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Volhynia massacre

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Polish victims of a UPA-led massacre on 26 March 1943.

Volhynia massacre, also known as the Wołyń massacre, was a series of mass murder committed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Українська повстанська армія, УПА, English: UPA) against the Polish minority in Volhynia (/voʊˈlɪniə/), Eastern Galicia between 1943 and 1945.[1][2] The worst atrocities are reported to have happened in July–August 1943, killing as many as 133,000 Poles.[3]

Background

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Map of southeastern Poland (1921-1939), including Volhynia.

Eastern Galicia was historically part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was fully partitioned between the Kingdom of Prussia, the Austrian Empire and Russian Empire in 1795, with Volhynia falling under Russian rule and bordering Austrian Poland.[2] When Poland regained her independence in 1918, she fought two years of war with Soviet Russia, the first year of which involved a parallel skirmish with the short-lived Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR), which lost Eastern Galicia to Poland.[3]

Prelude

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Interwar period

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Prior to World War II, Ukrainian speakers reportedly made up 68% of Volhynian residents, followed by 17% Polish speakers, 10% Yiddsh[4] speakers, 2% German speakers, 2% Czech speakers and 1% Russian speakers.[5]

Some historians claimed that the Polish government was repressive towards ethnic Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia, contributing to the formation of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). The OUN waged an insurgency in the 1930s to fight for Ukrainian independence, the projected territory of which would include the Soviet-occupied eastern Ukraine suffering the Holodomor, an artificial famine under Joseph Stalin killing as many as 7,000,000 within a year.[6][7][8]

By 1937, 190 Ukrainian Orthodox churches in Volhynia had reportedly been destroyed, with another 150 converted into Roman Catholic churches, in an effort to enforce assimilation.[9] Polish citizens were also encouraged to move to Volhynia, with their number reaching 17,700 in 3,500 new settlements. The influx caused racial tension and sectarian violence,[10] worsened by communist agitation, paving the way for the atrocities later on.[11]

World War II

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A Jewish man assaulted by local Ukrainians in one of the antisemitic pogroms, photo taken by Nazi German soldiers.

In September 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland. Poland was partitioned, placing Volhynia under Soviet rule. Before Nazi Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, 200,000 Poles had already been deported to Siberia.[3][11] After Nazi Germany took over Volhynia from the Soviets, the OUN–Banderite faction (OUN-B) launched a series of antisemitic pogroms, the deadliest of which were the Lviv pogroms, where at least 5,000 Polish Jews were killed.[12] Some OUN-B commanders sought to eliminate the local Poles in addition to the Jews.[3][11] Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence that the OUN-B leader Stepan Bandera, who was not released from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp until September 1944, had been involved in any of the pogroms.[13]

Massacres

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The first mass murder, known as the Parośla I massacre, was committed on 9 February 1943 by a UPA group disguised as Soviet partisans.[14] The second mass murder was committed during the 1943 Holy Week, killing 600 Poles.[14] The mass murder peaked in July–August 1943. As many as 11,000 Poles were killed during UPA's attacks on 520 Polish villages.[14]

In reprisal, the Polish Home Army (Polish: Armia Krajowa, AK) reportedly killed 2,000 Ukrainians.[14] The series of mass murder continued until spring 1944 when the Nazi troops withdrew due to Soviet reoccupation of Ukraine.[14] British historian Norman Davies provided a lurid account of the massacre:[15]

[...] Ukrainian peasants carrying knives, pitchforks, scythes and machetes [...] destroy neighbouring Polish villages [. ...] dismembering pregnant women [...] chopping up babies, burning families alive, crucifying priest on church doors.

Aftermath

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The Volhynia massacre is a highly contentious issue in modern Eastern European historiography. It is the Achilles' heel of Poland–Ukraine relations which has prevented Ukraine from joining the European Union (EU) and receiving military protection.[2][16]

Assessment

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Since the end of WWII, the nature of the Volhynia massacre has been under debate. The Polish establishment classified the massacre as a genocide,[17] while the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS) deemed it a "genocidal ethnic cleansing".[1]

Whereas, Holocaust historian Jared McBride said in 2016 that it was a scholarly consensus for the massacre to be classified as an ethnic cleansing rather than a genocide, whose view was shared by German-Polish historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe.[18]

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References

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  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Volhynian massacre". European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS). August 21, 2013. Retrieved October 28, 2024.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3
  4. ↑ "Yiddish language". Britannica. October 25, 2024. Retrieved October 29, 2024.
  5. ↑ Rudling, Per Anders (November 28, 2006). "Historical representation of the wartime accounts of the activities of the OUN–UPA (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists—Ukrainian Insurgent Army)". East European Jewish Affairs. 36 (2): 163–189. doi:10.1080/13501670600983008. Retrieved October 29, 2024.
  6. ↑
  7. ↑
  8. ↑ 81 years on, the Holodomor is still denied or downplayed by most Western progressives:
  9. ↑ Subtelny, Orest (2009). Ukraine: A History. University of Toronto Press. p. 430. Retrieved October 29, 2024.
  10. ↑ Lidia Głowacka, Andrzej Czesław Żak, Osadnictwo wojskowe na Wolyniu w latach 1921–1939 w swietle dokumentów centralnego archiwum wojskowego Archived 2014-08-15 at the Wayback Machine (Military Settlers in Volhynia in the years 1921–1939), PDF, pp. 143 (4 / 25 in PDF), 153 (14 / 25 in PDF).
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Snyder, Timothy (October 10, 2007). Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine. Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300125993. Retrieved October 29, 2024.
  12. ↑ Longerich, Peter (2010). Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews. Oxford University Press. p. 194. ISBN 978-0-19-280436-5.
  13. ↑ Goncharenko, Roman (May 22, 2022). "Stepan Bandera: Ukrainian hero or Nazi collaborator?". Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 Grzegorz, Motyka (2006). Ukraińska partyzantka 1942–1960 (in Polish). Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Politycznych. ISBN 83-7399-163-8.
  15. ↑ Davies, Norman (November 18, 2023). "Volhynia and the forgotten massacre of the Second World War". The Spectator. Retrieved October 25, 2024.
  16. ↑
  17. ↑ "Polish parliament adopts resolution on 81st anniversary of Volyn tragedy". Ukinform. July 28, 2024. Retrieved October 29, 2024.
  18. ↑ McBride, Jared (2016). "Peasants into Perpetrators: The OUN-UPA and the Ethnic Cleansing of Volhynia, 1943–1944". Slavic Review. 75 (3). Cambridge University Press: 630–654. doi:10.5612/slavicreview.75.3.0630. JSTOR stable/10.5612/slavicreview.75.3.0630. Retrieved October 29, 2024.
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