Pikulice

Pikulice is situated by the streams Jawor and Wisla, which enter the Wiar River. To the east is Nehrybka, to the southeast Hermanowice, to the southwest Grochowe, and to the west Kruhel Wielki.

In the 14th century, the lands of Pikulice belonged to Przemyśl and the city's Roman Catholic bishop. In 1389, Władysław II Jagiełło granted the city one hundred Franconian fiefs. The following century, the village was incorporated by the starosta of Przemyśl, this according to a document dated October 29, 1408. Władysław II Jagiełło freed the residents of the village from all taxes and weights. In 1418, Ivan of Obychow, the Rus starosta and the castellan of Szremsk, carried out royal orders to distinguish between the city outskirts and the villages Pikulice, Grochowe, Witoszyńce, and Koniuchy.^[2][3]

Austria, following the First Partition of Poland in 1772, granted Pikulice along with other surrounding villages to Count Ignacy Cetner. South of Pikulice, in Bakończyce, manorial-estate buildings still stand. The last owner of the estate and local assets was Princess Karolina Emilia Lubomirska.^[2] Following World War I, Poland regained independence and control of the village.

Under German occupation during World War II, the German army carried out the first local mass executions of Jews on September 16 and 19, 1939, at several places in the outskirts of Przemyśl, including Pikulice. The German administration operated a subcamp of the Stalag 327 prisoner-of-war camp at the pre-war Polish Army barracks in Pikulice, with mass graves of Italian POWs unearthed in 1961.^[4]

Soviet-installed Polish communist authorities rounded up and deported most of the Ukrainian population in the summer 1945 to Soviet Ukraine. On November 15, 1945, Ukrainian partisans burned down most of the village buildings. The remaining Ukrainians, some fifteen, were resettled in Western Poland in May 1947.

The first mention of a local parish church dates from 1507. A Basilian monastery was in Pikulice in the 16th century.^[2]

The Roman Catholic villagers belonged to the parish in Przemyśl until a neo-Gothic stone church and belfry were erected for their spiritual needs in Pikulice in 1912. The Greek Catholic villagers had their own parish in nearby Nehrybka, and an affiliate church in Pikulice,^[2] The Greek Catholic church in Pikulice was originally a wooden structure constructed around 1830. In 1841, this church building was replaced by another wooden structure, which, in 1903, was reconstructed as a masonry building. The church was named the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was demolished in the 1950s following the resettlement of the remaining Ukrainian population to Soviet Ukraine.^[3] The Roman Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Blessed Jakub Strzemię remains. The façade of this church is decorated with an emblem displaying the Polish eagle, the crest of the Lubomirski family, and the figure of Saint John the Baptist, who is the patron saint of Przemyśl.^[3]