Volyn's tragedy: why "it is difficult to believe the Poles ..."
20 June after two months of discussion, the Senate of Poland adopted a resolution accusing the "Ukrainian Insurgent Army" (UPA) of "ethnic cleansing with signs of genocide", which took place in 1943 in Volyn. In response, several deputies of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada announced the possibility of adopting a similar resolution with respect to the “Home Army” (AK), which was active in the same period.
The Polish Sejm, in its resolution adopted by unanimous acclamation without a voting procedure as early as 2009, stated that the OUN / UPA carried out an “anti-Polish action — massacres that had the character of ethnic cleansing and had signs of genocide”, stressing that “honors the memory of the Home Army soldiers , Self-defense of the Eastern Lands and the Peasant Battalions, which have risen to a dramatic struggle to protect the Polish civilian population. "
Today, on the occasion of the 11th anniversary of the Volyn massacre on July 70, a draft resolution has been prepared in the Polish Sejm that qualifies the mass atrocities and killings of Poles by Ukrainian gangs from the UPA as “genocide”. However, the ruling Civil Platform intends to exclude this definition from the text. Simply put, official Warsaw seeks to shut up and twist historical the truth for the sake of the political situation - so as not to spoil the game before the Vilnius Summit of the Eastern Partnership and not create obstacles to drawing Ukraine into its sphere of influence under the pretext of "joining Europe". With this article in two parts we will try to answer the question: why today penniless politicians neglect the memory of many tens of thousands of Poles - victims of Ukrainian fascists.
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Volyn tragedy is the peak of massacres of the Polish population of Western Ukraine by Bandera in July 1943. The planned nature of the action is confirmed by numerous documents, including German ones. However, we note that the Polish population had a chance to save their lives! Initially, the OUN / UPA sought to force the Poles to leave the “ethnic lands of Ukraine” with the help of “just terror”, without mass murder. Bandera officialdom "Before the battle" wrote in the July issue of 1943 for the year: "Let them go to build Poland on the Polish indigenous lands, since here they can only hasten their shameful death."
However, the local Polish population received an order from the leadership of the Home Army, which was subordinate to the London government, not to listen to the Ukrainians! Otherwise, Poland revived within the borders of 1939 of the year, will lose Volyn! It was this order that condemned thousands of Poles, who had submitted to it, to the terrible death of the nationalist beasts. The Polish leaders who gave this order were well aware of the likely consequences, since the systematic destruction of the Polish population by Ukrainian nationalists began in Ukraine from the first days of the Nazi occupation.
Already 30 on June 1941, Deputy Bandera Yaroslav Stetsko and others, proclaiming the creation of an “independent Ukrainian state” in the “capital of Halychyna”, accompanied it to a massacre of Polish and Jewish population of Lviv. Even the Hitlerites were frightened by the atrocities committed by the Ukrainian “allies”, who decided to put lackeys into the bloody initiative, sending the most zealous to the concentration camp. However, later they did not interfere with the process of mutual destruction of the Slavic “subhumans”. October 14 1942 OUN Bandera announced the creation of the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army), and from that moment began the systematic destruction of the Polish population of Volhynia (which continued until the occupation of these territories by the Red Army in 1944 year).
The Polish leadership knew perfectly well how “sane” OUN people were. The official couriers of the London government and the AK command delegated to 1942 to negotiate with the leadership of the UPA on a joint struggle with Germany, Bandera not just shot, but tore alive horses. Still, the “Londoners” and the Akhovites constantly ordered the Poles not to listen to the threats of the Ukrainians!
Meanwhile, the OUN / UPA operation on “depolonization of the region” began to cover the entire territory along the pre-war border (September 1939) of Poland: by March 1943 - Sarnensky, Kostopolsky, Rovensky, Zdolbunovsky districts, in June - Dubna and Lutsky districts, in July - Gorokhovsky, Kovelsky, Vladimirsky, in August - Lublin (the most western) ...
Initially, the Ukrainians intended to simply “squeeze” the Polish population to the west. The operation, according to Polish historians, usually began with an ultimatum of demands on the Poles - immediately, within 48 hours, leave their homes and go beyond the Bug. But, as a rule, the Polish population did not submit to the Ukrainian ultimatums, bearing in mind the orders of their authorities from London and counting on the support of local AK troops. Those, in turn, hoped that punitive actions of Ukrainians would only join their ranks with the affected Poles ...
Then the UPA detachments, mobilizing the scum-fellows of both sexes from nearby Ukrainian villages (deserters, relatives of policemen and others), surrounded Polish villages and hamlets. With brutal beasts, they killed the inhabitants, burned down houses, churches, gardens, crops. They destroyed everything that gave way to fire — in order to deprive the Poles of the hope of returning to the frightening ashes of wastelands.
Often did not make a single shot! Just cut out the entire population - from infants to the elderly - with scythes, axes and knives. Memories of miraculously surviving people contain numerous testimonies of tearing out tongues, piercing eyes, hammering nails in the head, spitting out fruits from pregnant women, quartering, horrible abuse of corpses and subtle sadistic torture ...
Only from July to August, 1943, according to various estimates, was brutally destroyed from 35 to 85 thousands of people. Mostly - children, women and old people (the figures differ greatly, since they often include some of the victims of the previous and subsequent months). Bandera did not spare anyone. Together with the Poles, they killed all Russians, Czechs, Jews, Armenians ... A remarkable fact: the German command did not send their compatriots to these actions, fearing for their psyche. Participation took only Ukrainian Bandera-scum of the Galician fascist movement.
Meanwhile, the leadership of the Craiova Army sent orders to its compatriots: do not leave the villages and villages, this is Polish land! For cynicism, they can be compared only with the statements of some modern Polish figures like Richard Shavlovsky. Acknowledging that “although the Volyn massacre was the most cruel: all Poles were destroyed - from infants to old people, the most sophisticated and inhuman torture was used”, these figures assert that the German Nazis and ... the Soviet regime were guilty of genocide! The one whose army stopped the systematic destruction of the Polish population and whose partisans (sometimes shoulder to shoulder with AK fighters) defended Polish villages in Western Ukraine.
The Craiova Army, contrary to the contradictory orders of its own command, conducted a series of “retaliation” operations, including the so-called "Blind", when in revenge destroyed innocent peasants just because they are Ukrainians. The action of the Lviv division of AK on sabotage in April 1944 of the year was the most brutal. Carried out in the framework of the Polish offensive launched a month earlier, coordinated with the operations of the 27-th Volyn division of the AK behind the Bug. Within the framework of this action alone, which was accompanied by massive arsons of Ukrainian villages, the victims of the civilian population reached, according to some sources, several thousand people. The total number of Ukrainians killed in retaliation for the actions of the UPA ranges from 10 to 20 thousand, plus the murders of Ukrainians in the Hrubieszow region in Poland.
Ukrainians were killed not only by the akhovtsy, but also by the Poles who had survived the Volyn Massacre, especially for this purpose they joined the police and gendarme formations. Today, leading Polish publications and authors like Rafal Zemkevich explain this by the fact that “people who lost all their relatives, who died a painful death, sometimes had a mad thirst for revenge. There were quite a few Poles who, for its commission, joined the ranks of the German formations in order to take part in the destruction of the Ukrainian population. The murders of Ukrainians committed and groups of underground Poland. However, the scale of such events was incomparably smaller than the calmly planned and systematic genocide of the OUN-UPA in July 1943, when the intensity of the terror reached its peak, its fighter units appeared in more than 500 settlements.
Polish politicians are trying to play with the historical truth and receive dividends even from the tragedy of their own people. They ignore the blame of their predecessors for the bloody massacre in Volyn, lying on the London government, which had no way to stop the scum of the OUN / UPA, but still ordered the leadership of the Home Army to prevent the evacuation of Polish civilians to Poland. Most of the people who were brutally tortured in Western Ukraine were descendants of localized inhabitants of the south-west of the “Russian” part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Russian and Zemite, who had departed Poland on the union 1569. That is why they have almost no relatives in today's Poland who are able to seek truth and justice from their two-faced rulers, seeking to incite hatred towards ... the USSR and present-day Russia, who have nothing to do with the Volyn massacre!
Aspiring to be honest in this matter, politicians, like former vice-marshal of the Polish Seym Yaroslav Kalinovsky, consider the events in Volhynia “a planned crime of the OUN-UPA”, which should be answered by “modern Ukrainian politicians”, and call for “to recognize the OUN-UPA and others Ukrainian nationalist organizations that collaborated with Germans and criminal organizations. ” But this is only half the truth. True, as the leading Polish publication “Rzeczpospolita” admits, is that “of the numerous crimes committed against the Poles in the 20th century, which became the century of genocide, the fate of this is special in that it is, perhaps, the only one that Poles voluntarily erase from memory ... It is difficult to believe the Poles when they declare that in the Katyn question they are only interested in the truth and not in politics, if at the same time in relations with Ukraine they refuse the truth just in the name of politics. ”
Volyn Massacre is one of the bloodiest episodes of the Ukrainian-Polish conflict in the mid-twentieth century. Polish historians interpret it as an anti-Polish action by the Ukrainian nationalists of the OUN / UPA. Researchers in Ukraine are trying to shift the focus on counter-anti-Ukrainian actions of the Home Army (AK) against the civilian population, including in Poland.
“Now, historians from the Ukrainian neo-fascism camp,” the Polish author writes, “are trying to appeal to the“ moral ”, so to speak, justification for the Volyn massacre: they say, for example,“ the plight of the Galician and Volyn populations in Poland between the two world wars ”. Such attempts are another evidence of the extreme moral degradation of modern Ukrainian neo-fascism. ”
A striking fact: during 20 and more than the existence of an independent Ukraine, none of its leaders publicly uttered words of repentance for the monstrous crimes committed by the Ukrainian fascists and did not publicly condemn the practice of exalting OUN / UPA today.
However, in Poland, dealing with historical memory is not much better.
On the 65 anniversary of the Volyn Massacre, the Polish authorities rejected in the Sejm a draft resolution prepared by the Peasant Party of Poland and containing the accusation of the OUN / UPA of the genocide of the Poles. Something similar is going to be done on the 70 anniversary, which falls on July 11. The then Polish President Lech Kaczynski did not take part in events dedicated to the tragic date, limiting himself to the duty letter to the participants. And the current Polish president, Bronislav Komorowski, declares that it is the fault of Volyn tragedy ... Soviet Russia. Such a statement is the height of cynicism and duplicity, if only because it was the Soviet partisans who defended the Poles from Bandera.
“It is difficult to justify the shameful pliability with which Poland rejects the truth, and some of the elites who form public opinion are hysterically reacting to any mention of the OUN or the use of the most appropriate word in this case,“ genocide, ”writes the central Polish publication Rzeczpospolita. - Instead of the truth, we have not been the first decade to have an outrageous performance, when those who have a good memory are shut up - and all this in the name of misunderstood geopolitics and “reconciliation” ... By agreeing to falsify history and oblivion the Volyn tragedy, the Poles do that which twice deserves the most severe condemnation. It’s a shame, because a crime requires truthful coverage, and reconciliation is worthless if it is based on a lie ”...
Lipniki, county Kostopopol, Lutsk province, 26 march 1943. 179 Poles, mostly women, old people and more than 50 children, aged from 1 to 14 years, were slaughtered here. Photo 1 - Janusz Biełowski (3 year), Roman Belawski (5 years), Jadwig BelAvska (18 years) and others. Photo 2 is the decapitated corpse of Yakub Varumzer. Photo 3 - the central fragment of the mass grave of Poles before the funeral at the People's House.
The ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism, Dmitro Dontsov, was an ardent admirer of the works of Mussolini and Hitler, who translated into Ukrainian and inspired the creation of the program of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (1929), the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which became its armed wing. According to Dontsov and his student Sciborsky, the creation of Great Ukraine “on the border of two worlds” requires the complete elimination of foreigners and the elimination of “racially bad” Ukrainians for the sake of “cleansing” lands for “racially good”: “Be aggressors and invaders before you can become rulers and holders ... Universal truth does not exist. "
Today, Dontsov’s followers are broadcasting the same “European future” of Ukraine with the same fanaticism.
The Polish delegation that visited Ukraine in the 1992 year, which received permission for research and exhumation in the field of events, had already discovered over 600 sites of mass graves of Polish victims of Ukrainian fascists. The total number of victims (the numbers fluctuate depending on what period is taken into account, because the killings took place over several years, July 1943 was only one of the peaks, when they simultaneously attacked and mostly destroyed along with the population above 150 Polish villages) ranges from 36.000 to 100.000 and more people. Mostly women, children, old people.
Corpses of Polish children: Zamoischizna, Lubelskie Province, 1942
"The Polish authorities and a significant part of the intellectual elites diligently contribute to the distortion of the memory of the Volyn tragedy, obscure the guilt of the ideology behind it ... Our circles, shaping public opinion, with great zeal pick up the propaganda thesis of the Ukrainian nationalists that crimes were mutual, symmetrical and it makes no sense to measure the guilt of each side. This thesis contradicts the facts, and is as monstrous as if a certain German politician addressed the Jews today with these words: in relations between our peoples it happened differently, you struck our army in the back during the war and robbed us during a big of the crisis, we later avenged this, well, maybe we’ve touched a bit, but now it’s time to forget the old disputes, to shake hands and never come back to it, ”writes Polish Rzeczpospolita.
Denouncing the Ukrainians, Polish authors for some reason forget about the blame for what happened and their then rulers. Who else but the leaders of the Polish government in London knew very well: what the Nazis called Politische Flurbereinigung (“political cleaning of the house”) did not begin on 1941 in Lviv, where Shukhevych, Oberländer, OUN and SD with bestial cruelty massacred Polish professors and the Soviet asset, not in August 1939, when the Abwehr created the Bergbauernhilfe subversive unit from 600 of the OUN in order to organize the anti-Polish uprising in Western Ukraine and its cleansing from “undesirable elements”, and not even in 1933 in Germany. And much earlier - in the First World War, when the Russophile intelligentsia and the peasants of Galicia and Volhynia were destroyed for their stubborn reluctance to refuse to consider themselves Russians.
The Nazis then was not. But there were executioners with Kholuy's kind - “nationally conscious” rural teachers, Uniate priests, future pilferers. This audience later commanded the zonderkommandami on the Eastern Front, the gendarmerie units in Ukraine. It is there that the sources of what Rzeczpospolita writes about should be sought: “What distinguishes the Volyn massacre from all known ethnic crimes is the incredible cruelty of criminals. Neither the Stalinist NKVD nor the Hitlerite Einsatzgtruppen were distinguished by the personal cruelty of the perpetrators. And the Rezuns of the OUN-UPA and other nationalist associations seemed to have a special passion for it. ”
Here are some testimonies from the FORGOTTEN GENOCIDE collection: Volyn Massacre of 1943-1944:
Photo 1 - Lubycha Krulevska, Rava Russkaya County, Lvivske Voivodeship. 16 June 1944.
Photo 2 - County Chortkow, Tarnopolskie voivodeship. Residents of the village of Polovtse in the Rosohach forest, hijacked by the UPA on the night of January 17, 1944. Clothing victims of the executioners stolen.
From Special Spokespersons for the UKR “Smersh” of the 1 of the Ukrainian Front, May 20, 1944
... The witness YANITSKY S. I. about KRICHKOVSKY showed:
“On the night of March 18, Ukrainian nationalists Bandera committed a massacre of Poles in sec. Graves They under the guise of Soviet partisans, in masks, broke into the houses of the Poles and made the most cruel mockery of them, cut them with knives, chopped children with axes, smashed their heads, and then burned to hide their crimes.
On that night, Bandera was tortured, stabbed to death and shot to 100 people. Soviet activists, Jews and Poles. That same night, my family was slaughtered - a wife, 17-year-old daughter and son. 15 nationalists broke into my house, among whom I recognized the Krychkovsky Bandera's Joseph Antonovich, who was directly involved in the murder of my family. ”
Checking the testimony of the witness YANITSKY in the forest near the Mogilnitsa of the Budzanovsky district, 94 of the corpse of the tortured inhabitants of the village of Nizhny was discovered in the pits The graves that were killed by nationalists on the night of 18. Iii. 44 of the year.
Central FSB. F. 100. Op. 11. D. 7 L. 231 – 234.
From the protocol of interrogation of the deputy commander of the smoking unit of the UPA "Kruk" Lev Yaskevich, September 28, 1949
... I remember that only in the village of Zabara of the Shumsky district we destroyed 10 or 15 families of the Polish population. I do not remember how many families were destroyed in other villages. It can also be said that the population that did not manage to completely leave the village, it was completely exterminated, with the extermination of the population did not pay attention either to the children or to the elderly, they destroyed everyone to the last - from young to old ...
YES SBU. F. 13. D. 1020. L. 214 – 220.
From the interrogation report of OUN member Vladimir Gorbatyuk, January 6, 1945
... When we arrived, there were already about 100 people from different Ukrainian villages ... Part of them was armed with real rifles, and the rest were what, shovels, and pitchforks ... Defenseless Poles could not offer resistance, they were beaten with anything on the street, in an apartment, in a barn, etc. Personally, I killed two Poles - men aged from 25 to 30 years.
YES SBU. F. 13. D. 985. L. 130 – 133.
From the record of the interrogation of the peasant Yuhim Orlyuk, July 26, 1944
... After that, after about one and a half to two weeks, Lutsyuk, Nedbailo, Fischuk and others gathered all the Ukrainian men into the Ovadnensky Forest, then in the evening they brought everyone to the village of Mogilnoye, lined everyone, and Lutsyuk said: "... Now we will go to kill of all Poles (living in the village of Mogilnoye), since the UPA government received an order to destroy all Poles ... ”
... Tachinsky's family consisted of 4 people, and was killed from the family of 3 people; the Shchurovskys' family of how many people were consisted - I don't know, but about 7 or 8 people, the 4 person was killed from their family. The Poles did not offer any resistance ...
... That night 11 Polish families were exterminated, but individuals from these families managed to escape. How many people were exterminated is unknown to me.
... On this night, all the Poles who were in the village, that is, adults, old people, children and even babies, were killed without exception.
Question: Who was personally killed by your group?
Answer: From the family of Tachinsky, the wife of Tachinsky Joseph, the son of 8-10 and the baby was killed. From the Shchurovsky family, Shchurovsky Antony was killed, two adult daughters of 18 – 20 years, I don’t know the names, and Shchurovsky’s wife Anthony, about the years 50.
... I know that the property and livestock of the Poles were partially disassembled by the population, and the best part was horses, 10 cows, about 10 pigs and the best property was immediately taken by Bandera.
YES SBU. F. 13. D. 1020. L. 136 – 143.
Original, manuscript.
From the protocol of interrogation of UPA fighter Vladimir Dubinchuk, 6 August 1941 of the year
... When the accomplices were near the cart, I ran into the house of Anton Soshinsky and shot the child for about 5 years. There were two more children in the room, but my remaining one cartridge misfired. After that, I left the apartment and reported Lupinka to Joseph, who gave me two bullets and an order to kill these children. I entered the room a second time and shot my second child about 2 of the year. At this time, Joseph went to Lupink's apartment and in my presence shot the third child, who was about 6-7 years old.
After the execution of the children of Soshinsky Anton, I, together with the bandits, returned in a village. Svichev, and we immediately drove to the estate of the citizen Yarmolinskaya Mayevskaya. I and Lupinka, Joseph Mayevskaya, were found in the next house, after which I was brought to her estate, where I personally shot her. We also left this corpse on the spot and drove to the village government building. The bandits Lupinka Joseph, Vasily Torchilo, Golumbitsky, I don't know one last name went to the Polish cemetery. There Lupinka and Torchilo killed citizen Dobrovolskaya, whose corpse was also left in place. Returning back, Lupinka entered the priest’s house, took the housekeeper, then started up the neighboring manor and shot her in the courtyard.
YES SBU. F. 13. D. 1020. L. 26 – 34.
Photo 1 - Katažinovka, Lutsk Voivodeship. 7 / 8 May 1943. The brothers Gvizdovskiy - Janek (3 of the year) with broken limbs and Marek (2 of the year), stabbed with bayonets. In the middle lies Stasia Stefanyak (5 years) with his tummy torn and outwards, as well as broken limbs.
Photo 2 - Podyarkov, Bobrka County, Lviv Voivodeship. 16 August 1943. The Kleschinsky family are married couples and two children. The victims had their eyes picked out, they were beaten on the head, they burned their palms, tried to chop off the upper and lower limbs, as well as brushes, inflicted stab wounds on the whole body, etc.
From the Special Communications 4 of the Directorate of the USSR NKGB from 4 August 1943
... During the liturgy in the churches of Bandera, 11 priests were killed and before 2 000 Poles were killed on the streets of the city.
Central FSB. F. 100. Op. 11. D. 7. L. 102.
From the interrogation report of the commander of the UPA Stepan Redeshi, 21 August 1944
... We surrounded the 5 of Polish villages and during the night and the next day we burned down these villages and the entire population, young and old, were massacred - a total of more than two thousand people.
My platoon took part in the burning of one large village and the village adjacent to this village. We cut about 1000 Poles.
... We threw many Poles - men, women, old people and children - alive into the wells, then finished them off with shots from a gunshot weapons. The rest were stabbed with bayonets, killed with axes and shot ...
Polish villages were burned in such a way that there were no traces of their existence and that the Poles never claimed the Ukrainian lands ...
YES SBU. F. 13. D. 1020. L. 164 – 176.
Ternopil Voivodeship, 1943. The so-called wreath of Polish children. The executioners strengthened such “wreaths” on each tree of the country road, over which a banner was hung with an inscription in Polish: “The road to independent Ukraine”.
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