The Church of the Holy Archangel Michael in the village of Holeszów in gmina Hanna is a modern masonry church built in 1983, but it has one of the most dramatic histories in the Włodawa region. The parish here was founded, transferred from rite to rite, closed and restored, and the community built the sanctuary anew three times. Today it is a parish church of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church, and a small women's skete operates nearby.
Radziwiłł Uniate Church
At the end of the 17th century, Holeszów belonged to the parish of the Orthodox monastery in Jabłeczna. Prince Karol Stanisław Radziwiłł, who sought to spread the Union here, allocated land for a new Uniate church in 1691, and the church was opened in 1727. Before the liquidation of the Union in 1872, the parish had 905 believers and belonged to the Włodawa deanery. In the mid-1870s, it was annexed to the Orthodox Church along with the church and the priest.
20th-Century Losses
During the First World War, most of the inhabitants left as refugees, and the abandoned church burned down. The authorities of reborn Poland did not allow the parish to be restored, although in the 1930s the Orthodox community numbered about two thousand people. From 1927, the faithful prayed in the surviving bell tower, to which a small room was added — the altar stood right next to the bell tower. On July 13, 1938, this church was destroyed during the so-called revindication campaign. Parishioners managed to save only part of the furnishings, in particular the iconostasis, which now stands in the Orthodox church in Włodawa.
On June 8–10, 1947, during Operation Vistula, the entire Orthodox population was removed from Holeszów, and four people died in the village at that time. From 1958, some of the evicted people began to return — about 50 families in total. At first they prayed at the Orthodox cemetery, in the 1970s they erected a temporary chapel there, and in winter they gathered in a private house.
New Church and Skete
The new church was first planned to be built at the cemetery, but eventually it was constructed on the site of the one destroyed in 1938 and consecrated in 1983 under the ancient dedication to Saint Michael. Archimandrite Nikon, abbot of the Saint Onuphrius Monastery in Jabłeczna, played a major role in this; a monument to him was erected near the church in 2012. In 1989, the parish recovered the old presbytery building, where a school had operated since the 1920s. In 2016, nuns settled at the church, and since 2019 it has been the Skete of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker, subordinate to the Intercession Monastery in Turkowice.
How to Get There
Holeszów lies about 20 km northwest of Włodawa, near the former town of Hanna on the Bug River. From Lublin and Chełm, first get to Włodawa, then continue by car. Nearby ends the blue trail from Biała Podlaska to Hanna, and the wider surrounding area is discussed in the article Polish Polissia. The easiest way to get inside is during a service. The village lies close to the Belarusian border, so keep your documents with you. For citizens of Ukraine, this is Poland: a foreign passport is required.
