Travels in Galicia: Day 4 - Відвідування Перемишляни

Вівторок - Tuesday, October 12
After breakfast in the hotel, I went off to the post office to mail a letter, and when I got back Alex was waiting in the lobby. He told us that he'd spoken to a contact in the state archive, and that there was no record of the name "Schechter" in Peremyshlyany. Unfortunately, dad didn't have that much information, such as a street name or the surnames of any other relatives from his father's side of the family to go on (and there's really no one left to ask). All he did remember was that his father told him that he grew up on a dairy farm outside the town (like Tevya), and that he walked 4 kilometers (or was it 4 miles?) to school in town.

With this information, we set out on the to road to Peremyshlyany. There was a decent amount of traffic, and the cobblestone roads made the drive rather loud and bumpy. Our driver, Oleh, navigated these obstacles with great skill. The morning was cold and foggy (it rained the night before), which cast an eerie pall over the landscape.

We drove for about 30 minutes until we saw the sign for Peremyshlyany. There were two signs, actually - one was the regular road sign announcing boundary of the town, and another was a monument built to commemorate the 550th anniversary of the town.

son & father


Entering Peremyshlyany


zoom-out of the sign

ooh, symbolism.


standing on the sign


farmer on a horse cart.

We drove into the center of town to walk around and get a feel for things. Alex pointed to a plaza with a statue of Bohdan Khmelnytsky were the synagogue once stood. Afterward, we walked around the town (I was admiring the ornate ironwork on balconies). The village was very rural - most of the houses had yards with vegetable gardens and livestock. We walked through the market, where you could by sausage, bread, lingerie, etc. Then we drove up a steep hill to the Jewish cemetery. All of the stones, save for a few, were toppled or removed, and there were chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys roaming freely. At one end was a chapel, inside which the Chassidic rebbe Meir Peremyshlaner and his wife are buried. We could not go inside, but in the window, hundreds of kvitelekh left by his followers were visible.