We
owe such young people gratitude at a time when politicians and others
with an ideological axe to grind aggressively foist their
interpretation of the events of that time. Over recent months
Ukrainian media sites have been
full of articles talking of the “Polish side” and the
“Ukrainian
side”.
Where
children were axed to death because they were Polish, or Ukrainian,
there can be no “sides”. Those who committed such
atrocities committed a foul crime whatever motives they used to
justify their actions.
It
is profoundly frustrating that 70
years after those events, the accounts in Ukrainian and Polish
textbooks
are
so different, and most Ukrainian history textbooks make it next to
impossible to understand what happened.
Arguments
about numbers of victims, Polish attempts to classify the massacre as
genocide are eagerly used to imply the existence of two separate
“memories”. Many such attempts are made by Ukrainian
supporters
of
the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists [OUN] and Ukrainian
Insurgent Army [UPA] who reject Polish charges that there was a
policy of ethnic cleansing ordered by the Bandera supporting faction
of OUN. Most arguments
are unfortunately at the level of rhetoric, whereas their position
would be better served by unemotional reference to facts and
documents, including proof that other documents are Soviet
forgeries.
They
have a valid right to defend their position. What neither they,
nor Polish nationalists, are entitled to do, is to try to minimize or
distort historical facts in order to push their line.
The
facts are basically known, including the key perpetrators. The
first massacre of an entire village – Parośla – was carried out
on Feb.
8 or 9, 1943 by a unit of UPA led by Hryhory Perehynyak which had
just carried out the first armed attack against the Nazi occupier.
Ukrainian
publications mention the attack on the Germans, but most avoid
talking about the village. According to historian Grzegorz
Motyka, at least 155 villagers were massacred. Much is known
about the events thanks to the testimony of a survivor, Witold
Kołodyński, 12 years old at the time. He can to this day show
the marks on his skull from the axe wound he sustained.
During
the following months, and especially in July and August 1943, there
were widespread attacks on Polish villages by Ukrainians, with the
bloodiest massacres on July
11.
Although plans to drive the 8 percent
Polish
population
out of Volyn had been discussed earlier, there remains controversy
over how much this was known and approved by the leadership of the
Bandera branch of OUN-UPA.
A
particularly fateful role in the carnage was undoubtedly played by
Ukrainian auxiliary police who had served the Nazi occupiers and
began defecting in large numbers during those months. Many joined UPA
and took part in what is now known as ethnic cleansing.
As
well as desperate attempts to defend themselves, there were also
revenge massacres of Ukrainian villages by the
Poles.
This
is not an attempt to give a historical account of these events.
Whatever Ukrainians saw as their grievances against Poles, whatever
grounds for wanting revenge there may have been, the victims were
children, innocent civilians, and there quite simply can be no
justification.
Nor
is there justification in politicizing painful memories, or
distorting historical facts. Attempts to place the ethnic
cleansing in Volyn 1943 in some kind of “broader context”, which
includes the crimes committed against
Ukrainians
during the Operation Wisła are like attempts by many Russians to
deny the very specific nature of Holodomor by adding it to the
unquestionably huge list of Stalin’s crimes.
On
June
27
in Warsaw, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, Patriarch of the Ukrainian
Greek-Catholic Church asked forgiveness from “every Polish family
who lost relatives at the hands of my compatriots”. I can say it no
better.
