Via TransilvanicaFive villages, one map
Where they are exactly, how many people live in them and what sets them apart.
Where they are exactly, how many people live in them and what sets them apart.
The difference that orders the whole map: Cacica grew around the salt mine, and its first inhabitants were miners from Bochnia. Solonețu Nou, Pleșa and Poiana Micului were founded by Highlanders from around Czadca, people of the forest and of cattle. You can still hear it, in the speech and in the cooking.
The fourth place is Moara, near Suceava, with the hamlet of Bulai, where Poles settled later and where a Polish House stands. The fifth, Ruda-Vicșani, emptied almost completely after the repatriations.
The 2002 census showed the villages where Poles were still the majority: Pleșa 99.5 percent of inhabitants, Solonețu Nou 89.7, Poiana Micului 50.3, Cacica 12.3. Two decades later the numbers are smaller but the pattern is the same: Cacica commune with 732 Poles, Mănăstirea Humorului commune with 414 in Poiana Micului and Pleșa, Moara with 286.
These are not open-air museums. They are villages where people work, build houses and go abroad for work, as everywhere in this part of Europe.
At the 1910 census the largest Polish villages of southern Bukovina had: Solonețu Nou 813 people, Cacica 762, Poiana Micului 572. The town of Siret then had 345 Poles. By 1930 Poiana Micului had grown to 741, Solonețu Nou to 893, Cacica had 703 and Pleșa 259.
Set those figures beside today's and you see what two wars, one border and the repatriation trains did.
In 1948, more than half of Bukovina's Poles lived in towns: Suceava, Siret, Rădăuți, Gura Humorului. By 2021, 9.9 percent were left there. In Câmpulung Moldovenesc, where our house stands, the 2011 census counted three people of Polish nationality.
The village held; the town did not. That is why this whole guide walks through villages.
Four villages, four completely different situations. Pleșa is practically uniform; Cacica became multinational long ago.
The figures are for communes, not single villages: Cacica also covers Solonețu Nou, and Mănăstirea Humorului covers Poiana Micului and Pleșa.
The figures: Tiberiu-Constantin Ambrosie, „Considerații asupra evoluției istorice și demografice a etnicilor polonezi din partea sudică a Bucovinei”, Yearbook of the National Museum of Bukovina, and the censuses cited there.
Czytaj dalej
Your base
Câmpulung Moldovenesc is an hour from the Polish villages and an hour from the painted monasteries. The whole house, seven beds, parking in the yard.