Solina ( uk, Солина, ''Solyna'') is a

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred ...

Lesko County __NOTOC__ Lesko County ( pl, powiat leski) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Subcarpathian Voivodeship, south-eastern Poland, on the Slovak border. It was created in 2002 out of five gminas which previously ...

Subcarpathian Voivodeship Subcarpathian Voivodeship or Subcarpathia Province (in pl, Województwo podkarpackie ) is a voivodeship, or province, in the southeastern corner of Poland. Its administrative capital and largest city is Rzeszów. Along with the Marshall, it i ...

, in south-eastern Poland. It is the former seat of the gmina (administrative district) called

Gmina Solina __NOTOC__ Gmina Solina is a rural gmina (administrative district) in Lesko County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south-eastern Poland. It takes its name from its former seat, the village of Solina, which lies approximately south-east of Lesko an ...

(in 1999 Polańczyk became the new seat). It lies approximately south-east of

Lesko Lesko (or ''Lisko'' until 1926; ua, Лісько - Lisko; la, Lescow, alias ''Olesco Lescovium''; yi, לינסק-Linsk) is a town in south-eastern Poland with a population of 5,755 (02.06.2009). situated in the Bieszczady mountains. It is ...

and south-east of the regional capital

Rzeszów Rzeszów ( , ; la, Resovia; yi, ריישא ''Raisha'')) is the largest city in southeastern Poland. It is located on both sides of the Wisłok River in the heartland of the Sandomierz Basin. Rzeszów has been the capital of the Subcarpathian ...

. In 2002 the village had a population of 190. It is best known for the tallest water

dam A dam is a barrier that stops or restricts the flow of surface water or underground streams. Reservoirs created by dams not only suppress floods but also provide water for activities such as irrigation, human consumption, industrial use ...

in Poland, the Solina Dam, which creates the biggest artificial lake in

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

, Lake Solina. There is no industry left after the liquidation of the Hydrobudowa site near the dam. Main employer is PGE, owning the hydroelectric plant in Solina. Local people highly depend on tourist income in the summer by renting rooms, running restaurants and bars and selling souvenirs. On the east side of the dam there are a lot of attractions open during summer, such as water sport equipment rental, a port with tourist ships, amusement park, disco and beach. Clean air and natural scenery are all around, bringing many visitors in the summer. The few hotels of various standards and local B&B's often are fully booked.

History

The name of the village comes from the

Solinka Solinka ( uk, Солинка, ''Solynka'') is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Cisna, within Lesko County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south-eastern Poland, close to the border with Slovakia. It lies approximately south-west of ...

river that was meeting the San river in the village before the creation of the lake. The original Solina village was located up the San river but due to the Solina lake creation it lies under water now. Today's Solina was created along with the water dam on the grounds of the small village of Zabrodzie. The original Solina village was one of the oldest villages in the Bieszczady mountains. It was first mentioned in 1436 as a village owned by the family of Kmits from Sobien. At the end of the 15th century it was subject to the Wallachian law again. There were three main ethnic groups living in the village until World War II:

Boyko The Boykos ( uk, Бойки, Boiky; pl, Bojkowie; sk, Pujďáci), or simply Highlanders (верховинці, ''verkhovyntsi''), are an ethnolinguistic sub-group of Ukrainians located in the Carpathian Mountains of Ukraine, Slovakia, Hungary, ...

(Ukrainians),

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

and

Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in C ...

. During the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

most Jews were taken away to concentration camps by

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

Germans occupying Poland. Another ethnic group of Boyko were forced by the communist government to move to the Soviet Union or west of Poland during the

Operation Vistula Operation Vistula ( pl, Akcja Wisła; uk, Опера́ція «Ві́сла») was a codename for the 1947 forced resettlement of 150,000 Ukrainians (Boykos and Lemkos) from the south-eastern provinces of post-war Poland, to the Recovered Te ...

. The Polish people that were left were moved in 1960 to the village of Berezka because of the Solina Dam creation.

References

Solina Solina Holocaust locations in Poland {{Lesko-geo-stub