How will the Volyn massacre be in Greek. Short Course in History

July 11, 1943 will forever remain in the memory of the Poles as a black date. On this day, Ukrainian nationalists, in order to completely destroy the "hostile elements", attacked the Polish settlements located on the territory of Western Ukraine. One and a half hundred villages and villages were literally covered in blood. The Nationalists spared no one.

Attempts at reconciliation

Last summer, on the eve of the 73rd anniversary of the terrible tragedy, representatives of Ukraine and Poland exchanged messages. The former tried to smooth over sharp corners, asked for forgiveness and said that “as long as our peoples are alive, the wounds of history continue to bring pain. But our peoples will live only when, despite the past, we learn to treat each other as brothers.” The latter, in principle, do not mind establishing contact, but there is one problem. This is how MPs of the ruling Law and Justice party responded: “The difference between us is not about the future, but about common policy historical memory. The problem is in today's Ukrainian attitude towards the perpetrators of the genocide of the Poles during the Second World War. In Poland, at the state and local levels, we do not honor people who have blood on the hands of innocent civilians. We are concerned about the selectivity of historical memory, in which an open declaration of sympathy for Poland is paired with the glorification of those who have the blood of our countrymen on their hands - defenseless women and children.
Therefore, attempts at reconciliation in Once again ended up with nothing.

Destroy in the fight

In the 20th century, the confrontation between Poles and Ukrainians turned into a different direction. If before that the former massively oppressed the latter, then at that moment the situation changed.
Ukrainian nationalists began to pursue a policy of terror against the Poles even before the outbreak of World War II. That is, when Western Ukraine belonged to Poland. Collaboration with the Nazis added courage and strength to the nationalists. By the way, the Nazis thought that in this way they would be able to create an independent, but puppet Ukrainian state. And most importantly, this new "power" had to be ethnically pure. Stepan Bandera, like all the other leaders of the nationalists, zealously supported this idea.

In the spring of 1941, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists gave birth to an instruction entitled "Fighting the activities of the OUN during the war." It described in detail the tasks of the "security service" (security) during the armed conflict with the USSR. Simply put, this document said that elements hostile to Ukraine must be destroyed by any means.
And in 1943 the dogs were let off the chain. The head of the "security service" Nikolai Lebed took the initiative to clear the territory of the Poles. The top of the OUN approved this. Although the oppression of the Polish population both in Volhynia and throughout Western Ukraine began much earlier.

Pyotr Nesterovich was the first to dare. With a nationalist detachment subordinate to him, he decided to cut out the Polish village of Parosle (not far from Vladimirets, Rivne region). And in order to minimize losses among his own, Nesterovich ordered the fighters to change into the uniform of Soviet partisans. The fact is that the inhabitants of Parosle actively cooperated with them, so they did not notice the dirty trick ...

Before killing the women, the nationalists raped them, then cut off their noses, ears and breasts. The men were dealt with with axes. Two teenage brothers named Gorshkevich, who tried to run away and call for help from the Soviet partisans, were mocked with particular cruelty. Their arms and legs were cut off, their bellies were torn open, and the wounds were covered with salt. Then the unfortunates were thrown into the field to die. In total, 173 Poles died in the village, among them 43 children. They did not spare even a one-year-old baby. They nailed him to the table with a bayonet ... Real partisans saw such a terrible picture when they came to Parosl.
The elite in the UPA detachments were considered "rezuns" - people whose strong point was cruel executions. Most often, they used saws, knives and axes for reprisals.
Following Parosle, another Polish village, Lipniki, came under attack. The detachment of Ivan Litvinchuk, better known as Oak, dealt with the locals. They completely slaughtered the village, killing 179 Poles (51 of them were children). By the way, it was in that settlement that the first Polish cosmonaut, Miroslav Germashevsky, was born in the future. At the time of the Ukrainian attack, he was only 2 years old. The fact that Miroslav survived the massacre is a miracle. His mother, trying to escape from her pursuers, hid him in a field among the corpses...
Then the population of the village of Kuta, the village of Katarynovka was slaughtered... Moreover, Ukrainian nationalists killed not only Poles. But also, as they themselves called them "non-Ukrainians", that is, people from mixed marriages. The nationalists treated the "apostates" with particular cruelty.

And just like that, the black date for the Polish people approached - July 11, 1943. On this day, UPA combat detachments simultaneously attacked several dozen villages inhabited mainly by Poles (data vary, according to one, there were about a hundred of them, according to others - about 150). They killed them all indiscriminately, because only in this way, according to the ideas of the nationalists, it was possible to "cleanse the Ukrainian land."

Polish historians who were closely involved in the restoration chronological events in the “Volyn massacre”, they reported that the UPA fighters, or rather those “rezuns”, used 125 ways to kill the civilian population.

The terror did not stop there. The nationalists began to carry out mass cleansings among the already Ukrainian population. Any person who refused to cooperate or help the UPA was automatically equated with enemies and executed. Like, for example, Ivan Aksyuchits from the village of Klevetsk. Aksyuchits condemned the brutal methods of the nationalists, for which he paid with his life. The "Rezuns" executed him in public and brutally indicatively - they sawed him in half. Moreover, such a death for him was chosen by a pedigree, who was a member of the UPA.

The Ukrainian people were outraged. And in order not to aggravate the situation, the nationalists began to exterminate only Ukrainians. As in the village of Palikrovy. There they "sorted" the population and machine-gunned more than three hundred Poles, while not touching the Ukrainians.

Revenge

It makes no sense to talk about all the atrocities of Ukrainian nationalists. The "Volyn massacre" is confirmed by several thousand witnesses and a huge number of photographs. Polish researchers talk about more than 36 thousand of their fellow citizens who died then. And these are only those whose identity has been established. Several thousand or even tens of thousands more remain unknown. Polish historians mention a figure of 100 thousand people, 60 thousand of which are Poles (the rest are “apostates”).
Is it true, Ukrainian historians and researchers disagree. According to them, the Poles overestimated the real figures several times.
It is clear that such terror could not go unanswered. And the Poles responded in 1944 with the forces of the Home Army. With fire and sword they went through the Ukrainian settlements scattered across the Eastern part of Poland. But the scale of retribution can not be compared with the "Volyn Massacre". In total, about 2-3 thousand Ukrainians died at the hands of Polish soldiers. True, Ukrainian researchers say that in fact several times more of their fellow citizens were killed than the Poles claim. In general, the parties still cannot agree and reconcile on this issue.

It is probably difficult to find a person who would not know about this tragic page in our history. The Volyn massacre is the ethnic cleansing of Western Ukraine from non-Ukrainians in 1943-44. Mostly Poles were slaughtered (there were most of them), well, and the rest of the non-Ukrainians to the heap. The purge was carried out by militants from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). That's what they called them - rezuny.

Even the Germans were amazed at their sadism - gouging out eyes, ripping open stomachs and brutal torture before death were commonplace. They killed everyone - women, children ... Here are photos that it is better not to look at the impressionable.

It all started literally from the first days of the war ... Thanks to the research of the Canadian historian John-Paul Khimki, we can see the events of that summer with our own eyes. According to the historian, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists under the leadership of Stepan Bandera helped the Germans in 1941. "Bandera" established a short-term government, headed by a staunch anti-Semite. This was followed by arrests, bullying and executions of Jews. Through cooperation with the Germans, the OUN hoped to achieve recognition of the independence of Ukraine.

The pogroms of 1941 in Lvov were an act of the highest degree of cruelty and inhumanity. German propaganda filed a pogrom as an act of revenge of the Ukrainians against the “Judeo-Bolsheviks”.

Women were publicly stripped, beaten with stones and sticks, and raped.

The key participant in the pogrom was the Bandera "people's militia", created by them on the very first day of the arrival of the Germans. The policemen wore civilian clothes with white armbands or the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

The Volyn massacre began on February 9, 1943 with an attack by the UPA gang on the village of Paroslya, where about 200 Poles were killed.

On February 9, 1943, Bandera from the gang of Pyotr Netovich, under the guise of Soviet partisans, entered the Polish village of Parosle near Vladimirets, Rivne region. The peasants, who had previously provided assistance to the partisans, warmly welcomed the guests. After eating plenty, the bandits began to rape women and girls. Before they were killed, their chests, noses and ears were cut off. Then they began to torture the rest of the villagers. Men were stripped of their genitals before they died. Finished off with blows of an ax on the head.
Two teenagers, the Gorshkevich brothers, who tried to call real partisans for help, had their stomachs cut open, their legs and arms cut off, their wounds were abundantly covered with salt, leaving the half-dead to die in the field. In total, 173 people, including 43 children, were brutally tortured in this village.
When the partisans entered the village on the second day, they saw in the houses of the villagers piles of mutilated bodies lying in pools of blood. In one of the houses on the table among the leftovers and unfinished bottles of moonshine lay a dead one-year-old child, whose naked body was nailed to the table boards with a bayonet. The monsters put a half-eaten pickled cucumber into his mouth.

From the village of Volkovya one night, Bandera brought a whole family into the forest. For a long time they mocked the unfortunate people. Then, seeing that the wife of the head of the family was pregnant, they cut open her stomach, tore out the fetus from it, and instead they pushed in a live rabbit.
One night, the bandits broke into the Ukrainian village of Lozovaya. Over 100 peaceful peasants were killed within 1.5 hours. A bandit with an ax in his hands broke into the hut of Nastya Dyagun and hacked to death her three sons. The smallest, four-year-old Vladik, cut off his arms and legs.

Rezun UPA used simple improvised tools. For example, a two-handed saw.

They burned the body of this Polish woman with a red-hot iron and tried to cut off her right ear.

One of the two Kleshchinsky families in Podyarkovo was tortured to death by the OUN-UPA on August 16, 1943. The photo shows a family of four - a wife and two children. The victims' eyes were gouged out, they were hit on the head, their palms were burned, they tried to cut off the upper and lower limbs, as well as the hands, stab wounds were inflicted on the whole body, etc.

A murdered adult woman named Shayer and two children are Polish victims of the Bandera terror in Vladinopol.

Podiarkov, August 16, 1943 Kleshchinska from a Polish family of four, tortured to death by the OUN-UPA. A gouged eye, head wounds, an attempt to cut off a hand, as well as traces of other tortures are visible.

One night, bandits broke into the Ukrainian village of Lozovoe and killed over 100 of its inhabitants in an hour and a half. In the Dyagun family, a Bandera man hacked to death three children. The smallest, four-year-old Vladik, cut off his arms and legs. In the Makukh family, the killers found two children - three-year-old Ivasik and ten-month-old Joseph. The ten-month-old child, seeing the man, was delighted and laughingly stretched out her hands to him, showing her four cloves. But the ruthless bandit slashed the baby's head with a knife, and cut his head with an ax to his brother Ivasik.

“They surpassed even the sadistic German SS with their atrocities. They torture our people, our peasants... Don't we know that they cut small children, smash their heads against stone walls so that their brain flies out of them. Terrible brutal murders - these are the actions of these rabid wolves, ”Jaroslav Galan called out. With similar anger, the OUN of Melnyk, and the UPA of Bulba-Borovets, and the government of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic in exile, and the Union of Hetmans-Derzhavniki, who settled in Canada, denounced the atrocities of Bandera with similar anger.

Evidence of the former Banderovka.
“We all went around in banderas, slept in the huts during the day, and at night we walked and drove around the villages. We were given tasks to strangle those who sheltered Russian prisoners and the prisoners themselves. Men were engaged in this, and we, women, sorted out clothes, took away cows and pigs from dead people, slaughtered cattle, processed everything, stewed it and put it in barrels. Once, in one night, 84 people were strangled in the village of Romanov. They strangled the older people and the old, and the little children by the legs - once, hit the head on the door - and it's ready, and on the cart. We felt sorry for our men that they suffered hard during the night, but they would sleep off during the day and the next night - to another village.

We were given an order: Jews, Poles, Russian prisoners and those who hide them, to strangle everyone without mercy. Young healthy guys were taken to the detachments to strangle people. So, from Verkhovka, two brothers Levchukiv, Nikolai and Stepan, did not want to strangle, and ran home. We sentenced them to death.

In Novoselki, Rivne region, there was one Komsomol member Motrya. We took her to Verkhovka to the old Zhabsky and let's get a living heart. Old Salivon held a watch in one hand and a heart in the other to check how long the heart would beat in his hand.”

However, arranging the massacre of the Polish minority in the West. In Ukraine, the Rezun leaders forgot about the Ukrainian minority in South-East Poland. Ukrainians lived there among the Poles for centuries, and at that time they were up to 30% of the total population. The "exploits" of the Bandera rebels in Ukraine came back to haunt Poland, local Ukrainians.

In the spring of 1944, Polish nationalists carried out a series of acts of retaliation against Ukrainians in southeastern Poland. As usual, innocent civilians suffered. According to various estimates, from 15 to 20 thousand Ukrainians were killed. The number of Poles, victims of the OUN-UPA is about 80 thousand people.

The new pro-communist power established in liberated Poland by the Red Army and the Polish Army did not allow the nationalists to arrange full-scale actions of revenge on the Ukrainians. However, the Bandera rebels achieved their goal: the relations between the two nations were poisoned by the horrors of the Volyn massacre. Their further living together became impossible. On July 6, 1945, an agreement "On the exchange of population" was concluded between the USSR and Poland. 1 million Poles went from the USSR to Poland, 600 thousand Ukrainians - in the opposite direction (Operation Vistula), plus 140 thousand Polish Jews went to British Palestine.

It's a paradox, but it was Stalin who turned out to be the man who civilly decided national question in Western Ukraine. Without cutting off heads and disemboweling children, by exchanging populations. Of course, not everyone wanted to leave their native places, often the resettlement was forced, but the ground for the massacre - the national striped strip - was eliminated.

The Poles published dozens of volumes of such facts of the genocide, none of which the Banderaites refuted.

Today's Bandera people love to talk about how the UPA allegedly fought against the German occupiers too...
March 12, 1944, a gang of UPA militants and the 4th police regiment of the SS division "Galicia" jointly attacked the Polish village of Palikrovy (former Lviv Voivodeship, now - the territory of Poland). It was a village with a mixed population, approximately 70% Poles, 30% Ukrainians. Having driven the residents out of their houses, the policemen and Bandera began to sort them according to their nationality. After the separation of the Poles, they were shot from machine guns. 365 people died, mostly women and children.

The territory of Volhynia in different periods was part of various states. From the 10th century it was part of Kievan Rus and from the end of the 12th century it became an integral part of the Galicia-Volyn principality, and from the second half of the 14th century the Grand Duchy of Lithuania captured the lands of Volhynia, but as a result of the renunciation of the Lithuanian king from his hereditary rights to the Lithuanian state in 1564, in favor of the Polish crown and the adoption of the Union of Lublin in 1569, Volhynia is part of the Commonwealth under Polish patronage. From 1793-95 Volyn was a part of Russian Empire on the rights of the Volyn province. But in 1920, Volyn was again part of Poland. In 1939 it became part of the Ukrainian SSR. From the above chronology, it is clear that, being part of various states, the Volyn lands have a far from homogeneous ethnic composition.

The main conflicts in Volhynia took place between the Polish gentry and its indigenous population, now called Ukrainians. The last inter-ethnic conflict that took place in the Volyn lands went down in history under the name of the Volyn Massacre, which officially began in the spring of 1943. Until the spring of 1943, there were already isolated cases of extermination of peaceful Poles by bands of Ukrainian nationalists back in 1942, but they were not of a large-scale mass character, as in 1943-44. The number of victims of Polish nationality killed by the OUN, whose names and places of death were established, is at least 36,750 people. On the Polish side, estimates were given from 30 to 80 thousand dead.

The Polish inhabitants of Volhynia and Polissya, for the most part, were not the autochthonous population of this region, although there were also indigenous inhabitants of these places from the Poles. They lived in special settlements - colonies. The veterans of the wars for the independence of Poland, and above all those who fought against Soviet Russia, became the colonists. They became owners of large plots of land that once belonged to Orthodox peasants, and the local population, as a rule, hated them for this. The Polish authorities, of course, did not give a damn about the mood of the Orthodox Ukrainian peasantry, and what the frank colonial policy was fraught with, what it could turn into. This fact can also be considered a prerequisite for the Volyn Massacre. As history shows, a large proportion of the victims of "ethnic cleansing" falls on the most defenseless part of the population - women, children and the elderly. No political circumstances can justify crimes against mother and child. Even in the underworld, in places not so remote, such villains are treated like the last dregs. This applies not only to the UPA warriors, but also to those degenerates from the Home Army, as well as the Poles who worked for the Nazis, who, in retaliation for the UPA genocide, began to destroy the civilian Ukrainian population.

The reasons for what happened stretch from the depths of centuries. to represent complete picture these events we have to take into account many important historical details.

During the period when the Ukrainian idea was actively cultivated in Galicia, Volhynia was part of the Russian State. But since the time of Poland, the position of the autochthonous indigenous population of the Volyn lands has changed little. The main landowners and masters of life in Volhynia, as it was under the Polish crown, remained under tsarist Russia Polish gentry. Although steps to improve the life of peasants in the Volyn province from the outside royal power were nevertheless done. But the liberal views of the Romanov dynasty allowed such an entity as the “Kingdom of Poland” to exist on the territory of the Russian Empire. (Austria and Prussia in the occupied Polish territories did not give the Poles such privileges). It was a part of the Polish lands that went to Russia after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and stayed in its composition until 1915. The Polish elite was hopelessly ill with the idea of ​​"Greater Poland". The gentry could not come to terms with the fact that the once mighty Polish state was torn apart and divided between Russia, Austria and Prussia, and that the times when Poland posed a military threat to its neighbors had passed. Only memories remained of the Polish military expansion of the Russian lands. It was a mistake to think that the expansion was stopped, it just grew from a military into a cultural one. Just the "Ukrainian idea" is the most convincing evidence and fruit of the Polish cultural expansion in Rus'. Its founders, the Poles Franciszek Duchinsky and Fadey Chatsky, probably could not imagine that their writings would become an ideological help “about independent Ukraine” for that “aggressive mass” without family and tribe, which after some time would begin the destruction of their fellow tribesmen - the Poles. The idea of ​​a separate Ukrainian people, born in the Polish minds, was preached not only in Galicia, which was under Austria-Hungary, but also in Volhynia and other southern Russian lands. Unlike Russia, in Galicia the "Ukrainian idea" enjoyed the support of the Austrian crown for some time. In Galicia, initially its lobbyists were also Poles, but the appearance of traitors from their native Russian population was not long in coming. Here are some active figures of "Ukrainianism" in Galicia: Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytsky (Polish), historian Mikhail Grushevsky, deputies of the Galician Seim Yulian Romanchuk and Anatoly Vakhnyanin. As soon as the "Ukrainian party" in Galicia began to take an active part in political life and occupy key positions in power, then she began to have friction with the Poles. The gentry wanted to see apostates in the Rusyns, who called themselves Ukrainians exclusively "devoted peasants", but their hopes were in vain.

We can see a frank clear point of view regarding the emergence of “Ukrainianism” and Ukraine in the statement of the Polish priest Valerian Kalinka: “If Gryts cannot be mine, then he will not be mine or yours!” The failure of the reconstruction of "Great Poland" subsequently launched the flywheel for the creation of "independent Ukraine". But the Ukrainian just did not begin to love his Pan-Pole. The share of blame for the death of the Polish civilian population falls not only on the UPA, but equally on those who laid this time bomb long before the Volyn Massacre. (Meaning the initiative to create a Ukrainian nation).

The renegades from the Ukrainian camp, who renounced their Russian name, absorbed all the poison of Polish hatred for everything Russian and transferred all their anger into "independent" ambitions. During the Great Patriotic War, they grabbed the throat of the people from which their creators actually came. Fuel to the fire was also added by the misanthropic doctrine of "Ukrainian integral nationalism" by Dmitry Dontsov, taken as the ideological basis of the OUN, - "Ukraine for Ukrainians!".

By the time of the German attack on the Soviet Union, the OUN(B) already had a developed plan for the construction of the "Ukrainian State". That “Power”, in which non-Ukrainians were assigned the most unenviable fate. The Poles living in the Ukrainian territories were initially supposed to be forcibly assimilated. Representatives of the Polish intelligentsia and "activists" were planned to be destroyed.

From the second half of 1942, Soviet partisans began to seep into Volyn, so the operational situation in the region changed dramatically. In order not to lose their influence in these parts, there was an urgent need to eliminate disloyal elements from Volhynia and Polissya, who hypothetically could complicate the fight against the “red partisan” by helping her. In addition, the central wire of the OUN (B), according to the testimony of some Bandera, did not have absolute influence on all its territorial structures. Therefore, these structures began to create detachments to fight the Germans, which absolutely did not suit the Central Wire. Be open about your unwillingness to lead fighting against the Germans, the Central Wire could not, so as not to lose its own authority, primarily in the eyes of its rank and file. The top leadership of the OUN(B) was faced with the task of orienting its rank-and-file fighters to fight Soviet partisans and "national minorities". In this regard, after the military conference, the “military program” of the organization began to be developed, the creation of which was completed by the beginning of 1943. A special place in it was occupied by the issue of "national minorities", under which the Poles also fell. The Poles were supposed to be evicted from Ukrainian lands, and those who refused to be subjected to physical destruction.

The mobilization of personnel into their ranks from the local Ukrainian population under this "program" was carried out by Ukrainian nationalists under the slogan of the "struggle for independence." Who will they fight against? simple people it was not explained to them, the question was posed objectively: “Are you for “Independent Ukraine” or against it?”. More often they didn’t even ask, Bandera’s people came to the peasant and said: “Get ready, you’re going to fight for “Nezalezhnu Ukraine!” Refusal entailed reprisal. Thus, most of the combat-ready Ukrainian male population of Volhynia was mobilized into the UPA, which provided the rear for the Germans in these lands, so the Soviet partisans in Volhynia did not have the necessary military support among the local population to fight the Nazis. In the spring of 1943, in March - early April, several thousand policemen - "shutsmans" left the Ukrainian "auxiliary police" for the formation of the OUN (B) from the Ukrainian "auxiliary police". They just became the main backbone of the UPA, as they had special training and experience in "ethnic cleansing". Then came " finest hour” to carry out the “military program”. Thus began the "Volyn massacre", which was headed by the regional conductor Dmitry Klyachkovsky ("Klim Savur").

But even at the beginning of the twentieth century, Volyn was the backbone of Russia throughout the South-Western Territory. Until the First World War, support came from here and the activities of Russophiles in Galicia were directed. But, just as in Galicia, all Russian tendencies in Volyn were finally curtailed as a relic of autocracy with the advent of Soviet power here in 1939. The establishment of "Ukrainianism" on the territory of Volhynia, as well as on the territory of the whole Ukraine, entirely corresponded to the "indigenization" carried out in the Soviet Republics. The fact that "Ukrainianism" was a product of Polish chauvinism and a weapon of the Habsburg Empire for the eradication of Russian culture, no one went into it. In fact, the Soviet government created fertile soil for the activities of Ukrainian nationalists. Bandera did not have to convince the peasants that they were Ukrainians. Therefore, the mobilization of the newly minted Ukrainian population, carried out by the OUN to fight for "Independent Ukraine" can be considered successful. It is also important that the Soviet government found a place for all nationalities in Ukraine, only not for Russians, the indigenous Russian population became Ukrainian. Dissent in relation to the "soviets" was not welcomed and they were suppressed, as a result of which the people harbored anger at the Soviet government. There was no place in Ukraine for the remnants of Russian tsarism, and the remnants of the Habsburg monarchy (a separate Ukrainian nation) flourished, albeit in a Soviet version. The OUN members managed to use this circumstance very advantageously for themselves. Therefore, during the Great Patriotic War, gangs of Ukrainian nationalists greatly hampered the activities of Soviet partisans in western Ukraine, using all combat-ready human resources for their criminal purposes under the flag of the “Ukrainian idea” and “Ukrainian independence”.

But in fairness, it should be noted that there were conscious, thinking people in Volyn and Polissya who knew and understood what this “independent Ukraine” was worth and who was behind it, they went to the Soviet partisans. In addition to the Poles, who saw their saviors in the Soviet partisans, those who saw the greater evil in the Germans and “Svidomites” also left for the partisans, turning a blind eye even to the fact that they had to become Ukrainians even under the “soviets” against their will. .

First of all, the Nazis needed bloody bacchanalia in order to bind to themselves through the UPA the entire combat-ready population of Volyn and Polissya with the blood of the murdered Polish civilian population. After the murder of Soviet citizens of Polish nationality, the path to the ranks of the Soviet partisans or the Red Army for a participant in "ethnic cleansing" was automatically excluded. Involuntarily, many peaceful Ukrainian peasants became enemies of everything that was Soviet, which during the years of World War II penetrated Volyn and Polissya occupied by the Nazis, mainly thanks to the fascist lackeys from the OUN (B).

In August 1943, at the III Extraordinary Great Congress of the OUN(B), just in the midst of the "Volyn massacre", Roman Shukhevych was one of many members of the wire who spoke in defense of "Klim Savur" about his activities related to extermination of the Poles. Most members of the OUN(B) wire found it expedient to exterminate the Polish civilian population of Volhynia and Polissya.

The UPA lived up to all the expectations of the Nazis, pulling back several tens of thousands of people from the mobilization potential of the Soviet partisans. If the number of partisans in the spring of 1943 were not 20-30 thousand people, but reached 100 thousand people due to the mobilization of the local population, the Nazis would not have had a rear in western Ukraine. The creation of the UPA prolonged the war with Nazism, postponing the liberation of the territory of the USSR.

Summing up the destruction of the civilian Polish population in Volhynia and Polissya in 1943-1944, we come to the conclusion that the wire of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) succeeded at a critical moment for the Nazis on the Eastern Front to calm down the anti-German sentiments of Western Ukrainians, and to restrain the actions of Soviet partisans in Western Ukraine , drawing the local population into a war with them. And the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) succeeded in this by drawing the Volyn peasants into “ethnic cleansing”, in particular, into the massacres of Poles, which went down in history under the name of the “Volyn Massacre” and laid down an indelible shame on all participants in this villainy.

Oleg Misko

In case of full or partial reprint of the material, a link to the site "Geopolitics and World Politics" is required.

Publication date: March 6, 2013

08.12.2014 0 16649

"Volyn massacre" - under this definition, the event that took place in March-July 1943 in Ukraine went down in history. This ominous episode is still a stumbling block for the development of Polish-Ukrainian relations and, at the same time, the most mysterious episode of World War II...

Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), established on October 14, 1942, proclaimed its goal the struggle for the independence of Ukraine. Basically, she fought against Berlin and Moscow. However, there was another country with which the UPA had long-standing scores - Poland.

The Ukrainian side could not forget all the injustice that the Poles committed in the past, and especially in those years when Western Ukraine was part of Poland from 1921 to 1939.

Unsettled scores

Figuratively speaking, there is not enough space to list the entire list of mutual claims that Ukraine has accumulated over several centuries against Poland, and vice versa. And in the 20th century, the contradictions only intensified.

So, in 1908, Ukrainian student Miroslav Sichinsky, protesting against the falsification of elections, killed the Lviv governor Andrzej Potocki. The policy of “colonization” initiated by the Poles since 1920 caused great indignation among the Ukrainians.

Volyn Upland

It consisted in the fact that the authorities populated Galicia and Volhynia with Poles - "siegemen", who received the best lands or positions, and the Ukrainians suffered from land shortages and unemployment. This problem became especially acute during the Great Depression of 1929-1933. Ukrainian peasants could not sell their products, their incomes fell by almost 80%, and the “siegemen” received high subsidies from the authorities.

In 1930, when mass arson of Polish estates took place in Galicia, the Poles began "pacification" - "appeasement" of Ukrainians. Following the principle of "collective responsibility", 800 Ukrainian villages were attacked by troops and police - they destroyed cells of Ukrainian organizations and reading rooms, confiscated property.

With the outbreak of World War II, relations became even worse. Hunger, cold, raids by partisans of various colors drove the local population to white heat. And the appearance of the UPA - the Ukrainian Insurgent Army - gave hope that now the Ukrainians had at least some kind of protection. And such protection was necessary, especially since at that moment the locals were subjected to violence by Soviet partisans and partisans of the "Polish spill" - supported by Moscow - penetrating from neighboring Belarus Army of the People and subordinate to the Polish government in exile in London Home Army.

In addition, according to some evidence (although the Polish side denies this), in 1942 in the Kholmshchyna (the left-bank part of the Bug), the Polish side perpetrated a massacre of Ukrainians, which prompted the UPA to think of a retaliatory action.

The tragedy was brewing, and none of the interested parties tried to prevent it.

Underground fight

The actions of the UPA detachments were led by local patriots, among whom were both experienced "warriors", such as Taras Borovets and Dmitry Klyachkivsky, and less experienced - Mukha, Basalik, Dubovoy and others.

As the first major attack on the Polish settlement, which caused significant casualties, historians indicate the attack of the 1st group of the UPA, led by Dubov, on Janova Dolina, as a result of which from 500 to 800 people of the Polish population were destroyed. In June 1943, a secret directive was issued by the commander of the UPA Klyachkivsky, which ordered the following: "... carry out a large-scale action to eliminate the Polish element ... Villages located in or near forests must disappear from the surface of the earth."

UPA timed actions to coincide with various significant dates. So, the mass attack took place on June 29 and 30, 1943 (the day of the proclaimed OUN (b) allied Great Germany of Ukraine), the general offensive began on July 12 (Peter and Paul Day).

The action was well planned, more than 150 settlements where the Polish population lived. More than a thousand people were killed in the Polish colonies of Novyny, Guriv Duzhiy, Guriv Maly, Vygnanka, Zygmuntivka and Vitoldivka.

Attacks on the places of residence of the Polish population were accompanied by great cruelty. People were killed indiscriminately - women, children, the elderly - while, in addition to firearms, household tools were used: axes, knives, pitchforks. No wonder the detachments that committed atrocities were called “rezuns”.

Here is how the UPA commanders themselves later described the atrocities:

“Having driven the entire Polish population into one place, we began the massacre. After there was not a single living person left, they dug out large pits, dumped corpses there, covered them with earth, and in order to hide the traces of this grave, they kindled a fire over it.

According to a number of modern Polish and Ukrainian scholars, the “commander-in-chief of the UPA” Dmitry Klyachkivsky and the political leader of the OUN (b) (at that time called the OUN-SD) Roman Shukhevych were responsible for the ethnic cleansing of the Polish population.

It is interesting that on one of these nights, the future first cosmonaut of Poland, Miroslav Germashevsky, almost died at the hands of the “rezunov”. Then he was 1.5 years old, the Germashevsky family, fleeing terror, came to another village to their relatives in early 1943. We can say that the child was saved by a miracle - the mother ran away into the forest, and on the way she lost Miroslav in an open field. They found him only in the morning.

There is still no consensus on the number of dead Poles. According to some data, the figure ranges from 36,543-36,750 people. In any case, their names and places of death have been established. In addition, from 13,500 to more than 23,000 Poles were counted, the circumstances of whose death were not revealed.

Various studies suggest that the victims of different parties were probably 50-60 thousand Poles. Sometimes another figure is given: from 30 to 80 thousand people.

In Ukraine, such calculations were not carried out, and the death toll on the Ukrainian side is estimated at several thousand people. Some historians believe that between 2,000 and 3,000 Ukrainians died in Volhynia alone, while others believe that in 1943-1944, about 2,000 Ukrainians died from the actions of Polish units subordinate to the Regional Army.

Hatred by order?

About why the "Volyn massacre" happened at this particular time and why in Volyn, researchers still cannot come to a common opinion. But most agree that in April-May 1943 there was a turning point in the course of World War II, and all parties to the conflict had already begun to deal with the future structure of Europe. Therefore, in March 1943, the London government of Poland in exile suddenly turned its attention to Volhynia - it probably expected that this circumstance would be taken into account during the post-war division of territories.

As for the place of the tragedy, here we can say the following. In Volyn at that moment there was a very strong patriotic upsurge, so it was there, in the forest areas, remote from large settlements, that UPA detachments appeared, supported by the local population. In addition, Volhynia was the subject of long-standing territorial claims by Poland, and therefore it was actively settled by its citizens.

The echo of this tragedy echoed immediately after the Second World War, when on July 1945 an agreement "On the exchange of population" was concluded between the USSR and Poland. As a result, 1 million Poles moved from the USSR to Poland, and 600 thousand Ukrainians moved in the opposite direction (Operation Vistula). Thus, the USSR government decided to play it safe by making the population of these territories relatively homogeneous.

I must say that not all the circumstances of the incident are well studied. The fact is that after the Second World War in the USSR, these events were not widely publicized. Only in 1992, a Polish delegation visited Ukraine, which was allowed to study the places of these events. As a result, about 600 local burials were discovered. Exhumations were carried out - and many other facts recorded in the archives were confirmed.

In Polish history, the Volyn tragedy of 1943 is very often recognized only as an anti-Polish action of the UPA. In Ukraine, they talk more about the motives that led the UPA to carry out such an action, and also pay attention to retaliatory actions, including against the civilian Ukrainian population of the Home Army (AK) units.

There is no doubt that only mutual reconciliation, a common apology can overcome the consequences of the tragedy that has become long years the common pain of both peoples.

Viktor PRIKHODKO

In July 1943, mass ethnic cleansing, brutal murders of civilians, including women and children, reached their climax in Western Ukraine. The events that took place 75 years ago will forever go down in history as the Volyn massacre or the Volyn tragedy. On the night of July 11, 1943, militants of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (OUN-UPA) * broke into 150 Polish settlements on the territory of Western Ukraine at once. In one day alone, more than ten thousand civilians, mainly ethnic Poles, were killed.

Ukrainian nationalists felt their strength as soon as the Nazi troops entered the territory of Ukraine. Already in 1941, they participated in the murders of not only Komsomol workers, party functionaries and Red Army soldiers, but also representatives of national minorities - Jews and Poles. The notorious Lviv pogrom, which was well documented, entered history. German troops entered Lviv on the morning of June 30, 1941, on the same day, local pogroms began in the city, which on July 1 turned into a large-scale Jewish pogrom. At the same time, bullying, murder and torture of the mainly Jewish population of Lviv continued for several days. During this time, members of the newly formed "Ukrainian People's Militia", nationalists and voluntary assistants from among the inhabitants of the city managed to exterminate about four thousand Jews in Lvov.

From the internal documents of the OUN-UPA * published already in the post-war years, it follows that not only Jews and Russians, but also Poles were considered enemies of Ukrainian statehood. At the same time, ethnic cleansing of the Polish population was planned even before the start of World War II. For example, the military doctrine of the Ukrainian nationalists, which was developed in the spring of 1938, contains theses about the need to “cleanse the foreign Polish element from the Western Ukrainian lands” down to the last person. So Ukrainian nationalists wanted to put an end to Polish claims to these territories, which for centuries were part of different states. At the same time, the Red Army, which occupied the territory of Western Ukraine in 1939, first prevented the Ukrainian nationalists from starting to implement their plans. True, the delay for the Poles did not last long.

In 1941, the OUN-UPA * issues another instruction on its activities and struggle. This document attributed to the "People's Militia" the "neutralization" of the Poles, who did not renounce their dream of creating Greater Poland, which includes the lands located in the north-west of Ukraine. Including the historical region - Volyn.

Lviv pogrom, 1941

It should be noted that Volyn is ancient region, which in the X century was part of Kievan Rus (Volyn, and then Vladimir-Volyn principality). Later, these lands were ceded to the Principality of Lithuania, and then to Poland. After several sections of the Commonwealth, this region became part of the Russian Empire. In 1921, the western part of Volhynia was ceded to Poland, and the eastern part to the Ukrainian SSR. In 1939, Western Volyn was also annexed to the Ukrainian SSR. During the Great Patriotic War, this geographical area was occupied by the Nazi troops.

The historical background accumulated over many centuries, the ethnic disunity of the region and numerous old grievances against each other, may have become a kind of fuse that set fire to the powder keg and led the entire region, primarily its civilian population, to a real disaster. By the end of the first third of the 20th century, a persistent Polish-Ukrainian territorial and ideological confrontation had developed. Both sides over the centuries-old history managed to repeatedly commit numerous atrocities against each other, which, however, did not go beyond the normal practice of that time period. At the same time, the events that took place in Volyn during the Second World War, in their bloodiness and cruelty, overshadowed medieval history.

The UPA itself - the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, as a wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Bandera Movement) *, was formed in 1942. The impetus for its formation was the victory of the Red Army at Stalingrad. After this victory Soviet troops began the liberation of the lands occupied by the Germans and their allies and were getting closer and closer to the Reichskommissariat "Ukraine", which was created in 1941 by the German occupation forces on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR. At the same time, almost from the very first days of the formation of the UPA *, the destruction of the ethnic Polish population began.

Ukrainian nationalists took full advantage of their own impunity. After the retreat of the Red Army, there was practically no one to resist the OUN-UPA * gangs. The Soviet partisan movement was the most massive on the territory of Belarus, and the Poles themselves did not have a sufficient number of well-armed detachments that could provide decent resistance to Ukrainian nationalists.

UPA fighters

The Volyn massacre (the mass extermination of the Polish population), which has gone down in history forever, began in the winter of 1943. The starting point for this tragedy is called February 9, 1943. On this day, OUN-UPA * fighters entered the Polish settlement of Parosl under the guise of Soviet partisans. During the period between the First and Second World Wars, Paroslya was a small village of 26 houses, located near the city of Sarny, which is currently located on the territory of the Rivne region of Ukraine. By the time the massacre began, the ethnic Polish population accounted for, according to various estimates, from 15 to 30 percent of all residents of Volhynia. Resting and eating at home local residents Parosli, Bandera began to massacre. No one was spared: they killed men and women, old people and babies. Only because the locals were Poles. According to various estimates, from 149 to 179 local residents were killed in the village, including several dozen children. At the same time, Ukrainian nationalists showed bestial cruelty, most were simply hacked to death with axes. Also in the course were knives and bayonets. Only a few managed to survive.

The Polish population was exterminated by Ukrainian nationalists throughout Western Ukraine according to one scenario: several armed gangs surrounded Polish settlements, all the inhabitants were gathered in one place and systematically destroyed. American historian Timothy Snyder noted that Ukrainian nationalists learned the technology of mass destruction from the Germans. Therefore, all the ethnic cleansing that was carried out by the forces of the UPA * were so nightmarish. And that is why in 1943 the Volyn Poles were almost as helpless as the Volyn Jews in 1942, the historian notes.

It often turned out that their neighbors, ordinary Ukrainians, often fellow villagers, also took part in actions against the Polish population. The houses of the murdered Polish families were burned, and all valuable property was simply plundered. At the same time, a distinctive feature was that they killed mainly with cold and improvised means, agricultural implements, and not with firearms. Shooting in such a situation was an easy death. Wielding axes, saws, knives, bayonets, stakes, supporters of independent Ukraine exterminated tens of thousands of innocent civilians.

The atrocities of Ukrainian nationalists in Volyn are confirmed by numerous documentary evidence, photographs, testimonies of miraculously surviving people and interrogations of the perpetrators themselves, a large amount of information is stored in the archives of the special services. For example, the commander of one of the UPA* platoons, Stepan Redesha, testified during interrogations that in some cases Poles were thrown alive into wells and then finished off with firearms. Many were beaten to death with clubs and axes. The protocol of the interrogation of the criminal states that he personally participated in one operation against the Polish population, it took place in August 1943. According to Redesh, more than two kurens, consisting of 500 people with weapons, and more than a thousand people from the OUN* underground, who were armed with axes and other improvised means, participated in the operation. “We surrounded five Polish villages and burned them in one night and the next day, while the entire population from babies to the elderly was slaughtered, in total more than two thousand people were killed. My platoon took part in the burning of a large Polish village and the liquidation of farms close to it, we slaughtered about a thousand Poles, ”the Ukrainian nationalist said during interrogation.

In the detachments of Ukrainian nationalists who participated in the massacres of the Polish population, there were so-called "rezuns" - militants who specialized in carrying out brutal executions and used mainly edged weapons for murder - axes, knives, two-handed saws. They literally massacred the civilian population of Volhynia. At the same time, Polish historians who worked on the study of the "Volyn Massacre" counted about 125 methods of killing, which were used by "rezun" in their reprisals. From one description of these methods of murder, the blood of a normal person literally freezes in the veins.

Particularly massive and bloody events took place in Volhynia on the night of July 11, 1943, when numerous UPA * detachments simultaneously attacked 150 Polish villages, villages and farms. In just one day, more than ten thousand people died then. For example, on July 11, 1943, 90 people were killed at once in Kiselyn, who had gathered for mass in the local church, including priest Aleksey Shavlevsky, who was also killed. In total, according to various estimates, up to 60 thousand Poles died in the Volyn massacre (directly on the territory of Volyn), and the total number of Poles killed throughout Western Ukraine is estimated at about 100 thousand people. During the Volyn massacre, almost the entire Polish population of this region was destroyed.

The atrocities committed by the nationalists of the OUN-UPA * could not but receive a response from the Poles. For example, units of the Home Army also carried out raids on Ukrainian villages, including their own actions of retribution. It is believed that they killed several thousand Ukrainians (up to 2-3 thousand civilians). The total number of dead Ukrainians can reach 30 thousand. At the same time, it should be taken into account that a significant part of them could have been killed by their compatriots - Ukrainian nationalists. UPA* fighters killed Ukrainians who tried to help the Poles and save them, they also demanded that Ukrainians with a mixed family commit murders of their closest relatives, Poles. In case of refusal, they killed everyone.

Massacres Poles and Ukrainians were stopped only after the entire territory of Ukraine was liberated by the soldiers of the Red Army. At the same time, even then it was no longer possible to reconcile the two peoples with each other. That is why in July 1945 the USSR and Poland concluded joint agreement on population exchange. Poles who lived in the territories included in the Soviet Union, moved to the territory of Poland, and the Ukrainians, who lived on Polish lands, went to the territory of the Ukrainian SSR. The resettlement operation was codenamed "Vistula" and lasted almost two years. During this time, more than 1.5 million people have been resettled. This "resettlement of peoples" allowed to reduce the degree of tension between the Poles and Ukrainians. At the same time, throughout Soviet history This sore subject tried once again not to remember and not to touch. The Volyn massacre was not widely publicized in the USSR, and in the Polish People's Republic in those years, only a few works devoted to this tragedy were published. Again, historians and the general public returned to these events only in 1992, after the collapse of the USSR.

Monument to the victims of the Volyn Massacre in Krakow

The policy of the new Kyiv leadership in recent years has exacerbated many historical issues between Poland and Ukraine. Thus, Warsaw consistently condemns Kyiv for the glorification of members of the OUN-UPA *, as well as regular acts of vandalism that are carried out against Polish places of memory. In July 2016, the Sejm of Poland recognized July 11 as the National Day of Remembrance for the victims of the genocide of citizens of the Republic of Poland, committed by Ukrainian nationalists. At the same time, the Prime Minister of Poland recently announced that the final reconciliation between the Polish and Ukrainian people will become possible only when the truth about the Volyn massacre is recognized.

At the same time, according to RIA "", the Ukrainian authorities insist on revising the provision of the Polish law on the Institute of National Remembrance, which concerns Ukrainians. This law, which came into force in the spring of 2018, criminalizes the promotion of the "Bandera ideology" and the denial of the Volyn massacre.

*Extremist organizations banned in the Russian Federation.

Information sources:
https://ria.ru/defense_safety/20180711/1524304863.html
https://www.gazeta.ru/science/2018/02/09_a_11642473.shtml?updated
http://www.aif.ru/society/history/volynskaya_reznya_geroi_ukrainy_ubivali_polyakov_ot_mala_do_velika
Materials from open sources