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Massacres of Poles by Ukrainian nationalists remembered

PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge 11.07.2012 12:19
One of the bloodiest actions of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) began sixty-nine years ago today on 11 July 1943.

Monument
Monument to the victims of UPA, Wroclaw, Poland: photo: wikipedia

Some 100 Polish localities in Nazi-occupied Volhynia, formerly a region of south east Poland, came under attack from units of UPA, a guerilla army of Ukrainian nationalists.

The July attacks marked the zenith of the campaign against ethnic Poles in the region. From 1943 to 1945, it is estimated that between 30,000 and 60,000 Poles were killed in the area.

The purpose of the attacks was to cleanse the region of ethnic Poles, paving the way for the creation of a Ukrainian state after the Second World War.

Ethnic Ukrainians were in the majority in the region. Prior to the war, the Polish government had championed a programme of tolerance under liberal voivoide (governor) Henryk Jozewski.

However, the mission foundered and Warsaw began forcibly converting Orthodox churches (of the Ukrainian community) into Roman Catholic ones. The vast majority of ethnic Poles in the region were Roman Catholic. During the campaign, scores of Orthodox churches were burnt to the ground.

Warsaw also encouraged ethnic Poles to settle in Volhynia, and large numbers of army veterans, among others, moved to the region.

Following the strikes from UPA in 1943, Poles fought back, principally as part of units of AK, the official underground army of the Polish government-in-exile in London.

It is estimated that Poles killed between 2000-3000 Ukrainians in Volhynia, and about 20,000 more when the the fighting spread to other areas of south east Poland (1944-1947).

Atrocities were commonplace on both sides.

“While I never saw one of our men pick up a baby with the point of his bayonet and toss it into the fire, I saw the charred corpses of Polish babies who had been killed in that way,” recalled Polish guerilla Waldemar Lotnik.

“If none of our number did that, then it was the only atrocity that we did not commit,” he claimed.

When Poland's borders were shifted west in 1945 owing to the Yalta Agreement between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill, Volhynia and much of what had been south east Poland were absorbed into Soviet Ukraine.

Ukrainian insurgents continued fighting the Soviets, but were eventually snuffed out.

Skirmishes also continued within Poland's new borders. However, between 1944 and 1946, about 140,000 ethnic Ukrainians were resettled in the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the majority of ethnic Poles from the former eastern territories were resettled in the new Poland.

In 1947, Poland's now communist authorities launched Operation Vistula, which resettled about 200,000 ethnic Ukrainians and Lemkos in territories gained by Poland in former eastern Germany.

This deprived the last remnants of UPA of their alleged support base, and the fighting ended. (nh)

tags: UPA
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