The
Massacres of Poles in Volhynia were part of an
ethnic cleansingEthnic cleansing is a term that has come to be used broadly to describe all forms of ethnically inspired violence, ranging from murder, rape, and torture to the forcible removal of populations...
operation in
VolhyniaVolhynia, Volynia, or Volyn is a historic region in western Ukraine located between the rivers Prypiat and Western Bug, to the north of Galicia and Podolia. The area has some of the oldest Slavic settlements in Europe...
and its environs (now in western
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
) that took place mainly between late March 1943 and August 1947 during and after
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.. The actions, orchestrated and conducted in most part by the
Ukrainian Insurgent ArmyThe Ukrainian Insurgent Army was a group of Ukrainian nationalist partisans who engaged in a series of guerrilla conflicts during World War II...
(UPA) together with other Ukrainian groups and local Ukrainian peasants, resulted in over 50,000
Polish civiliansThe Polish people, or Poles , are a Western Slavic ethnic group of Central Europe, living predominantly in Poland. Poles are sometimes defined as people who share a common Polish culture and are of Polish descent. Their religion is predominantly Roman Catholic...
, being brutally murdered in Wołyń Voivodeship alone, out of six voivodeships affected. The peak of the massacres took place in July and August 1943 when a senior UPA commander,
Dmytro KlyachkivskyDmytro Klyachkivsky was a colonel of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army , first head-commander of the UPA-North...
, ordered the extermination of the entire
PolishPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
population between 16 and 60 years of age.
The slaughter was directly linked with the policies of the
BanderaStepan Andriyovych Bandera was a Ukrainian politician and one of the leaders of Ukrainian national movement in Western Ukraine, who headed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists . The son of a clerical family, Bandera played a significant role in the history of Ukraine during World War II...
faction of the
Organization of Ukrainian NationalistsOrganization of Ukrainian Nationalists or OUN is a Ukrainian political movement originally created in 1929 in interwar Poland . The OUN at one time accepted violence as an acceptable tool in the fight against foreign and domestic enemies of their cause as the revenge upon the occupation of...
, whose goal, specified at the Second Conference of the OUN-B, was to purge all non-Ukrainians from the future Ukrainian state. The number of casualties is being actively researched and continues to be the subject of scholarly as well as political deliberation.
Background
Polish-Ukrainian tensions date back several hundred years, with territorial, religious, and social dimensions with the
Khmelnytsky UprisingThe Khmelnytsky Uprising was a Cossack rebellion in Ukraine in 1648–1657 which turned into a Ukrainian war of liberation from Poland. Under the command of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Zaporozhian Cossacks allied with the Crimean Tatars, and the local peasantry, fought several battles...
of the 1600s persisting in the national memories of both groups. While not always harmonious, the Poles and Ukrainians interacted with each other on every civic, economic, and political level throughout hundreds of years. With the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, the ethnicity of citizens became an issue, and the conflicts erupted anew after First World War. Both Poles and Ukrainians claimed the territories of
VolhyniaVolhynia, Volynia, or Volyn is a historic region in western Ukraine located between the rivers Prypiat and Western Bug, to the north of Galicia and Podolia. The area has some of the oldest Slavic settlements in Europe...
and
Eastern GaliciaGalicia is a historical region in East-Central Europe, currently divided between Poland and Ukraine, named after the Ukraіniаn city of Halych. The nucleus of historic Galicia is formed of three regions of western Ukraine: Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk.-Tribal area:The region has a turbulent...
. The political conflicts escalated in the
Second Polish RepublicThe Second Polish Republic, Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland refers to Poland between the two world wars; from the creation of an independent Polish state in the aftermath of World War I, to the invasion of Poland in 1939 by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Slovak Republic,...
during the
interwar periodThe interwar period is understood, within recent Western culture, to be the period between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Second World War. This is also called the period between the wars or interbellum....
, particularly in the 1930s as a result of a cycle of terrorist actions by the
Organization of Ukrainian NationalistsOrganization of Ukrainian Nationalists or OUN is a Ukrainian political movement originally created in 1929 in interwar Poland . The OUN at one time accepted violence as an acceptable tool in the fight against foreign and domestic enemies of their cause as the revenge upon the occupation of...
, formed in Poland and the ensuing state repressions. Collective punishment meted out on thousands of mostly innocent peasants resulted in exacerbation of animosity between the Polish state and the Ukrainian population. At the onset of
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, and soon after the
Soviet annexation of that areaOn the basis of a secret clause of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union , the Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17, 1939, capturing the eastern regions of Poland , with Galicia and Volhynia, facing little Polish opposition and occupying the principal city of...
in 1939–1941 (see: Polish September Campaign), new doors of opportunity for Ukrainian nationalists began to open. Killings of Poles in Volhynia and Galicia started soon after the Soviet annexation of the territory, and reached its pinnacle during the German occupation. The mass murder of Poles did not end when the
Red ArmyThe Red Army The Red Army The Red Army was the Soviet government’s revolutionary militia beginning in the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the USSR. Since 1946, after the Second World War, it was called the Soviet Army.The 'Red...
pushed the
WehrmachtWehrmacht was the name of the unified armed forces of Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe ....
out from the current territory of Western Ukraine. The massacres lasted well into 1945.
Polish-Ukrainian relations after World War I
As the Austro-Hungarian government collapsed following
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
, Poles and Ukrainians struggled for the control over the city of Lemberg (today Lviv), populated mostly by Poles, but surrounded by a Ukrainian majority. Until 1795 the area belonged to the Kingdom of Poland, but later, with the
Partitions of PolandThe Partitions of Poland or Partitions of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth took place in the second half of the 18th century and ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The partitions were carried out by Prussia, Russia and Habsburg Austria dividing up the Commonwealth lands...
, was annexed to
AustriaThe Habsburg Monarchy covered the territories ruled by the junior Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg , and then by the successor House of Habsburg-Lorraine , between 1526 and 1867/1918. The capital was mainly Vienna, except from 1583 to 1611, when the capital was Prague...
. The conflict, known as the Polish–Ukrainian War, spilled over to Volhynia with the Ukrainian leader
Symon PetluraSymon Vasylyovych Petliura was a publicist, writer, journalist, Ukrainian politician and statesman, who led Ukraine's fight for independence following the Russian Revolution of 1917....
attempting to expand Ukrainian claims westward. The war was conducted by professional forces on both sides resulting in relatively minimal number of civilian deaths. On July 17, 1919, a ceasefire was signed. On November 21, 1919, the Paris Peace Conference granted Eastern Galicia to Poland. The lost war left a generation of frustrated western Ukrainian veterans convinced that Poland was Ukraine's principal enemy.
Even though Polish statehood had just been re-established by the
Treaty of VersaillesThe Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...
after a century of
PartitionsThe Partitions of Poland or Partitions of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth took place in the second half of the 18th century and ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The partitions were carried out by Prussia, Russia and Habsburg Austria dividing up the Commonwealth lands...
, the frontiers between Poland and Soviet Russia had not been defined by the Treaty. As a result the
Polish-Soviet warThe Polish–Soviet War was an armed conflict between Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine against the Second Polish Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic, four states in post-World War I Europe. The war was the result of the belligerents' desire to expand their territories and their influence...
of 1920 broke out with the Soviets claiming both Ukraine and Belarus, which they viewed as a part of the
Russian EmpireThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia, and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
currently under Civil War. The Soviets caused Ukrainian forces to retreat to
PodoliaThe region of Podolia is an historical region in the west-central and south-west portions of present-day Ukraine, corresponding to Khmelnytskyi Oblast and Vinnytsia Oblast. Northern Transnistria, in Moldova is also a part of Podolia...
, and in effect the Ukrainian leader Symon Petlura decided to ally with Poland's Józef Piłsudski. On April 21, 1920, Piłsudski and Petlura signed
a military allianceThe Treaty of Warsaw of April 1920 was an alliance between the Second Polish Republic, represented by Józef Piłsudski, and the Ukrainian People's Republic, represented by Symon Petlura, against Bolshevik Russia...
accepting the Polish-Ukrainian border on the river Zbrucz. Following this agreement, the government of the West Ukrainian National Republic went into exile in Vienna, viewing it as betrayal. At the end of the Polish-Ukrainian war with the Soviets, in 1921
Peace of RigaThe Peace of Riga, also known as the Treaty of Riga; was signed in Riga on 18 March, 1921, between Poland on one side and Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine on the other...
signed with
Vladimir LeninVladimir Ilyich Lenin , born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov , was the Bolshevik Leader of the 1917 October Revolution, and the first Head of State of the Soviet Union; in the course of his political career, he used the pseudonyms Lenin, V. I. Lenin, Nikolai Lenin, and N. Lenin...
, Volhynia and Eastern Galicia were eventually adjoined to the
Second Polish RepublicThe Second Polish Republic, Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland refers to Poland between the two world wars; from the creation of an independent Polish state in the aftermath of World War I, to the invasion of Poland in 1939 by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Slovak Republic,...
, whilst the rest of contemporary Ukraine, known as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic became part of the USSR. Meanwhile, the exiled Ukrainian government was disbanded on March 14, 1923, by the Council of Ambassadors at the League of Nations. After a long series of negotiations, on March 14, 1923, the League of Nations decided that eastern Galicia would be incorporated into Poland, thus "taking into consideration that Poland has recognized that in regard to the eastern part of Galicia ethnographic conditions fully deserve its autonomous status." Their promise was not fulfilled by the Polish government. In the following years, the historical discourse between Polish and Ukrainian researchers has often been based on historical stereotypes stemming from ethnic conflicts during First World War and the interwar period, making it difficult to draw an objective account of bilateral Polish-Ukrainian relations during World War II.
OUN-B
Decisions leading to the massacre of Poles in Volhynia, and their implementation, were primarily attributable to the extremist Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) and not by other Ukrainian political or military groups. The OUN-B's ideology involved the following ideas:
Integral nationalismIntegral nationalism is one of five types of nationalism defined by Carlton Hayes in his 1928 book The Historical Evolution of Modern Nationalism....
, that a pure national state and language were desired goals; glorification of violence and armed struggle of nation versus nation; totalitarianism, in which the nation must be ruled by one person and one political party. While the moderate Melnyk faction of the OUN admired aspects of Mussolini's fascism, the more extreme Bandera faction of the OUN admired aspects of Nazism.
At the time of its founding, the most popular political party among Ukrainians was the
Ukrainian National Democratic AllianceThe Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance, was the largest Ukrainian political party in the Second Polish Republic, active in territory that is currently Western Ukraine. It dominated the mainstream political life of the Ukrainian minority in Poland...
which, while opposed to Polish rule, called for peaceful and democratic means to achieve independence from Poland. The OUN, on the other hand, was originally a fringe movement within western Ukraine, condemned for its violence by figures from mainstream Ukrainian society such as head of the
Ukrainian Greek Catholic ChurchThe Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church , also known as the Ukrainian Catholic Church, is one of the successor Churches to the acceptance of Christianity by Grand Prince Vladimir the Great of Kyiv, in 988. UGCC is the largest Eastern Rite Catholic sui juris particular church in full communion with...
, Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytsky who wrote of the OUN's leadership that "whoever demoralizes our youth is a criminal and an enemy of our people." Several factors contributed to the OUN-B's increase in popularity and, ultimately, monopoly of power within Ukrainian society, conditions necessary for the massacres to occur.
In the 1930s the
Organization of Ukrainian NationalistsOrganization of Ukrainian Nationalists or OUN is a Ukrainian political movement originally created in 1929 in interwar Poland . The OUN at one time accepted violence as an acceptable tool in the fight against foreign and domestic enemies of their cause as the revenge upon the occupation of...
, formed in
ViennaVienna is the capital of the Republic of Austria and also one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.7 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 10th largest city by...
,
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
, conducted a terrorist campaign in Poland, which included the assassination of prominent Polish politicians such as Interior Minister Bronisław Pieracki, and Polish and Ukrainian moderates such as Tadeusz Hołówko.
Events during the times of the Second Polish Republic
Jeffrey Burds of Northeastern University believes that the build up towards the ethnic cleansing of Poles that erupted during the Second World War in Galicia and Volhynia had its roots in the interwar period when the provinces were ruled by Poland.
Harsh policies implemented by the Second Polish Republic, often provoked by the OUN-B violence, contributed to a further deterioration of relations between the two ethnic groups. Between 1934 and 1938, a series of violent and sometimes deadly attacks against Ukrainians were conducted throughout Poland. In Wołyń Voivodeship some policies resulted in suppressing the
Ukrainian languageUkrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses the Cyrillic alphabet....
, culture and religion, and the antagonism escalated. Although around 68% of the voivodeship's population spoke Ukrainian as their first language (see table), nevertheless practically all government and administrative positions, including the police, were assigned to Poles. Beginning in 1937, the Polish government in Volhynia initiated an active campaign to use religion as a tool for
Polonization Polonization is the acquisition or imposition of elements of Polish culture, in particular, Polish language, as experienced in some historic periods by non-Polish populations of territories controlled or substantially influenced by Poland.-Piast Poland:...
and to forcibly convert the Orthodox population to Roman Catholicism. Over 190 Orthodox Churches were destroyed and 150 converted to Roman Catholic ones. Remaining Orthodox Churches were forced to use the Polish language in their sermons. In August 1939, the last remaining Orthodox Church in the Volhynian capital of
LutskLutsk is a city located by the Styr River in north-western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Volyn Oblast , as well as the administrative center of the surrounding Lutskyi Raion within the oblast...
was converted to a Roman Catholic one by decree of the Polish government.
By 1938, thousands of
Polish colonistsOsadniks was the Polish loanword used in Soviet Union for veterans of the Polish Army that were given land in the Kresy territory ceded to Poland by Polish-Soviet Riga Peace Treaty of 1921 .- History :Shortly before the battle of Warsaw on August...
and war veterans were encouraged to settle in Volhynia and Galicia. This number is estimated at 17,700 in Volhynia (not including Galicia) by Polish historians. Ukrainian sources estimated the total number of Polish inhabitants in both Galicia and Volhynia at 300,000, including the 1930s settlers. The short presence of the settlers, as almost all were forcibly expelled by the Soviets to Siberia, ignited further anti-Polish sentiment among the locals.
The Ukrainian population was outraged by the Polish government polices. In a Polish report about the popular mood in Volhynia, a comment of a young Ukrainian from October 1938 was recorded as "we will decorate our pillars with you and our trees with your wives." By the beginning of World War II, the membership of the OUN had risen to 20,000 active members and there were many times that number of supporters.
Policies conducted by the Soviet Union (1939–1941)
In September 1939, at the
outbreak of World War IIThe Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War in Poland and the Poland Campaign in Germany, was an invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent that marked the start of World War II...
and in accordance with the secret protocol the
Molotov-Ribbentrop PactThe Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, colloquially named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and signed in...
, Poland was invaded from the west by
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
and from
the eastThe term Kresy, meaning "Outskirts" or "Borderlands", is used to define the Polish eastern frontier. The term referred to the eastern frontiers of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. During the period of the Second Polish Republic, these territories roughly equated with the lands to the east of...
by the Soviet UnionSoviet invasion of Poland can refer to:* the second phase of the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 when Soviet armies marched on Warsaw, Poland* Soviet invasion of Poland of 1939 when Soviet Union allied with Nazi Germany attacked Second Polish Republic...
. Volhynia was split by the Soviets into two
oblastOblast is a type of administrative division in Slavic countries, including some countries of the former Soviet Union. The word "oblast" is a loanword in English, but it is nevertheless often translated as "area", "zone", "province", or "region"...
s,
RovnoRivne Oblast is an oblast of Ukraine. Its administrative center is Rivne....
and
VolynVolyn Oblast is an oblast in north-western Ukraine. Its administrative center is Lutsk...
of the
Ukrainian SSRThe Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or the Ukrainian SSR was one of the founders of the Soviet Union constituent republic that made up the former Soviet Union from its formation in 1922 to its abolition in 1991.-Name:...
. Upon the annexation, the
Soviet Secret PoliceThe People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including...
started to eliminate the predominantly Polish middle and upper classes, including social activists and military leaders. Between 1939–1941, 200,000 Poles were deported to Siberia by the Soviet authorities, the total amount of Polish citizens transferred to Eastern European part of the USSR, Ural and Siberia ranged from 1.2 to 1.7 million. Tens of thousands of Poles fled from the Soviet-occupied zone to the areas controlled by the Germans. These deportations and murders deprived the Poles of their community leaders.
During the Soviet occupation, Polish members of the local administration were replaced by Ukrainians and Jews, and the Soviet NKVD subverted the Ukrainian independence movement. All local Ukrainian political parties were abolished. Between 20,000 to 30,000 Ukrainian activists fled to German-occupied territory; most of those who did not escape were arrested. For example, Dr. Dmytro Levitsky, the head of the moderate, left-leaning democratic party
Ukrainian National Democratic AllianceThe Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance, was the largest Ukrainian political party in the Second Polish Republic, active in territory that is currently Western Ukraine. It dominated the mainstream political life of the Ukrainian minority in Poland...
, and chief of the Ukrainian delegation in the pre-war
Polish parliamentThe Sejm is the lower house of the Polish parliament. Each member of Sejm is called Poseł.Before the 20th century, the term "Sejm" referred to the entire three-chamber Polish parliament, comprising the lower house , the upper house and the King. It was commonly termed a three-estate parliament...
, as well as many of his colleagues, were arrested, deported to Moscow, and never heard from again. The elimination by the Soviets of the individuals, organizations, and parties that represented moderate or liberal political tendencies within Ukrainian society left the extremist
Organization of Ukrainian NationalistsOrganization of Ukrainian Nationalists or OUN is a Ukrainian political movement originally created in 1929 in interwar Poland . The OUN at one time accepted violence as an acceptable tool in the fight against foreign and domestic enemies of their cause as the revenge upon the occupation of...
, which operated in the underground, as the only political party with a significant organizational presence among western Ukrainians.
Policies conducted by Nazi Germany (1941–1943)
The areas of eastern Poland occupied by the Soviet Union
were attackedOperation Barbarossa was the code name for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a 2,900 km front...
by German, Slovak, and Hungarian forces on June 22, 1941. Soviet forces in Volhynia were better armed and prepared than in more northerly areas and were able to resist, but only for a couple of days. On June 30 the Soviets withdrew eastwards and Volhynia was overrun by the Nazis, with support from the Ukrainian nationalists, carrying out acts of sabotage. The Ukrainian pro-Nazi militia also staged
pogromA pogrom is a form of riot directed against a particular group, whether ethnic, religious, or other, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes, businesses, and religious centers...
s and assisted the Nazis in executions of Poles and Jews. Some wartime actions by the Poles presumably contributed to the deepening tensions between the Polish and Ukrainian communities and politicians. In 1941, two brothers of Ukrainian leader
Stepan BanderaStepan Andriyovych Bandera was a Ukrainian politician and one of the leaders of Ukrainian national movement in Western Ukraine, who headed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists . The son of a clerical family, Bandera played a significant role in the history of Ukraine during World War II...
were murdered while imprisoned in Auschwitz by Polish (
VolksdeutscheVolksdeutsche is a historical term which arose in the early 20th century to describe ethnic Germans living outside of the Reich. This is in contrast to Imperial Germans , German citizens living within Germany...
)
kaposKapo was a prisoner who worked inside German Nazi concentration camps during World War II in some lower administrative position ....
. In the
ChelmChełm is a city in eastern Poland with 67,702 inhabitants . It is located to the south-east of Lublin, north of Zamość and south of Biała Podlaska, some 25 kilometres from the border with Ukraine...
region, 394 Ukrainian community leaders were killed by the Poles on the grounds of collaboration with the German authorities.
Perhaps the largest practical effect of German rule on the Volhynia massacres was participation of Ukrainian nationalists with the German police forces. During the first year of German occupation, the
Organization of Ukrainian NationalistsOrganization of Ukrainian Nationalists or OUN is a Ukrainian political movement originally created in 1929 in interwar Poland . The OUN at one time accepted violence as an acceptable tool in the fight against foreign and domestic enemies of their cause as the revenge upon the occupation of...
pursued a policy of infiltrating the German police units with its members. In this role they obtained training in the use of weapons, and would also assist the German SS in murdering approximately 200,000 Volhynian Jews. While the Ukrainian police's share in the actual killings of Jews was small (they primarily played a supporting role), the Ukrainian police learned from the Germans the techniques necessary to kill large numbers of people: detailed advanced planning and careful site selection; assurances to the local population prior to the massacres in order for them to let down their guard; sudden encirclement; and then mass killing. This training obtained in 1942 explains the UPA's efficiency in the killing of Poles in 1943.
Prelude
After Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union, both the Polish government in Exile and the Ukrainian Nationalists of the OUN-B considered the possibility that in the event of the mutual military exhaustion of Germany and the Soviet Union, the region would become a scene of conflict between Poles and Ukrainians. The Polish Government in Exile, which wanted the region returned to Poland, planned for a swift armed takeover of the territory as part of its overall plan for a future anti-Nazi uprising. This view was strengthened by OUN collaboration with the Nazis, so that by 1943 no understanding between the Polish government's Home Army and OUN was possible. On the other hand, the OUN-B came to believe that it had to move fast while the Germans still controlled the area in order to preempt future Polish efforts at re-establishing Poland's pre-war borders. The result was that the local OUN-B commanders in Volhynia and Galicia (if not the OUN-B leadership itself) decided that an ethnic cleansing of Poles from the area, through terror and murder, was necessary. Nevertheless, throughout 1942 both Poles and Ukrainians considered Volhynia to be a relatively peaceful area, and there was no significant rise in ethnic tensions between the two peoples.
According to OUN reports, from April to May 1942, Polish underground paramilitary groups were already being formed. The formation of such groups was corroborated by German sources. At the same time, other Poles attempted to enter German service in order to obtain weapons and then quickly deserted and joined self defense units with their arms. However, as evidenced both by Polish and Ukrainian underground reports, the only major concern was that of strong
Soviet partisan groupsThe Soviet partisans were members of a resistance movement which fought a guerrilla war against the Axis occupation of the Soviet Union during the Second World War....
operating in the area. The groups, consisting mostly of
Soviet POWThe Nazi crimes against Soviet Prisoners of War relates to the genocidal policies taken towards the captured soldiers of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany...
s, initially specialized in raiding local settlements, which disturbed both the OUN and the
AKThe Armia Krajowa , abbreviated "AK", was the dominant Polish resistance movement in World War II German-occupied Poland. It was formed in February 1942 from the Związek Walki Zbrojnej . Over the next two years, it absorbed most other Polish underground forces...
, who expected it to result in the increase of German terror. Indeed these concerns soon materialized, as Germans started the "pacifications" of entire villages in Volhynia in retaliation for real or alleged support for the Soviet partisans.
Polish historiographyThis article presents the historiography of the Volyn tragedy after World War II.-Communist Poland:The Polish historiography of the Volyn tragedy during the dictatorship of the communist party can be broken down into 3 periods:# End 1950-1960s....
wrongly attributed most of these actions to Ukrainian nationalists, while in reality they were conducted by Ukrainian occupational police units under the direct supervision of Germans. One of the best-known examples was the pacification of Obórki village in
LutskLutsk is a city located by the Styr River in north-western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Volyn Oblast , as well as the administrative center of the surrounding Lutskyi Raion within the oblast...
county on November 13–14, 1942. While most of the actions were carried out by the Ukrainian occupational police, the murder of 53 Polish villagers was perpetrated personally by the Germans, who supervised the operation.
For many months in 1942, the OUN-B was not able to control the situation in Volhynia, where in addition to Soviet partisans, many independent Ukrainian self-defense groups started to form in response to the growth of German terror. The first OUN-B military groups were created in Volhynia only in autumn 1942 with the goal of subduing the other independent groups. By February 1943 the OUN had initiated a policy of murdering civilian Poles as a way of resolving the Polish question in Ukraine. In spring 1943 the OUN-B partisans started to call themselves the
Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)The Ukrainian Insurgent Army was a group of Ukrainian nationalist partisans who engaged in a series of guerrilla conflicts during World War II...
, using the former name of the
Ukrainian People's Revolutionary ArmyUkrainian People's Revolutionary Army aka Polissian Sich - UPA. aka Ukrainian Insurgent ArmyThe Ukrainian Insurgent Army was a paramilitary formation of Ukrainian nationalists, nominally proclaimed in Olevsk region in December 1941 by Taras Bulba-Borovets by renaming an existing military unit...
, another Ukrainian group operating in the area in 1942. In March 1943 approximately 5,000 Ukrainian policemen defected with their weapons and joined the UPA. Well-trained and well-armed, this group contributed to the UPA achieving dominance over other Ukrainian groups active in Volhynia. Soon, the newly created OUN-B forces managed to either destroy or absorb other Ukrainian groups in Volhynia, including four OUN-M units and the
Ukrainian People's Revolutionary ArmyUkrainian People's Revolutionary Army aka Polissian Sich - UPA. aka Ukrainian Insurgent ArmyThe Ukrainian Insurgent Army was a paramilitary formation of Ukrainian nationalists, nominally proclaimed in Olevsk region in December 1941 by Taras Bulba-Borovets by renaming an existing military unit...
. It also soon undertook steps to liquidate
foreign elements, with posters and leaflets urging Ukrainians to murder Poles. Its dominance secured, the UPA began the large-scale UPA operations against the Polish population.
Ukrainian policemen who deserted from German service were replaced by the Nazis with Polish policemen. Polish motives in joining were local and personal: to defend themselves or avenge UPA atrocities. German policy involved the murder of the family of every Ukrainian police officer deserting and the destruction of the village of any Ukrainian police officer deserting with his weapons. These retaliations were carried out using newly recruited Polish policemen. Even though Volhynian Polish participation in the German Police followed UPA attacks on Polish settlements, it nevertheless provided the Ukrainian Nationalists with useful sources of propaganda and was used as a justification for the cleansing action - OUN-B leader summarized the situation in August 1943 saying that German administration "
uses Polaks in its destructive actions. In response we destroy them unmercifully". Despite the desertions in march and April 1943, the auxiliary Police remained heavily Ukrainian, and Ukrainians in the Nazi service, continued
pacificationsThe pacification operations in German-occupied Poland were the unlawful use of military force and punitive measures conducted during World War II by the German state with the goal of suppressing any Polish resistance....
of Polish and other villages.
Volhynia
On February 9, 1943, a group pretending to be Soviet partisans
murdered 173 Poles in the ParośleParośla I massacre – a crime committed by Ukrainian Insurgent Army under Hryhorij Perehijniak "Dowbeszka-Korobka" command 9 February 1943 on ethnic Polish residents of the village of Parośla located in Antonówka community, Sarny county in Volhynia...
settlement in
SarnySarny translated as Deers, is a small city in the Rivne Oblast of western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Sarny Raion , and is a major railway node on the Slutch River.The current estimated population is 27,700....
county. According to Polish historiography, the perpetrators were a unit of UPA, commanded by Hryhory Perehyniak. The assault on Polish settlements began between late March and early April 1943, killing approximately 7,000 unarmed men, women, and children in its first days. On the night of April 22–23, Ukrainian groups, commanded by Ivan Lytwynchuk (aka
Dubowy), attacked the settlement of
Janowa DolinaJanowa Dolina was a model settlement for workers of the Polish State Basalt Quarry, located in the Volhynian Voivodeship, in the Kostopol County of the Second Polish Republic. The name comes from Polish king Jan Kazimierz Waza, who reportedly hunted in the Volhynian forests, and after hunting —...
, killing 600 people and burning down the entire village. Those few who survived were mostly people that found refuge with friendly Ukrainian families. In one of the massacres, in the village of Lipniki, almost the entire family of
Miroslaw HermaszewskiMirosław Hermaszewski , is a retired Polish Air Force officer. He became the first Pole in space when he flew aboard the Soyuz 30 spacecraft in 1978....
(Poland's only astronaut) was murdered. Also, the nationalists murdered the grandparents of composer
Krzesimir DebskiKrzesimir Dębski - Polish composer, conductor and jazz violinist.Krzesimir Dębski’s music career as an musician has been that of a performer as well as a composer of classical music, opera, television and feature films....
, whose parents met each other during the Ukrainian attack on Kisielin (see
Kisielin massacreKisielin massacre was a massacre which took place in the Volhynian village of Kisielin , now Кисилин, located in the Volyn Oblast, Ukraine. It took place on Sunday, July 11, 1943, when units of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, supported by local Ukrainian peasants, surrounded Poles who had gathered...
). Debski's parents survived, taking refuge with a friendly Ukrainian family. In another massacre, according to an UPA report, "in the village of Kuty, in the the Szumski region, an entire Polish colony (86 farms) was liquidated for cooperation with the Gestapo and German authorities." According to Polish sources,
Kuty self-defenseKuty defence – was a skirmish between Polish self-defense units and Ukrainian Insurgent Army unit under commander Ivan Klymshyn and Andriy Melnyk's supporters in the village of Kuty located in Volhynia, Krzemieniec county, Shumsk commune 3 or 4 May, 1943...
unit managed to repel the UPA assault, though 67 Poles were murdered. The rest of inhabitants decided to abandon the village and were escorted by the Germans who arrived at Kuty concerned by the glow of fire and the sound of gunfire. Nevertheless, the claims about collaboration prior to the attack seem unreliable.
The
decisive Soviet offensive at KurskThe Battle of Kursk refers to German and Soviet operations on the Eastern Front of World War II in the vicinity of the city of Kursk in July and August 1943. It remains both the largest series of armoured clashes, including the Battle of Prokhorovka, and the costliest single day of aerial warfare...
acted as a prime stimulus for escalation of massacres in June and August 1943, when ethnic cleansing reached its peak. In June 1943,
Dmytro KlyachkivskyDmytro Klyachkivsky was a colonel of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army , first head-commander of the UPA-North...
head-commander of UPA-North made a general decision to exterminate Poles in Volhynia. His secret directive stated:
"We should make a large action of the liquidation of the Polish element. As the German armies withdraw, we should take advantage of this convenient moment for liquidating the entire male population in the age from 16 up to 60 years. We cannot lose this fight, and it is necessary at all costs to weaken Polish forces. Villages and settlements laying next to the massive forests, should disappear from the face of the earth".
In mid-1943, after a wave of killings of Polish civilians, the Poles tried to initiate negotiations with the UPA. Two delegates of the
Polish government in ExileThe Polish government-in-exile was the government of Poland after the country had been occupied by Germany and the Soviet Union at the start of World War II...
,
Zygmunt RumelZygmunt Jan Rumel was a Polish poet and soldier of the Bataliony Chłopskie. Rumel's poetic talent was acknowledged by a renowned Polish poet Leopold Staff, and author Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz...
and Krzysztof Markiewicz, together with a group of representatives from the
Polish Home ArmyThe Armia Krajowa , abbreviated "AK", was the dominant Polish resistance movement in World War II German-occupied Poland. It was formed in February 1942 from the Związek Walki Zbrojnej . Over the next two years, it absorbed most other Polish underground forces...
, attempted to negotiate with UPA leaders, but instead, they were captured, tortured and murdered on July 10, 1943, in the village of Kustycze.
The following day, July 11, 1943, is regarded as one of the bloodiest days of the massacres, with many reports of UPA units marching from village to village, killing Polish civilians. On that day, UPA units surrounded and attacked Polish villages and settlements located in three counties – Kowel, Horochow, and Włodzimierz Wołyński. The events began at 3:00am, with the Poles having no chance to escape. After the massacres, the Polish villages were burned to the ground. According to those few who survived, the action had been carefully prepared; a few days before the massacres there had been several meetings in Ukrainian villages, during which UPA members told the villagers that the slaughter of all Poles was necessary. Within a few days an unspecified number of Polish villages were completely destroyed and their populations murdered. In the Polish village of Gurow, out of 480 inhabitants, only 70 survived; in the settlement of Orzeszyn, the UPA killed 306 out of 340 Poles; in the village of Sadowa out of 600 Polish inhabitants only 20 survived; in Zagaje out of 350 Poles only a few survived. In August 1943, the Polish village of Gaj (near
KovelKovel is a city located in the Volyn Oblast , in north-western Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of the Kovelskyi Raion , the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast...
) was burned and some 600 people massacred. In September in the village of Wola Ostrowiecka 529 people were killed, including 220 children under 14, and 438 people were killed, including 246 children, in Ostrowki. In September 1992 exhumations were carried out in these villages, confirming the number of dead.
The atrocities were perpetrated with utmost cruelty. The victims, regardless of their age or gender, were routinely tortured to death.
Norman DaviesProfessor Ivor Norman Richard Davies Fellow of the British Academy is a leading British historian of Welsh descent, noted for his publications on the history of Poland, Europe, and the United Kingdom.- Academic career :Davies studied in Grenoble, France . He was a disciple of A. J. P...
in
No Simple Victory gives a short, but shocking description of the massacres. He writes:
"Villages were torched. Roman Catholic priests were axed or crucified. Churches were burned with all their parishioners. Isolated farms were attacked by gangs carrying pitchforks and kitchen knives. Throats were cut. Pregnant women were bayoneted. Children were cut in two. Men were ambushed in the field and led away. The perpetrators could not determine the province's future. But at least they could determine that it would be a future without Poles."
Timothy SnyderTimothy D. Snyder is an American professor of history at Yale University. He specializes in the history of modern nationalism and the history of East Europe....
describes the murders in the following way:
"Ukrainian partisans burned homes, shot or forced back inside those who tried to flee, and used sickles and pitchforks to kill those they captured outside. In some cases, beheaded, crucified, dismembered, or disembowelled bodies were displayed, in order to encourage remaining Poles to flee". Similar account has been presented by Niall Ferguson, who wrote:
Whole villages were wiped out, men beaten to death, women raped and mutilated, babies bayoneted. Ukrainian historian Yuryi Kirichuk from
LvivLviv is a major city in western Ukraine.It is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically also for Ukraine’s neighbour Poland. The historic centre of Lviv with its old buildings and cobblestone roads has survived the Second World War and the Soviet presence...
described the conflict as similar to the medieval rebellions.
Altogether, in July 1943 the Ukrainians attacked 167 towns and villages. This wave of massacres lasted 5 days, until July 16. The UPA continued the ethnic cleansing, particularly in rural areas, until most Poles had been deported, killed or expelled. These actions were conducted by many units, were well-coordinated and thoroughly planned. Also, even though it may be an exaggeration to say that the massacres enjoyed general support of the Ukrainians, it has been suggested that without wide support from local Ukrainians they would have been impossible. Those Ukrainian peasants who took part in the massacres, created their own units, called
Samoboronni Kushtchovi Viddily (
Kushtchov Self-Defence Units). People who did not speak Polish, but were considered Poles by the perpetrators were also murdered.
Ukrainians in ethnically mixed settlements were offered material incentives to join in the slaughter of their neighbours, or warned by UPA's security service (
Sluzhba BezbekySluzhba Bezpeky was division of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army responsible for security, anti-espionage, and punishment. It was responsible for committing acts of terror against civilians and non-civilians, and their families, alleged to have served either the German or the Soviet forces occupying...
) to flee by night, while all remaining inhabitants were murdered at down. Nevertheless, many of Ukrainians risk, and in some cases, lost their lives trying to shelter or warn Poles - such activities were treated by the UPA as collaboration with enemy and severely punished. According to the Volhynian delegation to the Polish government, by October 1943 the number of Polish casualties exceeded 15,000 people. Timothy Snyder estimates that in summer and spring 1943 the UPA actions resulted in deaths of 40,000 Polish civilians.
Władysław FilarWładysław Filar - soldier of 27th Home Army Infantry Division, Polish historian, professor.He was born in Iwanicze Nowe at Volhynia...
from the Polish
Institute of National RemembranceInstitute of National Remembrance — Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation is a Polish government-affiliated research institute with lustration prerogatives and prosecution powers founded by specific legislation...
, a witness of the massacres, cites numerous statements of the Ukrainian officers, who reported their actions to the leaders of UPA-OUN. For example, in late September 1943, the commandant of the
Lysoho group wrote to the OUN headquarters:
"On September 29, 1943, I carried out the action in the villages of Wola Ostrowiecka (see Massacre of Wola OstrowieckaMassacre of Wola Ostrowiecka was a mass murder of Polish inhabitants of a Volhynian village of Wola Ostrowiecka, located in the prewar gmina Huszcza, Luboml county, in the Volhynian Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic....
), and Ostrówki (see Massacre of OstrowkiMassacre of Ostrówki was a mass murder of Polish inhabitants of a Volhynian village of Ostrówki, located in the interbellum in the gmina of Huszcza, Luboml county, Volhynian Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic, now known as Ostrowky, located in the Manevychi Raion of the Volyn oblast,...
). I have liquidated all Poles, starting from the youngest ones. Afterwards, all buildings were burned and all goods were confiscated". On that day in Wola Ostrowiecka 529 Poles were murdered (including 220 children under 14), and in Ostrówki, the Ukrainians killed 438 persons (including 246 children).
In August 1943 the UPA placed notices in every Polish village stating
in 48 hours leave beyond the BuhThe Bug or Buh River , sometimes called the Western Bug to distinguish it from the Southern Bug, flows from central Ukraine to the west, forming part of the boundary between Ukraine and Poland, passes along the Polish-Belarusian border and into Poland, and empties into the Narew river near Serock...
or the SianThe San is a river in southeastern Poland and western Ukraine, a tributary of the Vistula River, with a length of 433 km and a basin area of 16,861 km2...
river - otherwise Death. Ukrainian nationalists limited their actions to villages and settlements, and did not attack towns or cities. Prosecutor Piotr Zając from the
IPNInstitute of National Remembrance — Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation is a Polish government-affiliated research institute with lustration prerogatives and prosecution powers founded by specific legislation...
branch in Lublin stated that in 1943 the massacres were organized westwards, starting in March in Kostopol and
SarnySarny translated as Deers, is a small city in the Rivne Oblast of western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Sarny Raion , and is a major railway node on the Slutch River.The current estimated population is 27,700....
counties, in April they moved to the area of Krzemieniec,
RivneRivne is a historic city in western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Rivne Oblast , as well as the administrative center of the surrounding Rivne Raion within the oblast...
,
DubnoDubno is a city located on the Ikva River in the Rivne Oblast of western Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of Dubno Raion , the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast...
and
LutskLutsk is a city located by the Styr River in north-western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Volyn Oblast , as well as the administrative center of the surrounding Lutskyi Raion within the oblast...
, by June 1943, the attacks had spread to the counties of
KovelKovel is a city located in the Volyn Oblast , in north-western Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of the Kovelskyi Raion , the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast...
, Włodzimierz Wołyński, Horochów, and in August to
LubomlLuboml may refer to:* Liuboml, a city in Ukraine* Luboml , a documentary...
county. The slaughter did not stop after the
Red ArmyThe Red Army The Red Army The Red Army was the Soviet government’s revolutionary militia beginning in the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the USSR. Since 1946, after the Second World War, it was called the Soviet Army.The 'Red...
entered the areas, with massacres taking place in 1945 in such places as Czerwonogrod (Ukrainian: Irkiv), where 60 Poles were murdered on February 2, 1945, the day before their departure to the
Recovered TerritoriesRecovered or Regained Territories was the official term used by the Communist Polish post-war authorities to denote those territories which were assigned by the Big Three allies to Poland and incorporated into Poland after the Second World War...
.
According to Polish historian Piotr Łossowski, the method used in most of the attacks was the same. At first, local Poles were assured that nothing would happen to them. Then, at dawn, a village was surrounded by armed members of the UPA, behind whom were peasants with axes, hammers, knives, and saws. All the Poles encountered were murdered; sometimes they were herded into one spot, to make it easier. After a massacre, all goods were looted, including clothes, grain, and furniture. The final part of an attack was setting fire to the village. In many cases, victims were tortured and their bodies mutilated, with all vestiges of Polish existence eradicated. Even abandoned Polish settlements were still burned to the ground.
The massacres of the Polish population prompted Poles, starting in April 1943, to organize self-defence organizations, 100 of whom were formed in Volhynia in 1943. Sometimes these self-defence organiation obtained arms from the Germans, other times the Germans confiscated their weapons and arrested their leaders. Many of these organization could not withstand the pressure of UPA and were destroyed by them. Only the largest self-defence organizations who were able to obtain help from the AK or from Soviet partisans were able to survive.
[ Institute of Ukrainian History, Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Chapter 5, p. 264 Written by Ihor Ilyushin]Ihor Ilyushyn is a Ukrainian historian and professor of the Kiev Slavonic University.Ilyushyn is a graduate of the University of Kiev and doctor of historical sciences . Since 2004, he directs the Department of International Relations in Kiev Slavonic University...
.
Polish self-defence organization took part in revenge massacres of Ukrainian civilians starting in the summer of 1943, when Ukrainian villagers who had nothing to do with the massacres were suffering at the hands of Polish partisan forces. Among the evidence was a letter dated August 26 1943 to local Polish self-defence commander Bombinsky criticizing the burning of neighboring Ukrainian villages, killing any Ukrainian that crosses their path, and robbing Ukrainians of their material possessions.
[ Institute of Ukrainian History, Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Chapter 5, p. 266 Written by Ihor Ilyushin]Ihor Ilyushyn is a Ukrainian historian and professor of the Kiev Slavonic University.Ilyushyn is a graduate of the University of Kiev and doctor of historical sciences . Since 2004, he directs the Department of International Relations in Kiev Slavonic University...
. The total number of Ukrainian civilians murdered in Volyn in retaliatory acts by Poles is estimated at 2,000-3,000.
Eastern Galicia
In late 1943 and early 1944, after most Poles of Volhynia had either been murdered or had fled the area, the conflict spread to the neighboring province of Galicia, where the majority of the population was still Ukrainian, but where the Polish presence was stronger. Unlike in the case of Volhynia, where Polish villages were usually destroyed and their inhabitants murdered without warning, in east Galicia Poles were sometimes given the choice of fleeing or being killed (an order by an UPA commander in Galicia stated, "Once more I remind you: first call upon Poles to abandon their land and only later liquidate them, not the other way around"). This change in tactic, combined with better Polish self-defence and a demographic balance more favorable to Poles, resulted in a significantly lower death toll among Poles in Galicia than in Volhynia. The methods used by Ukrainian nationalists in this area, however, were the same, and consisted of killing all of the Polish residents of the villages, then pillaging the villages and burning them to the ground. In the night of February 5-6, 1944, Ukrainian groups attacked the Polish village of Barycz, near
BuchachBuchach is a small city located on the Strypa River in the Ternopil Oblast of western Ukraine...
. 126 Poles were massacred, including women and children. A few days later on February 12–13, a local group of OUN under Petro Chamchuk attacked the Polish settlement of Puźniki, killing around 100 people and burning houses. Those who survived moved mostly to
PrudnikPrudnik is a town in Poland, located in the southern part of Opole Voivodeship. Its population numbers 26,400 inhabitants...
. Then, in the village of Korosciatyn, 78 Poles were murdered; the victims were later counted by a local Roman Catholic priest, Rev. Mieczysław Kamiński. Father Kamiński claimed that in Koropiec, where no Poles were actually murdered, a local Greek Catholic priest, in reference to mixed Polish-Ukrainian families, proclaimed from the pulpit:
Mother, you're suckling an enemy - strangle it. Among scores of Polish villages, whose inhabitants were murdered and all buildings burned, there are such places as Berezowica near Zbaraz, Ihrowica near
TernopilTernopil , is a city in western Ukraine, located on the banks of the Seret River. Ternopil is one of the major cities of Eastern Galicia. It is located approximately east of Lviv, at around...
, Plotych near
TernopilTernopil , is a city in western Ukraine, located on the banks of the Seret River. Ternopil is one of the major cities of Eastern Galicia. It is located approximately east of Lviv, at around...
, Podkamien near
BrodyBrody is a city in the Lviv Oblast of western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Brodivskyi Raion , and is located in the valley of the upper Styr River, approximately 90 kilometres northeast of the oblast capital, Lviv...
, Hanachiv and Hanachivka near Przemyslany.
One of the most infamous massacres took place on February 28, 1944, in the Polish village of
Huta PieniackaHuta Pieniacka – was an ethnic Polish village of about 1,000 inhabitants previously located in Tarnopol Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic...
with over 1,000 inhabitants. The village served as a shelter for refugees including Polish Jews, as well as a recuperation base for Polish and Communist partisans. One AK unit was active there. In winter of 1944 a Soviet partisan unit numbering 1,000 stationed in the village for two weeks. Huta Pieniacka's villagers, although poor, organized a well-fortified and armed self-defense unit that fought off a Ukrainian and German
reconnaissanceReconnaissance is a military and medical term denoting exploration conducted to gain information. Militarily, its shorthand Canadian and British form is recce , its American usage form is recon...
attack on February 23, 1944. Two soldiers of the Galician Division of the Waffen-SS were killed and one wounded by the villagers. Five days later, on February 28 elements of the Ukrainian Division from Brody returned with 500-600 men assisted by a group of civilian nationalist. The killing spree lasted all day. Kazimierz Wojciechowski, the commander of the Polish self-defense unit was drenched with gasoline and burned alive at the main square. The village was utterly destroyed and all of its occupants killed, many with utmost cruelty. The civilians, mostly women and children, were rounded up at a church, divided and locked in barns which were set on fire. Estimates of casualties in the
Huta Pieniacka massacreHuta Pieniacka massacre was a punitive military operation against the inhabitants Huta Pieniacka massacre was a punitive military operation against the inhabitants Huta Pieniacka massacre was a punitive military operation against the inhabitants (estimates of victims range from 500 to 1200 of the...
vary, and include 500 (Ukrainian archives), over 1,000 (
Tadeusz PiotrowskiTadeusz Piotrowski may refer to:* Tadeusz Piotrowski , mountaineer and writer, 1940-1986; died on K2* Tadeusz Piotrowski , b. 1940, sociologist and author of books about Holocaust and history of Poland...
), and 1,200 (Sol Littman). Some historians deny the role of the Ukrainian Galician Division in the killings, and attribute them entirely to German units, while others disagree. According to IPN investigation, the crime was committed by the 4th battalion of the Ukrainian Galician Division. A military journal of the Ukrainian Galician Division condemned killings of Poles. In a March 2, 1944 article directed to the Ukrainian youth, written by military leaders, Soviet partisans were blamed for the murders of Poles and Ukrainians, and the authors stated that "If God forbid, among those who committed such inhuman acts, a Ukrainian hand was found, it will be forever excluded from the Ukrainian national community." According to Yale historian
Timothy SnyderTimothy D. Snyder is an American professor of history at Yale University. He specializes in the history of modern nationalism and the history of East Europe....
, the 14th SS Division's role in the ethnic cleansing of Poles from western Ukraine was marginal.
The village of Pidkamen near Brody was a shelter for Poles, who escaped there, to hide in the monastery of the Dominicans. Some 2000 persons, majority of them women and children, were living there when the monastery was attacked in mid-March 1944, by the UPA units, which according to AK accounts were cooperating with Ukrainian SS. Over 250 Poles were killed. In the nearby village of Palikrovy, 300 Poles were killed, 20 in Maliniska and 16 in Chernytsia. Armed Ukrainian groups destroyed the monastery, stealing all valuables. What remained is the painting of Mary of Pidkamen, which now is kept in Saint Wojciech church in Wrocław. Authors of a monograph "Zycie religijne w Polsce pod okupacja 1939-1945" state that Roman Catholic priests were among those killed with most cruelty. Father Ludwik Wrodarczyk from the village of Okop was crucified by the Ukrainians, father Stanislaw Dobrzanski from the village of Ostrowka beheaded (with him 967 local Poles were killed) and father Karol Baran from the village of Korytnica was cut in half by a saw. According to Kirichuk, the first attacks on the Poles took place there in August, 1943 and they were probably the work of UPA units from Volhynia. In return, Poles killed important Ukrainians, including the Ukrainian doctor Lastowiecky from Lviv and a popular football player from
PrzemyslPrzemyśl is a city in south-eastern Poland with 66,756 inhabitants, as of June 2009. In 2006, it became part of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship; it was previously the capital of Przemyśl Voivodeship....
, Wowczyszyn.
By the end of summer, mass acts of terror aimed at Poles were taking place in Eastern Galicia with the purpose of forcing Poles to settle on the western bank of the
San riverThe San is a river in southeastern Poland and western Ukraine, a tributary of the Vistula River, with a length of 433 km and a basin area of 16,861 km2...
, under the slogan "Poles behind the San". The number of victims is unknown. Kirichuk estimates that 10,000-12,000 Poles were killed in Galicia alone. According to
Grzegorz MotykaGrzegorz Motyka is a Polish historian, specializing in the history of the Polish-Ukrainian relations. Since 1992 employed in the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences and in the Institute of National Remembrance....
about 40,000-60,000 Poles were murdered.
In Polish retaliatory actions conducted in early 1944, the Ukrainian villages of Prykhorile, Mentke, Sakhryn, Shykhoviche, Terebin were destroyed. Seventy percent of the estimated 1,500 victims were Ukrainian women and children.
[ Institute of Ukrainian History, Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Chapter 5, pg. 275 Written by Ihor Ilyushin.]
Approximately 366 Ukrainian and a few Polish inhabitants of Pawłokoma were killed by a former
Armia KrajowaThe Armia Krajowa , abbreviated "AK", was the dominant Polish resistance movement in World War II German-occupied Poland. It was formed in February 1942 from the Związek Walki Zbrojnej . Over the next two years, it absorbed most other Polish underground forces...
unit aided by Polish self-defence groups from nearby villages. The massacre is believed to be an act of retaliation for earlier alleged murders by Ukrainian Insurgent Army of 9 (or 11) Poles in Pawłokoma and unspecified number of Poles killed by UPA in neighbouring villages.
German involvement
While Germans actively encouraged the conflict, for most of the time they attempted to remain not directly involved. However, there are reports of Germans supplying weapons to both Ukrainians and Poles. Special German units formed from collaborationist Ukrainian or Polish police were deployed in pacification actions in Volhynia, and some of their crimes had been attributed to either the Polish
Home ArmyThe Armia Krajowa , abbreviated "AK", was the dominant Polish resistance movement in World War II German-occupied Poland. It was formed in February 1942 from the Związek Walki Zbrojnej . Over the next two years, it absorbed most other Polish underground forces...
or the Ukrainian UPA.
According to Yuryi Kirichuk the Germans were actively prodding both sides of the conflict against each other.
Erich KochErich Koch was a Gauleiter of the Nazi Party in East Prussia from 1928 until 1945, and Reichskomissar in Ukraine from 1941 until 1943. His orders caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Nazi-occupied Ukraine.-Early life and First World War :Koch was born in Elberfeld, today...
once said: "We have to do everything possible so that a Pole meeting a Ukrainian, would be willing to kill him and conversely, a Ukrainian would be willing to kill a Pole". Kirichuk quotes a German commissioner from
SarnySarny translated as Deers, is a small city in the Rivne Oblast of western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Sarny Raion , and is a major railway node on the Slutch River.The current estimated population is 27,700....
whose response to Polish complaints was: "You want Sikorski, the Ukrainians want
BanderaStepan Andriyovych Bandera was a Ukrainian politician and one of the leaders of Ukrainian national movement in Western Ukraine, who headed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists . The son of a clerical family, Bandera played a significant role in the history of Ukraine during World War II...
. Fight each other".
On August 25, 1943, the German authorities ordered all Poles to leave the villages and settlements and move to larger towns.
Also the
Soviet partisan unitsThe Soviet partisans were members of a resistance movement which fought a guerrilla war against the Axis occupation of the Soviet Union during the Second World War....
present in the area were aware of the massacres. On May 25, 1943, the commander of the Soviet partisan forces of the
RivneRivne is a historic city in western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Rivne Oblast , as well as the administrative center of the surrounding Rivne Raion within the oblast...
area in his report to the headquarters stressed that Ukrainian nationalists did not shoot the Poles but cut them dead with knives and axes, with no consideration of age or gender.
Number of victims
The death-toll among civilians murdered during the Volhynia Massacre is still being researched. Some estimates place the number of Polish victims of the ethnic cleansing in former eastern Poland at up to 300,000. UPA did not spare members of mixed families, including Ukrainians. Sociologist
Tadeusz PiotrowskiTadeusz Piotrowski may refer to:* Tadeusz Piotrowski , mountaineer and writer, 1940-1986; died on K2* Tadeusz Piotrowski , b. 1940, sociologist and author of books about Holocaust and history of Poland...
writes that OUN-UPA nationalists also murdered local Ukrainians who did not want to participate in the massacres of Poles. The ethnic cleansing was focused on unarmed persons in the country side as UIA partisans were not present in cities. Piotr Łossowski estimates that in the massacres, around one-third of Poles living in Volhynia (50,000-60,000) perished, and those who survived, were mostly inhabitants of towns and cities .
Władysław Siemaszko and his daughter
EwaEwa Siemaszko – Polish engineer, publicist, collector of oral accounts regarding the Volyn tragedy.A graduate with a Masters degree in technological studies from the Head Military Academy in Warsaw. She has a strong interest in Polish history. From 1990 she collected and prepared documents...
have identified by name 33,454 names of Polish victims in only half of one administrative district, with the true losses exceeding 60,000 civilian Poles in the Volhynian Voivodeship alone. Łossowski emphasizes that the document is far from complete, as in numerous cases there were no survivors, who would later be able to testify.
Niall FergusonNiall Ferguson is a British historian who specialises in financial and economic history as well as the history of colonialism. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and the William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School...
estimated that number to be as high as 80,000.
According to Grzegorz Motyka, in 1943-1947, 80,000-100,000 Poles and 10,000-20,000 Ukrainians were killed. He estimates the number of victims in Volhynia at about: 50,000-60,000 Poles and 2,000-3,000 Ukrainians.
Within a month of the beginning of the massacres, Polish self defense units responded in kind. There were also atrocities committed by Soviet Partisans, and German policemen. In 1943 alone, as many as 10,000 Ukrainian civilians might have been killed by ethnic Poles. Although the exact number of Ukrainian victims is not documented, according to some Ukrainian estimates the retaliation by the Polish Home Army, might have resulted in the deaths of an estimated 20,000 Ukrainians. Research continues on arriving at the number of victims on both sides.
The Soviet and Nazi invasions of pre-war eastern Poland, the UPA massacres, and postwar Soviet expulsions of Poles all contributed to the virtual elimination of a Polish presence in the region. Those who remained left Volhynia mostly for the neighbouring province of
LublinLublin is the ninth largest city in Poland. It is the capital of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 350,462 . Lublin is also the largest Polish city east of the Vistula river...
. After the war, the survivors moved further west to the territories of
Lower SilesiaLower Silesia ; is the northwestern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia; Upper Silesia is to the southeast. Throughout its history Lower Silesia has been under the control of medieval Poland, Bohemia, Austria, Prussia, and Germany. After 1945 the main part of the former...
. Polish orphans from Volhynia were kept in several orphanages, with the largest of them around Kraków. Several former Polish villages in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia do not exist any more and what remains are ruins.
At the first ever joint Polish-Ukrainian conference in
Podkowa LeśnaPodkowa Leśna is a town in Grodzisk Mazowiecki County of Poland and located in Łowicko–Błońska Plain on the territory of Młochowskie Forests. City status - from January 1, 1969. The city holds also a status of gmina. Population - ca. 3500...
organized in June 7–9, 1994 by Karta Centre with almost 50 Polish and Ukrainian participants, only the lower number of victims in just one (less populated)
voivodeshipA voivodeship, also spelled voivodship, voivodina or vojvodina , is a type of administrative...
(above) was agreed upon in its final
communiquéA communiqué is a brief report or statement released by a public agency.Communiqué may also refer to:* Communiqué , a rock band* Communiqué , a 1979 album by Dire Straits...
signed by Władysław Siemaszko among some 11 Polish signatories. After the conference, Siemiaszko said in a press interview that in his opinion, the numbers were not as important as the fact that the Ukrainian side agreed that the genocide indeed took place. The term "slaughter" was first used to describe the ethnic cleansing operations by
Edward PrusEdward Prus Edward Prus Edward Prus (born 1931 in Załoźce (now known as Zaliztsiv) near Zboriv, (now in the Ternopil oblast, Ukraine, died December 31, 2007) was a controversial Polish politologist with fields of interest in history of Poland (particularly the Second World War events in the Kresy...
in 1985 in his book "Heroes under the sign of the Trident".
Responsibility
The
Organization of Ukrainian NationalistsOrganization of Ukrainian Nationalists or OUN is a Ukrainian political movement originally created in 1929 in interwar Poland . The OUN at one time accepted violence as an acceptable tool in the fight against foreign and domestic enemies of their cause as the revenge upon the occupation of...
, (OUN) of which the Ukrainian Insurgent Army would have become the armed wing, promoted removal, by force if necessary, of non-Ukrainians from the social and economic spheres of a future Ukrainian state.
The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists adopted in 1929 the
Ten Commandments of the Ukrainian Nationalists, which all members of the Organization were expected to adhere to. This
Decalogue stated "Do not hesitate to carry out the most dangerous deeds" and "Treat the enemies of your nation with hatred and ruthlessness".
It is suggested that the decision to ethnically cleanse the area East of
Western Bug riverThe Bug or Buh River , sometimes called the Western Bug to distinguish it from the Southern Bug, flows from central Ukraine to the west, forming part of the boundary between Ukraine and Poland, passes along the Polish-Belarusian border and into Poland, and empties into the Narew river near Serock...
was taken by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army early in 1943. In March 1943, OUN(B) (specifically
Mykola LebedMykola Lebed was a Ukrainian political activist and Ukrainian nationalist guerrilla fighter.-Biography:...
) imposed a collective death sentence of all Poles living in the former eastern part of the Second Polish Republic and a few months later local units of the UPA were instructed to complete the operation with haste. The decision to cleanse the territory of its Polish population determined the course of events in the future. According to
Timothy SnyderTimothy D. Snyder is an American professor of history at Yale University. He specializes in the history of modern nationalism and the history of East Europe....
, the ethnic cleansing of the Poles was exclusively the work of the extreme Bandera faction of the
Organization of Ukrainian NationalistsOrganization of Ukrainian Nationalists or OUN is a Ukrainian political movement originally created in 1929 in interwar Poland . The OUN at one time accepted violence as an acceptable tool in the fight against foreign and domestic enemies of their cause as the revenge upon the occupation of...
, rather than the Melnyk faction of that organization or other Ukrainian political or religious organizations. Polish investigators claim that the OUN-B central leadership decided in February 1943 to drive all Poles out of Volhynia, to obtain an ethnically pure territory in the postwar period. Among those who were behind the decision, Polish investigators see
Dmytro KlyachkivskyDmytro Klyachkivsky was a colonel of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army , first head-commander of the UPA-North...
, Vasyl Ivakhov, Ivan Lytvynchuk, and Petro Oliynyk.
According to prosecutor Piotr Zając, Polish
Institute of National RemembranceInstitute of National Remembrance — Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation is a Polish government-affiliated research institute with lustration prerogatives and prosecution powers founded by specific legislation...
in 2003 considered three different versions of the events in its investigation:
http://www.ipn.gov.pl/wai/pl/18/2572/PRZEGLAD_MEDIOW___piatek_14_marca_2003_r.html
- the Ukrainians at first planned to chase the Poles out but the events got out of hand in the course of time.
- the decision to exterminate the Poles was taken by the OUN-UPA headquarters.
- the decision to exterminate the Poles was taken by some of the leaders of OUN-UPA in the course of an internal conflict within the organisation.
IPN concluded that the second version was the most likely one.
Reconciliation
The question of official acknowledgment of the
ethnic cleansingEthnic cleansing is a term that has come to be used broadly to describe all forms of ethnically inspired violence, ranging from murder, rape, and torture to the forcible removal of populations...
remains a matter of a discussion between Polish and Ukrainian historians and political leaders. Efforts are ongoing to bring about reconciliation between Poles and Ukrainians regarding these tragic events. The Polish
Institute of National RemembranceInstitute of National Remembrance — Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation is a Polish government-affiliated research institute with lustration prerogatives and prosecution powers founded by specific legislation...
which is conducting an extensive investigation has collected over 10,000 pages of documents and protocols. The Polish side has made the first steps towards reconciliation. In 2002 president
Aleksander KwaśniewskiAleksander Kwaśniewski is a post-communist Polish socialist politician who served as the President of Poland from 1995 to 2005...
expressed regret over the resettlement program, known as Operation Vistula, stating that “The infamous Operation Vistula is a symbol of the abominable deeds perpetrated by the communist authorities against Polish citizens of Ukrainian origin.” and that the argument that "Operation Vistula was the revenge for the slaughter of Poles by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army" in 1943-1944, was “fallacious and ethically inadmissible,” as it invoked “the principle of collective guilt.” The Ukrainian government has not yet issued an apology. On July 11, 2003, presidents Aleksander Kwaśniewski and
Leonid KuchmaLeonid Danylovych Kuchma was the second President of independent Ukraine from July 19, 1994, to January 23, 2005. Kuchma took office after winning the 1994 presidential election against his rival then-President Leonid Kravchuk...
attended a ceremony held in the Volhynian village of Pavlivka (previously known as
PoryckPavlivka is a town now located in northwestern Ukraine, in Volyn Oblast, near Volodymyr-Volynskyi, on the Luga river.-History:...
), where they unveiled a monument to the reconciliation. The Polish President stressed that it is unjust to blame the entire Ukrainian nation for these acts of terror, saying "The Ukrainian nation cannot be blamed for the massacre perpetrated on the Polish population. There are no nations that are guilty... It is always specific people who bear the responsibility for crimes
".
On 15 July 2009 the Sejm of the Republic of Poland unanimously adopted a resolution regarding the tragic fate of Poles in Volhynia. The text of the resolution states that July 2009 marks the 66th anniversary "of the beginning of anti-Polish actions by the
Organization of Ukrainian NationalistsOrganization of Ukrainian Nationalists or OUN is a Ukrainian political movement originally created in 1929 in interwar Poland . The OUN at one time accepted violence as an acceptable tool in the fight against foreign and domestic enemies of their cause as the revenge upon the occupation of...
and the
Ukrainian Insurgent ArmyThe Ukrainian Insurgent Army was a group of Ukrainian nationalist partisans who engaged in a series of guerrilla conflicts during World War II...
on Polish Eastern territories - mass murders characterised by
ethnic cleansingEthnic cleansing is a term that has come to be used broadly to describe all forms of ethnically inspired violence, ranging from murder, rape, and torture to the forcible removal of populations...
with marks of
genocideGenocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.While precise definition varies among genocide scholars, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of...
"
.
See also
- Historiography of the Massacre of Poles in Volhynia
This article presents the historiography of the Volyn tragedy after World War II.-Communist Poland:The Polish historiography of the Volyn tragedy during the dictatorship of the communist party can be broken down into 3 periods:# End 1950-1960s....
- 27th Polish Home Army Infantry Division
- Janowa Dolina
Janowa Dolina was a model settlement for workers of the Polish State Basalt Quarry, located in the Volhynian Voivodeship, in the Kostopol County of the Second Polish Republic. The name comes from Polish king Jan Kazimierz Waza, who reportedly hunted in the Volhynian forests, and after hunting —...
- Poryck Massacre
Pavlivka is a town now located in northwestern Ukraine, in Volyn Oblast, near Volodymyr-Volynskyi, on the Luga river.-History:...
- Przebraże Defence
The Przebraże Defence was the World War II defence of Przebraże, a Polish settlement, located in Lutsk county, Volhynian Voivodeship, near the village of Troscianiec...
- Koliyivschyna
Koliyivschina 1768-1769 was a Ukrainian Cossack and peasant rebellion against Poland, which was responsible for the murder of noblemen , Jews, Uniates, and Catholic priests across the part of the country west of the Dnieper river...
- Massacre of Ostrówki
Massacre of Ostrówki was a mass murder of Polish inhabitants of a Volhynian village of Ostrówki, located in the interbellum in the gmina of Huszcza, Luboml county, Volhynian Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic, now known as Ostrowky, located in the Manevychi Raion of the Volyn oblast,...
Further reading
The Causes of Ukrainian-Polish Ethnic Cleansing 1943,
The Past and Present Society: Oxford University Press.
Timothy Snyder. (2003). The Reconstruction of Nations, New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0300095694
External links
Pictures from massacres. Association Commemorating Victims of the Crime of Ukrainian nationalists /
Volhynia and Eastern Galicia 1943–1944. Documents of State Committee on Archives of Ukraine Tragedy of Volhynia 1943–1944. Documents of State Committee on Archives of Ukraine
- To resolve the Ukrainian Question Once and for all: the ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians in Poland 1943-1947, written by Yale historian Timothy Snyder
- Kost Bondarenko, "The Volyn Tragedy: Echoes Through Decades" in Zerkalo Nedeli
Zerkalo Nedeli , usually referred to in English as the Mirror Weekly, is one of Ukraine’s most influential analytical newspapers published weekly in Kiev, the nation's capital. It was founded in 1994, and as of 2006 its print circulation was 57,000. It offers political analysis, original...
(the Mirror Weekly), Feb. 15-21, 2003. L.Melnik, B.Yurochko, "Rozkhytane derevo myfiv" in The Lviv Newspaper, May 25, 2007.
- Documents on Ukrainian Polish Reconciliation
- Ut unum sint: Ukraine and Poland Volyn Discussion (a list of articles) a Polish website of Światowy Związek Żołnierzy Armii Krajowej Genocide in Volhynia An abbreviated preface to the monographic book of Władysław Siemaszko and Ewa Siemaszko, November, 2000.