Volhynia and Eastern Galicia massacres commemorated

President Bronislaw Komorowski (centre) taking part in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia massacres ceremony in Warsaw: photo - PAP/Rafał Guz

The massacres were part of an operation carried out by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, whose plan was to have a sovereign and nationally homogenous Ukraine after the war.

The commemorative events include a field mass celebrated by the Archbishop of Warsaw Cardinal Nycz, ecumenical prayers and the unveiling of a memorial which consists of a seven-metre cross with the figure of Christ and 18 plaques with the names of all localities in pre-war Poland’s seven provinces which were the scene of mass killings.

Up to 100,000 Poles, including women and children, were killed or hacked to death and their villages burned down in 1943 and 44 in what was then Nazi-occupied eastern Poland and is now Western Ukraine.

On 11 July 1943, the day of the worst bloodshed, Ukrainian nationalists attacked 100 villages.

Parliament vote

The Polish Parliament is to vote tomorrow on a resolution about the Volhynia massacres after the committee for culture and the mass media has failed to agree on the text that would be approved by all parliamentary factions.

The ruling Civic Platform and the opposition Palikot Movement have opted for the wording ‘ethnic cleansing bearing the hallmarks of genocide’ claiming the use of the term ‘genocide’ would be harmful for the process of Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation and for Ukraine’s political future and that country’s leaning towards Europe or Russia.

The remaining parliamentary factions, including the co-ruling Peasant Party and the Democratic Left Alliance, say that the word ‘genocide’ should be used in the resolution.

Tomasz Kaminski of the Democratic Left Alliance told the commission that the aim of the resolution is not to condemn the Ukrainian nation but those criminal organizations which carried out the extermination of Poles in the eastern borderlands of pre-war Poland. (mk/pg)