Podcast "Przystanek Historia": The Volhynian Massacre - Exterminate Poles, Eliminate Polishness
"The victims cry out not for revenge, but for remembrance," reads the inscription on the monument to the victims of Ukrainian nationalists at Krakow's Rakowicki Cemetery. On July 11, 1943, OUN-UPA units attacked Poles in 99 towns in the pre-war Volhynian Voivodeship in the Eastern Borderlands. To commemorate this day, known as "Bloody Sunday," we observe the Day of Remembrance of the Polish Victims of Genocide perpetrated by the OUN-UPA in the Eastern Borderlands of the Second Polish Republic.
The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, active since the interwar period, began forming armed units in 1942, later called the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. One of its targets was the Polish population living in the pre-war Polish territories east of the San River. In February 1943, the OUN decided to expel the non-Ukrainian population from areas recognized by Ukrainian nationalists as Ukrainian lands.
Systematic extermination operations primarily encompassed Volhynia—culminating in 1943—and parts of eastern Lesser Poland, where anti-Polish activities intensified a year later. The physical extermination was intended to cleanse the pre-war Polish southeastern Kresy of any Polish presence. It is estimated that Ukrainian nationalists, supported by the peasantry, attacked the population of 4,300 localities and murdered approximately 100,000 Poles.
Near the destroyed villages and farmsteads, unmarked mass graves remained, concealing the bodies—mostly mutilated—of the Polish inhabitants of the Borderlands. The genocide of Poles became known as the Volhynian Massacre. However, the goal of Ukrainian nationalists was not only the physical elimination of the Polish community but also the clearing away of all traces of the centuries-long Polish presence in the Borderlands. Therefore, while committing acts of genocide, they simultaneously destroyed Polish cultural assets and monuments, and attacked the Borderlands' economy, burning Polish settlements to their foundations and with particular ferocity destroying Catholic churches.
Material from the partner Institute of National Remembrance.
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