec-Podilski, was also criticized for wearing clothing featuring gold buttons, gold embroidered shoes and Dutch cloth lined with llama wool. The use of ostrich feathers in the diamond crown worn by the bride sparked a particular scandal, as such accessories were traditionally reserved for the spouses of magnates.       

Over time, Armenian clusters burgeoned in cities to the west of Lviv, such as Jarosław, Lublin, Kazimierz Dolny (contemporary Polish cities) and Berezhany, Horodenka, Lutsk, Mohylów Podolski, Ivano-Frankivsk and Balta (contemporary Ukrainian cities). 130 kilometres west of Lviv lies Zamość, a fortified city with a once-significant Armenian population. It was founded by Jan Zamoyski (1542-1605), the Grand Chancellor of the Crown, who signed a degree in 1585 inviting Armenians to settle and trade in the city: “Wishing that the city I have founded should flourish rapidly thanks to trade, I willingly decided that [the Armenians] and their descendants should be granted all the rights and liberties that have been conferred on this city by the consent of His Royal Majesty and me.”

Henceforth, a new city was filled with a prosperous and autonomous Armenian community, and wider rights were granted than Lviv’s autonomy model. A trade monopoly on oriental rugs, carpets, sheep and goatskin leather with Moldova, the Ottoman Empire and Persia began and, exempt from taxes for 20 years, the Armenians of Zamość enjoyed more extraordinary wealth. By 1603, of 28 houses encircling the city’s Rynek Wielki, 11 belonged to the Armenians, 6 to the Poles, 5 to the Greeks, 4 to the Italians, and one to each of the Russians and Germans. They were skilful craftsmen, goldsmiths, translators and diplomats, holding negotiations with the Tatars and Kalmiks of Crimea on behalf of the Polish authorities.

Forming an established part of the multi-ethnic medley of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and blending into the higher echelons of society, boundaries often dissolved, leading to integration and assimilation. Conversions to Armenian Catholicism played a considerable role in this process. As ethnic Armenian surname endings changed from ‘-jan’ to the Polish ‘-wicz’, Armenian numbers dwindled, and by the late 19th century, the pressures of Polonization had blurred ethnic boundaries further.

Armenian Catholics

It was early on a winter’s morning in December when I walked to the Armenian Catholic Church in Gliwice. Nicely dressed people were also hurrying in the cold fog to various worship destinations. When the church appeared, the lights in the window were a welcome glow. I went through the little gate, noting the apricot-coloured khachkar at the entrance and into the incense-filled church. Although it was still ten minutes to seven, the mass had already started and I made my way to the back of the full congregation and up to the balcony.

The grey concrete exterior of the church betrayed nothing of the beauty within. Lining the base of the ceiling ran gold banners of blue Armenian letters. The ceiling was decorated with stylized flowers, geometric shapes and cypress trees shot up between them. Carpeted steps ran up to the altar, and silver candleholders framed in a background of reds, oranges and blues, hung above. There were portraits of Pope Francis and Rafael Bedros XXI, a memorial to the victims of the 1915 genocide and a bookshelf holding prayer books in Polish and Latin and magazines in Armenian. It could have been a typical Polish Sunday mass if you closed your eyes and just listened. And yet, with all senses engaged, it was a remarkable mixture of two cultures, a microcosm of Armenianness, enclosed in the squat little church in Poland.

The Armenian Catholic Church is an Eastern-rite member of the Roman Catholic Church. As an entity, it first came into being in 1740 when the Armenian Bishop of Aleppo was elected patriarch of Sis, today’s Kozan in Turkey. Today, dioceses exist in as many countries as Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, the United States, Argentina, Iran, Jerusalem, Athens, Mexico and Romania. In Poland, Nicholas Torosowicz was responsible for the union of the Armenian Apostolic Church with the Roman Catholic Church from around 1630. This hybrid form of worship, motivated by political and social pressures rather than faith, was met with resistance from the Armenian community. The wealthy Armenian merchants were the ones who helped cement the union, being deeply tied to Polish Catholic leadership despite resistance from their own people.

Over time, the community accepted the Armenian-Catholic identity, allowing them to retain their own liturgy and customs while recognizing the Pope. Even though the liturgical clothing lost its original appearance, they became ‘famous for their Eastern magnificence and splendour’ and ‘Polish cut’. In this way, the Armenian Catholic Church, albeit a hybrid, served as a pillar of cultural preservation and a space for belonging, and at the same time, by becoming Catholic, these Armenians became more like the Poles. 

A Polish cradle 

The Second World War, border shifts and Soviet occupation of post-war Poland dealt a hefty blow to minority communities in Poland. Only about 10% of the traditional settlements remained within new Polish borders and Poland became one of the most religiously homogeneous countries in Europe. “Members of my family, as so many other families, were deprived of their normal lives, their homes, properties”, so writes Monika Agopsowicz, Polish cultural activist of Armenian descent. “They were scattered all around Poland and the world. Natural family ties were broken, the Soviet “new” history and “uravnilovka” (‘equalization’ in Russian - author’s note) banned the idea of minorities, of the existence of Kresy”. Agopsowicz, the 2014 winner of the Polish History Book of the Year award (Książka Historyczna Roku) has written extensively on her Armenian ancestors who lived in the south eastern borderlands of pre-war Poland, a “kind of Polish cradle”, from the 17th century until the beginning of World War II.

The Kresy is a mythologised borderland that still has nostalgic value in the Polish imagination, a place that no longer exists in contemporary geopolitical reality, and yet is a testament to the multiculturalism of the former Polish state. Encompassing various regions and several ethnic groups, this area now comprises Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. So strong was the connection to Polish identity to this region that after 1945, when they found themselves outside of Polish territory, Muslim Tatars, Karaites and Armenians migrated back to Poland. They mainly resettled in Poland’s so-called Recovered Territories in the west, like Wroclaw, Gdańsk, Gliwice and Opole. But the memories of former eastern Polish territory and its cities never faded.

“I was lucky to have grown up in a home where my father and his friends would freely talk, with a great sense of humour, about their beloved and lost Lwów (Lviv) and Kresy. This was – despite the war – their youth. And I would listen to their never-ending stories”. Agopsowicz continues by saying that she was raised in Gdańsk and baptised and confirmed by Kazimierz Filipiak, the last priest of the Armenian Catholic church in Stanisławów (now Ivano-Frankivsk). “All the Armenian Catholic churches had remained in the Kresy, apart from some church items brought to Poland by Armenian Benedictine nuns from Lviv”, she tells me. Priests who took care of the churches in Kresy were either killed during the war or came barefoot from the Soviet work camps. “Kazimierz Filipiak was an exception. In 1946 he brought from Stanisławów (Ivano-Frankivs’k in Ukraine - author’s note) all (all!) the furnishings of the church and the whole parish library!”   

Father Filipiak died in 1992 with no successor. Anxious not to lose any more valuables, the Ordinariate of Poland for Armenian Catholics in 2005 gave a group of Polish Armenian volunteers the responsibility of cataloguing remaining artefacts and information. From this initiative, the Foundation of Culture and Heritage of Polish Armenians was born, established in Warsaw. For the past 19 years these volunteers have worked together to conserve and popularize the history of Polish Armenians and make available everything they can share. These groups organize exhibitions, lectures, concerts, publications and meetings to help Poles of Armenian descent connect with their heritage. Thanks to such organizations many Poles can (re)discover their Armenian roots through genealogists and research done in Lviv’s Lychakiv cemetery and Warsaw’s Powązki cemetery. Other organizations have been founded on similar motives. Their activities not only contribute to promoting Armenian history and culture, but also help to integrate newly arrived Armenians into Polish society.

Preserving roots

In today’s Poland, Armenians are considered one of nine national minorities as well as one of the oldest. Two of the six conditions to be regarded as a national minority are, according to the Act of 6 January 2005 on National and Ethnic Minorities and Regional Languages: 1) having an awareness of a historical national community and 2) having ancestors who lived in the current territory of the Republic of Poland for at least 100 years. For Gohar Khachatryan, the Armenian heritage in Poland was unknown to her until she came to Poland from Gyumri, north west Armenia, in 1992. She studied chemistry at Yerevan University and moved to Kraków with her partner, who was an exchange student in Poland. They became chemistry professors at Kraków’s Agricultural University.

For them, the move was an opportunity for a better life, one removed from economic difficulties caused by the earthquake in 1988 and hostilities of the Nagorno-Karabakh wars. The crippling effects of the Gyumri earthquake, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the civil war in Syria have driven large numbers of Armenians to Poland, contributing to what is often called the ‘new emigration’ of Armenians, distinguishing between the ‘old emigration’ Armenian descendants from the Middle Ages.

Such terminology is problematic and seen to cause potential rifts in the Armenian community in Poland. Gohar began to learn about the ‘Old Armenians’ via the Armenian Cultural Association (ACA) of Kraków. Both she and her husband have been board members.

The inclusion of the question: “Do you also feel that you belong to another nation or ethnic community?” in the censuses after 2002 was the fruit of minority organizations leaders’ efforts to allow people to express more complex, dual national identities. Therefore, in Poland's 2021 national consensus, 6,772 people declared Armenian nationality, while 4,361 declared this to be their only nationality and 2,140 felt a dual national identification. “Even if they don’t speak Armenian, if they are one-half or one-quarter Armenian or if they recently discovered some Armenian roots, they are Armenian,” says Gohar’s daughter, Lusine Khachatryan, born in Germany and raised in Poland. “If they are proud of this identity and heritage in Poland, then that’s reason enough to claim Armenian identity.”

In 2004 Gohar decided to open an Armenian Saturday school, initially for her and her friends’ children to maintain their language skills and knowledge of Armenia. From just a handful of learners, the school now has 27 pupils aged between six and 13. When classes first began, the children of Armenian families born in Poland had very poor Armenian and little knowledge of their country. But now, Gohar tells me, the children speak very well. They learn about Armenian history, music, traditional dancing and famous Armenian Poles and participate in ethnic minority festivals in Poland.

A new wave of Armenian migrants has also increased the language level. Lusine says that she has a Polish accent when speaking Armenian and the new migrants are a welcome influence to improve it. Apparently these migrants from Armenia and Ukraine are very different to the economic migrants of the 1980s who held low-paid positions. “The most recent wave of migrants have well-paid jobs in tech, there’s more money, time and resources to focus on education. They also seem to have less emotional problems and it’s easier to gain legal documents to live here. There’s a general sense that these families have a firmer footing to begin their new life than those who came to Poland before.”

Gohar is quick to tell me that her pupils go on to become doctors, lawyers, designers and artists. “My school is one of my proudest successes; the first being my children and the second - my school”. She feels that she’s doing something for her country and giving the community roots to their homeland. “It’s very important to know your roots and be proud of them”, adds Lusine. “Growing up in Poland, we have unfortunately had some unpleasant experiences. I have faced rude and offensive comments from Poles just because we look different and people are ignorant about Armenia. The school in this way is extremely important because it taught us about where we come from, about our history and roots. If we know our roots and why we seem different, then we can be proud and resist such discrimination.”

When our chat turns to food, both women smile and admit that they eat a lot of Georgian food from the ever increasing number of bakeries and restaurants in Kraków and wider Poland. Armenian restaurants open and close but Gohar believes that restaurants will become more popular due to more Poles visiting the South Caucasus each year. “Armenia is now more attractive because since they’ve seen Georgia, they want somewhere more off the beaten track!” 

Warm bread

Our conversation reminded me of when I visited a Georgian-Armenian bakery in Warsaw, after my visit to the Powązki Cemetery on that December day. I chatted to the owner and learnt of her last six years spent in Poland, how the business is doing, the difficulties of cultural differences, the cold, and learning Polish with her children. She lamented the fact that there was no Armenian Apostolic church for her family, just a travelling priest who holds services in Armenian in Catholic churches each Sunday. She couldn’t believe I knew her hometown, Dilijan, in Armenia’s lush mountainous north. I bought some tan, a khachapuri, some Georgian mineral water and left with a round of warm bread, given as a gift. I waited for the next bus in the bitter cold and held the bread to my chest. Its warmth seeped through my coat. Uprooting and building a new life comes with a great many challenges, ones which the Armenian community in Poland has weathered via remarkable adaptation, resilience and strength of community. Long may their heritage continue and evolve for many decades to come.