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All photos in this issue were taken in eastern Poland
between 2005-2009, as part of the
Karczebyproject.
Karczeby, one of the dialects spoken in eastern Poland, is a
mixture of Polish and Belorussian. People there strongly
attached to the soil they cultivated for generations were
called
Karczebs
. With their bare hands, Karczebs cleared
forests in order to grow crops.
The word Karczeb was also used to describe what remains
after a tree is cut down
‒
a trunk with roots, which remains
stuck in the ground. This also applied to people
‒
it was not
easy for the authorities to root them out from their land,
even in Stalinist times. The price they paid for their
attachment to their soil was often their freedom or life.
After death, buried near his farmland, a Karczeb himself
became the soil, later cultivated by his descendants.