DYLĄGÓWKA IN GMINA HYŻNE
My father's ancestral village is Dylągówka, which is located in the foothills of the Carpathian mountains of southeastern Poland. Nowadays around a thousand people live there. It isn't a remote village; it's only ten miles from the regional capital, Rzeszów, and sits on a good secondary paved road.
Dylągówka (Di-lon GOOF-ka) is located in the rural gmina (administrative district) of Hyżne (HIZH-neh), which covers 20 square miles and has a population of some 7,000.
There are around 2,500 gminas in Poland. Hyzne has several claims to fame:
A VICTORY OVER SLAVING TATAR INVADERS
One of them, a 13th century victory over Turkic-speaking Mongol invaders known as Tatars, is symbolized in the coat of arms on its flag (at left). On either side of the cross are parts of a broken buńczuk, or horsetail ensign, a symbol carried into battle that was made of horsetail hair set on a wooden staff and topped, in this case, with a crescent moon.
From the
A GREAT SOLDIER AND STATESMAN
Hyzne's second claim to fame is that it was the childhood home of Władysław Sikorski (1881-1943), a Polish soldier and statesman who led Poland’s government in exile during World War II. The school he attended is now the General Władysław Sikorski Primary School. Quotations:
- "One experienced minute sometimes teaches us more than a lifetime."
- "Today it is time for strong and courageous people because only they can achieve victory and rid the world of tyranny."
Sikorski
A CONNECTION TO THE POLISH ARMENIAN NOBILITY
An essay posted in 2026 on the government-sponsored website Culture.PL, Then and now: Armenians at home on Polish lands, goes into this in detail.
In 1785, an estate that included the site of Dylagówka was purchased by Jan Jędrzejewicz, a descendant of Polonized Armenian nobility. His descendants built an impressive manor house with farm buildings, a mill, a distillery, and a stud farm. By 1880, Dylągówka had some 800 residents, two inns, and a chapel.
The Jędrzejewicz family owned property in the town at least into the 1920s.
Several important Polish cultural figures had Armenian heritage. These include the poets Zbigniew Herbert and Juliusz Slowacki, and composers Stanislaw Moniuszko and Krzysztof Penderecki.
Bas relief on the building of an Armenian association in Gdansk