Leśkiw Family Archive

Bazyli Leśkiw, Maria Leśkiw, Mirosława, Alina and Jarosław (their children), Bazyli Leśkiw’s family: Tatiana (his mother), his sisters: Anna Machejko and Maria Leszczuk, their husbands and children, among others, Ewa Machejko.

Bazyli Leśkiw (07.12.1944–02.02.1998), an author was a construction technician by profession, a photography enthusiast. He documented family celebrations and opened his own photo studio, where he took commemorative photos as well as photos for official documents. At the beginning of 1980s, he bought a LOMO 215 Super 8 camera, which he used for the undermentioned films. Together with his wife, Maria, who was a teacher, they lived and worked in Ińsko. The Leśkiw family lived in the village of Budynin, situated on the Polish-Ukrainian border until Operation Vistula in 1947. They were deported to the village of Ścienne near Ińsko. Bazyli’s parents and siblings returned to their home village in the 1960s. However, Bazyli remained in Western Pomerania, as he attended a secondary school in Szczecin. Then he met a teacher from Ińsko, Maria, whose family had also been resettled during Operation Vistula (from Wola Matiaszowa in the Lesko County, Solina District to the village of Osieki in Pomerania).

Ińsko, Stargard County, West Pomeranian Voivodeship; Budynin, Ulhówek District, Tomaszów County, Lublin Voivodeship. The film mostly shows a visit to Budynin, Bazyli Leśkiw’s home village, in winter 1984. Scenes present farm work (taking water from a well, fish smoking), family gatherings (with Bazyli’s mother, Tatiana, his sisters, Anna and Maria, their husbands and children, incl. Anna’s daughter, Ewa, wearing a red cap) and visits to family graves at the local cemetery (Ksenia Stefanowska, whose tombstone we see can, was Bazyli’s grandmother, Daniel Leśków – his father; the different spelling of the surname resulted from a different translation from the Ukrainian language, in the original “Леськів”). We can also see settings of snowy fields, rural roads, a roadside stone statue and a cross, a historic three-dome church, which was formerly the church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a wooden belfry and a local school. The film ends with short genre scenes from Ińsko. The first one is indoors and presents Bazyli and Maria’s children doing their homework, browsing through books. The second one shows Jarosław, Alina and Bazyli feeding swans by the Ińsko lake.

(KN)