The basis of this article are reflections on the analysis of the Lemko personal document literature, which was the subject of my Ph.D. thesis dedicated to the collective memory of the Lemko community in Poland and Ukraine. Lemko people, displaced from the Low Beskid Mountains in the years 1944–1947 to Soviet Ukraine and to the western and northern regions of Poland, inspire numerous sociologists, ethnologists, and historians. For years, certain problems in this regard have been thoroughly exploited, especially those concerning the national identity and ethnic renaissance. On the other hand, some issues are omitted and neglected, for instance the issue of memory (used by the Lemkos for the self-affirmation purposes), increased drive for self-discovery and the efforts undertaken by the Lemkos to take a stand towards the commemorating practices made by he Polish and Ukrainian society. Scrutinizing the Lemkos' memory was my primary objective.

I analyzed Lemko autobiographies, diaries, memoirs, chronicles, and collections of memoirs. The set of texts that I have collected includes 66 publications, published as separate books in Poland and Ukraine, after 1989 and 1991, respectively. These accounts have one or more authors and were published in Polish, Ukrainian or Lemko.

I dealt with the narrative practices applied by the Lemko—their structure, content and ways of using them in group self-presentation strategies. As a self-presentation I understand here the cultural representation of the group and its past, where it is the past whose preservation is a prerequisite for the subsistence of the group.