Volyn massacre is true and fiction. Volyn massacre

Volyn massacre(Polish. Rzez wolynska) (Volyn tragedy Ukrainian. Volinska tragedy, Polish. Tragedia Wolynia) - genocide against Poles, Jews, Russians. The mass destruction (by Bandera) by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army-OUN (b) of the ethnic Polish civilian population and civilians of the above-listed nationalities, including Ukrainians, in the Volyn-Podillya district (German Generalbezirk Wolhynien-Podolien), which until September 1939 were under the control of Poland, started in March 1943 and peaked in July of the same year.

In the spring of 1943, large-scale ethnic cleansing began in Volhynia, occupied by German troops. This criminal act was carried out mainly by the militants of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, who sought "Clear" the territory of Volyn from the Polish population. Ukrainian nationalists surrounded Polish villages and colonies, and then proceeded to kill their civilians. For about twelve hours, from the evening of July 11, 1943 to the morning of July 12, the UPA attacked 176 settlements….

They killed everyone - women, old people, children, babies. The victims were shot, beaten with clubs, hacked with axes, sawed with two-handed saws, eyes were gouged out, stomachs ripped open. Then the corpses of the destroyed Poles were buried somewhere in the field, plundered their property, and finally set fire to their houses. Only charred ruins remained in the place of the Polish villages.

Destroyed and those Poles who lived in the same villages with the Ukrainians. It was even easier - there was no need to assemble large detachments. Groups of OUN members of several people walked through the sleeping village, entered the houses of Poles and killed everyone. And then the local residents buried the killed fellow villagers of the “wrong” nationality.

The photo above was taken almost 70 years ago. The child in the photo is 2 years old Cheslava Khzhanovskaya from the village of Kuta ( Kosiv district Ivano-Frankivsk region, Zap. Ukraine). An angelic child looks into the camera lens ...

This is her last photo. In April 1944, Bandera's forces attacked the village of Kuta. Sleeping Czeslaw stabbed at night with a bayonet in a crib. For what? - For being non-Ukrainian.

2-year Cheslav Khzhanovskaya pierced with a bayonet. A 18-year-old Galina Khzhanovskaya Bandera took with them, raped and hanged at the edge of the forest. In the picture above - Galina Khzhanovska, a country girl in a national shirt, smiles broadly for the camera. Why was she raped and hanged? - For the same. He was not Ukrainian.

All non-Ukrainians in the village of Kuta were subject to destruction. There were about 200 of them - Poles and Armenians. Yes, Armenians. There was such a small national minority in the Rzecz Pospolita, the Polish Armenians. They have lived in the Carpathians since the Middle Ages. They don't live anymore. All were massacred together with the Poles in 1944, when the Volyn massacre reached the Carpathian region.

There were mixed families in the village of Kuty. At the Pole Francis Berezovsky there was a Ukrainian wife. And my wife has a nephew - a Bandera member. Francis Berezovsky cut off his head, put it on a plate and presented to his wife as a "gift". Presented by her nephew. After these bullying, the woman went crazy. A local Uniate priest was engaged in incitement to the massacre among the Banderaites.

All of the above is one of the episodes. This is the ethnic cleansing of Western Ukraine from non-Ukrainians in 1943-44. Mainly they killed the Poles (there were the most of them), and the rest to the heap. The militants from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) carried out the purge. They were called that - rezuns. What for? And why is independent Ukraine residents of non-Ukrainian nationality?

Why does Bandera Ukraine need this Polish family Kleshinsky ( carved out 08/16/1943 in Podyarkov, Lviv region)?

Or this Polka Maria Grabovskaya and her 3-year-old daughter (killed by Bandera on 11/10/1943 in the village of Blozhev Gorna, Lviv region)?

Or this Pole Ignacy Zamoysky with daughter 15 years old. On January 22, 1944, they were strangled with a stranglehold in the village of Bushche, Berezhansky district, Ternopil region.

On the same day, January 22, 1944, in the village of Bushcha Bandera killed and this one woman with 2 children(Polish family Popel). But, they themselves are to blame. They, all three, were of the wrong nationality.

But the Polish Scheyer family, mother and two children, carved at his home in Vladinopol in 1943. Three of the more than 80,000 victims of the massacre.

On August 30, 1943, the UPA gang under the command of Ivan Klimchak by nickname "Bold" cut out the Polish village of Volya Ostrovetskaya.

Rezuny killed 529 people, including 220 children... Pole Heinrich Klok miraculously survived that day, he was wounded and was mistaken for dead. Next to him, over the corpse of a villager Maria Esinyuk sat her 5 year old son, and asked my mother to go home. A 5-year-old child could not understand that mom was no longer there. A Bandera soldier approached the boy and killed with a shot in the head.

In the photo - the victims of the Bandera massacre in the Polish village of Germanovka, district of Luts ka, 11/28/1943:

The logic of genocide - children cannot be left alive. Ukrainian Nazis from the UPA learned this from the Germans. The same leader of the gang "Bold", which the carved the village of Volya Ostrovetskaya, before joining the UPA he was a policeman. He served with the Germans in the 103rd battalion of the Schutzmannschaft ("security police", punitive). The "commander-in-chief" of the UPA Roman Shukhevych (201st battalion) was also a policeman.

In the photo Latach district Zalishchyky region. Ternopil. Family Karpiaków, where the UPA committed murders on 12/14/1943 Maria Karpiak- 42 years old, mother; Joseph- 23 years old, son; Ivan- 20 years old, son; Vladislav- 18 years old, son; Sofia- 8 years old, daughter; Sigmund- 6 years old, son:

Another vivid episode of the "national liberation" struggle, the village of Katerinovka, May 1943:

The girl in the center Stasya Stefanyak was killed because of his Polish father. Her mother Maria Boyarchuk, Ukrainian woman, that night killed too. Because of her husband. Mixed families aroused particular hatred of the Razuns.

In the village of Zalesye Koropetskoye (Ternopil region) on February 7, 1944, there was an even more terrible case. The UPA gang attacked the village with the aim of massacring the Polish population.

About 60 people, mostly women and children, were herded into a barn, where they were burned alive. One of the victims that day was from a mixed family - half Pole, half Ukrainian. Bandera put him a condition - he must kill your polka mother, then he will be kept alive. He refused and was killed along with his mother.

The UPA rezuns used simple improvised tools. For example, a two-handed saw:

From the testimony of a witness Tadeusz Kotorsky, a resident of the Polish village of Ruzhin (15 km from Kovel):

“On November 11, 1943, our self-defense group in the colonies of Ruzhin and Truskota repulsed attempts by the UPA group to break into these villages. The next day we left Truskot. There, Stefan Skovron, 18, a total orphan who was a good friend of mine, was seriously wounded in the leg. We provided him with possible first aid, and he asked us to leave him near the house of our neighbor Gnat Yukhimchuk. The next day Stakh Shimchak went to pick up Stefan. It turned out that he was no longer alive. He had p rotate the stomach, stretched out all the insides, gouged out the eyes, and boots were removed from their feet. Soon his brother Sigmund identified these boots on a villager Lyublin resident Lenke Aksyutiche.

The death of Ukrainians was a big tragedy for me. Ivan Aksyutich and his son Sergei in the fall of 1943. Man in years Aksyutich Ivan he lived well with his neighbors, did not enter into any political intrigues, and had the courage not to support Ukrainian nationalists. They killed him in the village of Klevetsk with nephew Leonidas which for dear uncle chose a terrible death - sawed a living body with a saw ... His son Sergei OUN members shot«.

Banderovets Lyonka Aksyutich described by the witness, a typical UPA rezun. He found a wounded Pole, ripped open his stomach, took out his entrails, took off his shoes. A native Ukrainian uncle, who did not support the Banderaites, was sawed alive with a saw.

A two-handed saw takes a long time. Faster with an ax. In the picture - hacked Bandera polish a family in Macievo (Lukovo), February 1944. In the far corner, something lies on a pillow. It is difficult to see from here:

And there are severed human fingers. Before their death, Bandera's people tortured their victims:

Ukrainian nationalists wanted non-Ukrainian nationalities to die in agony.

This Polish woman was burned with a red-hot iron and tried to cut off her right ear:

In the course of the Bandera massacre, sadism regarding the victims flourished in the most magnificent color. The picture below shows a victim of the UPA gang attack on passenger train Belzec - Rava-Ruska June 16, 1944 The attack was carried out by a gang Dmitry Karpenko by nickname "Yastrub".

Karpenko-Yastrub- Bandera "hero", was awarded the highest award of the UPA - the Gold Cross "For Military Merit" I degree.

On June 16, 1944, his gang stopped a passenger train near Rava-Ruska, sorted passengers according to their ethnicity (Poles, Ukrainians and Germans were traveling there). Then the Poles were taken to the forest and killed.

The Polish woman in the photo below also rode this "death train". Her belly was ripped open, her hand was chopped off with an ax:

Bandera atrocities. Belzec, region, Rava Ruska county, Lviv voivodeship June 16, 1944:

The Polish village of Lipniki (Kostopolsky district of the Rivne region), March 26, 1943. At night this village was attacked by a gang under the command of a sadist UPA Ivan Litvinchuk by nickname "Oak"... A savage massacre began. These inhumans killed 179 people, including 51 children... Among the dead - 174 Poles, 4 Jews and one Russian woman... Pictured: victims of the Lipniki massacre in a mass grave:

That night, the future first cosmonaut of Poland almost died at the hands of the UPA nonhumans Miroslav Germashevsky... He was 2 years old. His family arrived in Lipniki at the very beginning of 1943, hoping to hide from the Bandera terror that had flared up in Volyn. There was a complete village of such refugees. The Germashevskikhs were sheltered in his house by a local Pole Jakub Varumser. Bandera's men burned down the house, they cut off Varumzer's head, and killed Miroslav Germashevsky's grandfather with 7 bayonets. Mother grabbed 2-year-old Miroslav and ran across the field towards the forest. They began to shoot after her. She fell and passed out from fear. They thought they had killed her.

An hour later she regained consciousness and was able to take refuge in the forest. Then the shock receded a little and she realized that she had lost the child on the field. Dropped when she ran. In the morning, father and older brother rushed to look for little Mirko. The whole field was littered with corpses. Suddenly, the brother saw in the snow a black bundle and in it - a child who showed no signs of life. At first, it was thought that Miroslav was frozen. The package was brought to the village, and they began to warm it up. Suddenly, the child stirred and opened his eyes. Miroslav survived and became the first Polish cosmonaut.

In the photo below: Miroslav Germashevsky(left) and a peasant from Lipniki Jakub Varumser(on the right), whose head was cut off by the Bandera rezuns:

LIPNIKI, Kostopol County, Lutsk Voivodeship. March 26, 1943. Resident of the Lipniki colony - Jakub Varumser headless, the result of a massacre committed under cover of the night by the OUN-UPA terrorists:

Another victim of the Lipniki massacre - 3-year-old Janusz Bielawski... What military merits did the UPA rezun deserve for this kid?

Now a lot of lies are emerging about how the UPA allegedly fought against the German invaders.

March 12, 1944 a gang of UPA militants and the 4th police regiment of the SS "Galicia" division jointly attacked the Polish village of Palikrovy(former Lviv voivodeship, now - the territory of Poland).

It was a village with a mixed population, about 70% Poles, 30% Ukrainians. After driving the residents out of their homes, the policemen and Bandera began to sort them according to their ethnicity. After separation Poles - they were shot with machine guns... It was 365 people were killed, mostly women and children.

In the photo below: The Palikrovs, March 1944, a child next to his mother. Mother was killed during the massacre staged by the UPA and punishers from the Ukrainian SS division "Galicia":

On February 9, 1943, Bandera from the gang of Pyotr Netovich, disguised as Soviet partisans, entered the Polish village of Parosle near Vladimirtsa, Rivne region. The peasants, who had previously provided assistance to the partisans, warmly welcomed the guests. Having had enough food, the bandits began to rape and kill women and girls:

On one of the nights from the village of Volkovyya, the Bandera members brought a whole family into the forest. They mocked the unfortunate people for a long time. Then, when they saw that the wife of the head of the family was pregnant, they cut open her belly, pulled out the fetus, and instead shoved 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 burst 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.

One of the two Kleshchinsky families in Podyarkovo was tortured to death by the OUN-UPA on August 16, 1943. In the photo there is a family of four - a spouse and two children. They gouged out the eyes of the victims, hit them on the head, burned their palms, tried to chop off the upper and lower extremities, as well as hands, stab wounds were inflicted all over the body, etc.:

TARNOPOL Voivodeship Tarnopolskie, 1943. One (!) Of the trees of the country road, in front of which the thugs and sadists of the OUN-UPA (OUN-UPA) hung a banner with the inscription in Polish:

"The Road to Independent Ukraine".

And on each tree on both sides of the road, the executioners created from Polish children, the so-called "wreaths" - killed children were tied to a tree with barbed wire:

From the interrogation of Bandera:

“The old ones were strangled, and the little children under one year old by the legs - once, they hit their head on the door - and it was ready, and on a cart. We felt sorry for our men that they would suffer a lot during the night, but they would sleep off during the day and the next night - to another village. There were people who were hiding. If a man was hiding, they were mistaken for women ... "

LIPNIKI, Kostopol County, Lutsk Voivodeship. March 26, 1943. The corpses of Poles, victims of the massacre committed by the OUN - UPA, brought to the identification and funeral. Behind the fence is Yerji Skulski, who saved his life thanks to the available firearms:

POLOVTSE, region, Chortkiv county, Tarnopil voivodeship, forest called Rosokhach. January 16-17, 1944. The place from which 26 victims were pulled out - Polish residents of the village of Polovce, who were taken away by the UPA on the night of January 16-17, 1944 and tortured in the forest:

From the interrogation of Bandera:

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

LIPNIKI, Kostopol district, Lutsk voivodeship. March 26, 1943. View before the funeral. Polish victims of the night massacre committed by the OUN-UPA brought to the People's House:

The Volyn massacre began on February 9, 1943. from the attack of the UPA gang on the village of Paroslya, where about 200 Poles were killed. The organizers of the Volyn massacre were the leaders of the UPA - Roman Shukhevych, Mikola Lebed and Roman Klyachkivsky.

However, organizing the massacre of the Polish minority in Western Ukraine, the leaders of the rezuns forgot something. About the Ukrainian minority in South-Eastern Poland. Ukrainians lived there among the Poles for centuries and at that time they were up to 30% of the total population. The atrocities of Bandera rezunov in Ukraine backfired in Poland, local Ukrainians. Although, maybe the leaders of the UPA were counting on that?

In the spring of 1944 Polish nationalists carried out a series of actions of retaliation against Ukrainians in South-East Poland. Suffered as usual innocent civilians... According to various estimates, it was killed from 15 to 20 thousand Ukrainians... The number of Poles - victims of the OUN-UPA is about 80 thousand people.

The largest action was the attack of the detachment Home Army to the village of Sagryn (Poland, Lublin Voivodeship) March 10, 1944 AK-sheep killed about 800 Ukrainians, burned the village... In the photo: soldiers of the Home Army in front of the burning village of Sagryn:

Another Sagryn: a Pole from the Home Army at the corpse of a murdered Ukrainian.

The second major episode was the massacre in the village of Verkhovyna (Lublin Voivodeship) on June 6, 1944. The village was attacked by the NSZ (People's Forces of Zbroyny), an ultra-right underground organization that competed with the AK. 194 Ukrainians were killed. In the photo below - the village of Verkhovyna, Soviet officers (Eastern Poland at that time was occupied by the Red Army) are investigating the massacres of Ukrainians in the village:

The Soviet power, established in the liberated Poland by the Red Army and the Polish Army, did not allow the nationalists to organize full-scale actions of revenge against the Ukrainians for the Bandera atrocities. However, Bandera's rezuns achieved their goal: 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 resolved the national question in Western Ukraine in a civilized manner. Without cutting off heads and gutting children, through population exchange. Of course, not everyone wanted to leave their homes, often the resettlement was forced, but the ground for the massacre was eliminated.

But with the rezuns of the UPA, the Soviet authorities, as well as the authorities of post-war Poland and Czechoslovakia, launched an irreconcilable war. It has already been said above about the horrors of the Bandera massacre in the village of Volya Ostrovetskaya on August 30, 1943. More than 500 people were killed, including a 5-year-old boy who was sitting by his mother's corpse and asked his mother to get up and go home. The leader of the UPA gang, Ivan Klimchak, nicknamed "Bald", who arranged all this, hardly thought that one day he would have to answer for what he had done.

In Poland, the Volyn massacre is very well remembered.
This is a scan of the pages of a Polish book:

The list of ways by which the Ukrainian Nazis dealt with the civilian population:

Driving a large and thick nail into the skull of the head.
Ripping the hair off the scalp (scalping).
Carving on the forehead of an "eagle" (the eagle is the coat of arms of Poland).
Eye gouging.
Circumcision of the nose, ears, lips, tongue.
Piercing children and adults with stakes through and through.
Penetration with a sharpened thick wire from ear to ear.
Cutting the throat and pulling the tongue out through the opening.
Knocking out teeth and breaking the jaw.
Tearing the mouth from ear to ear.
Oak gagging while transporting still living victims.
Roll your head back.
Crushing the head by putting in a vice and tightening the screw.
Cutting and pulling narrow strips of skin from the back or face.
Breaking bones (ribs, arms, legs).
Cutting off women's breasts and sprinkling wounds with salt.
Sickle cutting off the genitals of male victims.
Piercing the belly of a pregnant woman with a bayonet.
Cutting the abdomen and pulling the intestines out in adults and children.
Cutting the abdomen of a woman with a long-term pregnancy and inserting instead of a removed fetus, for example, a live cat and stitching up the abdomen.
Cutting the abdomen and pouring boiling water inside.
Cutting the belly and putting stones inside it, and throwing it into the river.
Cutting pregnant women of the abdomen and rash inside the broken glass.
Pulling out the veins from the groin to the feet.
Inserting a hot iron into the vagina.
Insertion of pine cones into the vagina with the apex side forward.
Inserting a pointed stake into the vagina and pushing it up to the throat, right through.
Cutting a woman's front torso with a garden knife from the vagina to the neck and leaving the viscera outside.
Hanging victims by the entrails.
Insertion into the vagina or anus glass bottle and breaking it.
Cutting the abdomen and pouring in the feed meal for hungry pigs, which pulled out this feed along with the intestines and other entrails.
Chopping / cutting with a knife / sawing off hands or feet (or fingers and toes).
Moxibustion inside palms on the hot stove of a charcoal kitchen.
Sawing the trunk with a saw.
Sprinkling hot charcoal over the bound legs.
Nailing your hands to the table and your feet to the floor.
Chopping the whole body into pieces with an ax.
Nailing the tongue to the table with a knife little child, which later hung on it.
Cutting a child into pieces with a knife.
Nailing a small child to the table with a bayonet.
Hanging a male child by the genitals on a doorknob.
Knocking out the joints of the legs and arms of the child.
Throwing a child into the flames of a burning building.
Breaking the baby's head by grabbing it by the legs and hitting a wall or stove.
Planting a child on a count.
Hanging a woman upside down on a tree and mocking her - cutting off the chest and tongue, dissecting the abdomen, gouging out the eyes, and also cutting off pieces of the body with knives.
Nailing a small child to the door.
Hanging from a tree with your feet up and scorching the head from below with the fire of a fire lighted under the head.
Drowning children and adults in a well and throwing stones at the victim.
Driving a stake into the stomach.
Tying a person to a tree and shooting at it like a target.
Dragging the body along the street with a rope tightened around the neck.
Tying a woman's legs and arms to two trees, and cutting the belly from crotch to chest.
A dragging mother with three children tied to each other on the ground.
Pulling one or more victims with barbed wire, pouring cold water on the victim every few hours in order to recover and feel pain.
Burying in the ground alive up to the neck and cutting off the head later with a scythe.
Tearing the torso in half with the help of horses.
Tearing the torso in half by tying the victim to two bent trees and subsequently releasing them.
Setting fire to a victim doused with kerosene.
Laying sheaves of straw around the victim and setting them on fire (Nero's torch).
Putting the baby on a pitchfork and throwing it into the fire.
Hanging on barbed wire.
Peeling the skin off the body and filling the wound with ink or boiling water.
Nailing hands to the threshold of the dwelling.

Illustrations from a Polish book:

In 1944. the former policeman and rezun was overtaken by a well-deserved NKVD bullet. The body of "Bald" was hung up for public viewing in Shatsk (Volyn region). Below is his posthumous photo. As the saying goes, a dog is a dog's death:

In 1950, the "commander-in-chief" of the UPA Shukhevych also received his bullet:

The territory of Poland was also cleared of UPYR. In the photo: Poland, 1947, a Polish officer will interrogate the captured Bandera soldiers:

Czechoslovakia, 1945 These rezuns also fought back. Look at their faces - they are all cut from one log:

The destroyed OUN security officer Ivan Diichuk, nicknamed "Karpatsky"in the village of Tatarie, Transcarpathian region:

In Poland, the Volyn massacre is very well remembered.
This is a scan of the pages of a Polish book:

The list of ways by which the Ukrainian Nazis dealt with the civilian population:

... Driving a large and thick nail into the skull of the head.
... Ripping the hair off the scalp (scalping).
... Carving on the forehead of an "eagle" (the eagle is the coat of arms of Poland).
... Eye gouging.
... Circumcision of the nose, ears, lips, tongue.
... Piercing children and adults with stakes through and through.
... Penetration with a sharpened thick wire from ear to ear.
... Cutting the throat and pulling the tongue out through the opening.
... Knocking out teeth and breaking the jaw.
... Tearing the mouth from ear to ear.
... Oak gagging while transporting still living victims.
... Roll your head back.
... Crushing the head by putting in a vice and tightening the screw.
... Cutting and pulling narrow strips of skin from the back or face.
... Breaking bones (ribs, arms, legs).
... Cutting off women's breasts and sprinkling wounds with salt.
... Sickle cutting off the genitals of male victims.
... Piercing the belly of a pregnant woman with a bayonet.
... Cutting the abdomen and pulling the intestines out in adults and children.
... Cutting the abdomen of a woman with a long-term pregnancy and inserting instead of a removed fetus, for example, a live cat and stitching the abdomen.
... Cutting the abdomen and pouring boiling water inside.
... Cutting the belly and putting stones inside it, and throwing it into the river.
... Cutting pregnant women of the abdomen and rash inside the broken glass.
... Pulling out the veins from the groin to the feet.
... Inserting a hot iron into the vagina.
... Insertion of pine cones into the vagina with the apex side forward.
... Inserting a pointed stake into the vagina and pushing it up to the throat, right through.
... Cutting a woman's front torso with a garden knife from the vagina to the neck and leaving the viscera outside.
... Hanging victims by the viscera.
... Inserting a glass bottle into the vagina or anus and breaking it.
... Cutting the abdomen and pouring in the feed meal for hungry pigs, which pulled out this feed along with the intestines and other entrails.
... Chopping / cutting with a knife / sawing off hands or feet (or fingers and toes).
... Searing the inside of the palm on the hot stove of a charcoal kitchen.
... Sawing the trunk with a saw.
... Sprinkling hot charcoal over the bound legs.
... Nailing your hands to the table and your feet to the floor.
... Chopping the whole body into pieces with an ax.
... Nailing a small child's tongue to the table with a knife, which later hung on it.
... Cutting a child into pieces with a knife.
... Nailing a small child to the table with a bayonet.
... Hanging a male child by the genitals on a doorknob.
... Knocking out the joints of the legs and arms of the child.
... Throwing a child into the flames of a burning building.
... Breaking the baby's head by grabbing it by the legs and hitting a wall or stove.
... Planting a child on a count.
... Hanging a woman upside down on a tree and mocking her - cutting off the chest and tongue, dissecting the abdomen, gouging out the eyes, and also cutting off pieces of the body with knives.
... Nailing a small child to the door.
... Hanging from a tree with your feet up and scorching the head from below with the fire of a fire lighted under the head.
... Drowning children and adults in a well and throwing stones at the victim.
... Driving a stake into the stomach.
... Tying a person to a tree and shooting at it like a target.
... Dragging the body along the street with a rope tightened around the neck.
... Tying a woman's legs and arms to two trees, and cutting the belly from crotch to chest.
... A dragging mother with three children tied to each other on the ground.
... Pulling one or more victims with barbed wire, pouring cold water on the victim every few hours in order to recover and feel pain.
... Burying in the ground alive up to the neck and cutting off the head later with a scythe.
... Tearing the torso in half with the help of horses.
... Tearing the torso in half by tying the victim to two bent trees and subsequently releasing them.
... Setting fire to a victim doused with kerosene.
... Laying sheaves of straw around the victim and setting them on fire (Nero's torch).
... Putting the baby on a pitchfork and throwing it into the fire.
... Hanging on barbed wire.
... Peeling the skin off the body and filling the wound with ink or boiling water.
... Nailing hands to the threshold of the dwelling.

Do you know what a Jewish chutzpah is? This is when a Jewish youth, who stabbed his mother, defending himself at the trial, demands a pardon on the grounds that he is an orphan.

Do you know what a Ukrainian chutzpah is? I'll show you now.

« The Kiev authorities are ready to apologize to Poland for the Volyn massacre, if evidence is provided that Roman Shukhevych, who led the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), really "did something bad." This was stated by the Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine for European Integration Ivanna Klimpush-Tsintsadze in an interview with the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita.

“Ukraine is now trying to deal with its complicated history. Many facts were falsified, in particular, through Soviet propaganda, Soviet historians, ”said Klimpush-Tsintsadze. She added that during the Second Years world war there were many cases when “someone else put on the UPA uniform and killed on behalf of the UPA”. According to Klimpush-Tsintsadze, in order to establish the truth about the Volyn massacre, it is necessary to create a joint Ukrainian-Polish commission of independent historians.»

Let's listen to the witness. The one who collected all the facts, all the documents in one book. In whose memory the atrocities of the UPA are forever imprinted.

There is an invaluable work - the book by Viktor Polishchuk “The Bitter Truth. Crimes of the OUN-UPA (confession of a Ukrainian) ”, published in Toronto.

Viktor Varfolomeevich Polishchuk was born in 1925 in Volyn, on the territory that belonged to Poland until 1939. His father is Ukrainian. His mother is Polish. By religion, Victor is Orthodox.

In 1946, Viktor Polishchuk left for Poland, where he received a higher education in law. Since 1981 he has been living in Canada and owns his own publishing company. He has academic degrees of Candidate of Law and Doctor of Political Science, author of a number of scientific and journalistic works.

He is sincerely hated by the Ukrainian diaspora, both in Canada and the United States, with all that replaces their heart and soul. Because Viktor Polishchuk wrote a terrible truth, which the Ukrainians tried with all their might to hide and forget. He is often accused of anti-patriotism. He proudly replies: "I do not accuse my people, but I cleanse them from the filth that is the OUN-UPA".

I have already touched upon the topic of how Lviv professors are trying to remake the minds of schoolchildren and students, distorting the facts about the Volyn Massacre.

Oles Buzina, the Kingdom of Heaven, did a lot, incredibly much to solve the crimes of Ukrainian nationalists.

Oles Buzina once asked the question: “ Ask yourself: would you kill your neighbor just because he speaks Polish? For the sake of Ukraine, would they kill? Would a woman's belly be ripped open? A baby who does not speak Polish or Ukrainian yet, but, in your opinion, is probably a POLYAK, would be smashed with his head on a well log house, so that his brain splashed? You'd better imagine yourself as one of those who surrounds a Polish village at dawn, drives people out into the street, takes the best things from their homes, and then, regardless of age and gender, drives them back into the houses and sets them on fire. Would you do it? And if they did, would it be of their own free will or simply by following an order? Tell me honestly, would you enjoy all of this? And then, many years later, would you remember all this as a feat and tell your grandchildren with all physiological details?»

For such questions he was killed.

In the book by Viktor Polishchuk "The Bitter Truth" there are terrible testimonies of people hunted by Ukrainian non-humans.

« In the summer of 1943, my maternal aunt Anastasia Vitkovskaya went with a Ukrainian neighbor to the village of Tarakanov, located three kilometers from Dubno. They spoke Polish, because my aunt, an illiterate woman from the Lublin region, could not learn the Ukrainian language. They went to exchange something for bread, since the aunt had six children. Neither she nor her uncle, Anton Vitkovsky, who is also a completely illiterate person, not only did not interfere in any politics, but also had no idea about it. And she, as well as a Ukrainian neighbor, was killed by Bandera from the UPA or the Self-Defense Cluster Departments (they included local peasants, often armed with pitchforks and knives, subordinate to the OUN-UPA) just because they spoke Polish. They were brutally killed with axes and thrown into a roadside ditch. Another aunt, Sabina, who was married to a Ukrainian Vasily Zagorovsky, told me about this..»

Once a Ukrainian acquaintance told his father-in-law that the UPA was preparing to destroy his family. They fled to Kremenets. Someone overheard the conversation of this young Ukrainian with my wife's father. Suspecting him of "treason," they hung him in the center of the village and hung a sign on his chest: "So it will be with all traitors." The hanged man was not allowed to be filmed for several days. Two facts that took place in different places in different time... They are united by one thing: the authorship of the OUN-UPA, the gratuitousness of the killings. My father had a brother, Yarokhtey, who lived in the village. Lipa, Dubensky district. For the fact that he openly branded the UPA, he was killed by a shot in the mouth. Uncle Yarokhtey was an ordinary, illiterate peasant.

“On March 24, 1944, on a frosty night, Bandera's men attacked our houses, set all buildings on fire. We lived in the village of Polyanovice (Tsytsivka), Zborivsky district, Ternopil region. My father, a Pole, married a Ukrainian woman. We lived in peace with Ukrainians from neighboring villages. We heard about the murders in Volhynia, but at first we did not think that they could kill us too. Somewhere in February 1944, the Bandera (we did not understand who was in the UPA, who was in another group - they were all called Bandera, since they themselves glorified the "leader" Bandera) put a demand for ransom in front of our village. The peasants collected the money and gave it to Bandera. But it did not help. At night, all the men, that is, father, younger brother and I, as on other nights, slept in a shelter under the outbuildings. My mother (Ukrainian) with my two sisters and my father's sister, who married a Ukrainian from near Kharkov, spent the night in a hut. Immediately after midnight, we smelled smoke and guessed that the UPA had set fire to the houses. I jumped out of the cellar, raising my lyada. They shot at me, who was running away, but did not hit. My father also tried to get out of the cellar, but could not - he burned down. My little brother suffocated from the smoke. A mother fleeing a burning house was wounded, but she escaped. The seven-year-old sister also escaped, although she was wounded in the knee. My father's sister also escaped and was shot in the arm, as a result of which the arm had to be amputated. The second 13-year-old sister, while fleeing, caught the eye of a Bandera soldier, who pierced her chest with a bayonet, and she died on the spot. On the same night, Bandera's supporters burned and killed our neighbors - Beloskurskiy and Baranovskiy and others from our small village ”

T. G. from Glukholazy (Poland) writes: “We lived in the Polish village of Chaikov, Sarny district. In June or July 1943, the Bandera men arrived on horseback before dinner. They surrounded the houses, set them on fire, and those who fled from them were killed with axes, bayonets ... The UPA did not fight the Germans. Before the war, we had no enmity between Ukrainians and Poles. "

E.B. from the USA: “We lived in the village of Radokhovka. In March 1943, at midnight, the UPovtsy set fire to the house of their neighbor Yancharek. Those who escaped from him were shot at. Only his son Yan escaped, the others died: Yakov Yancharek, his wife, mother, son Yanush, daughter Ledzia, second daughter with baby... Bandera's victims were thrown into the well. My mother was killed in May of the same year - she went to the village and was shot.

3-X. from Poland, Valch: “The village of Nikolaevka in Volyn. The Bandera attack took place on 04.24.1943 at dawn. Bandera's men entered our hut and began torturing us with bayonets. They brought straw and set it on fire. I was also struck with a bayonet, and I lost consciousness, falling on my aunt. When the flame reached me, I came to my senses and jumped out the window. The Banderaites were gone. My groan was heard by a Ukrainian neighbor Spiridon, he brought me to another Ukrainian - Bezukha, who took me to the hospital on a horse. As a result of the attack, 14 people died, including a pregnant woman. "

G.K. from the USA: “On July 14, 1943, in Kolodnya, the Banderovites tortured 300 people. Having rounded them up, they ordered them to lie down, they say, they will do a search. They started shooting at the lying ones. The witness is Antek Polyulya. Bandera from Kolodnya: Andrey Shpak, Semyon Koval, Volodya Snichishin, from Oleshkov - Pavel Romanchuk. The priest called for murder, who said: "We will hallow the knives so that we can carve a doll out of wheat."

G. D. from Poland: “On Tuesday, July 14, 1943, in the village of Selets, Vladimir-Volynsky district, Ukrainians killed two elderly people - Jozef Witkowski and his wife Stefania. They were shot dead in their own hut, which was then set on fire. In the afternoon, with the same axes, they killed two elderly people Mikhalovichs and their 7-year-old granddaughter, husband and wife of the Gronovichs, a priest's housekeeper named Zofia. Ivan Shostachuk, who was a corporal in the Polish army before the war and changed his religion to Roman Catholic, took part in the killings. His younger brother Vladislav, an Orthodox Christian, warned the Morelevsky and Mikhalkovich families. There was a Ukrainian in the gang - Yukhno, who killed Poles, and his father saved the Stichinsky family. Before the war, relations with the Ukrainians were good, they began to deteriorate at the beginning of 1943, when agitators began to arrive from Lviv and Stanislavschina, who rioted the Ukrainian youth, promising a free Ukraine. Not everyone succumbed to whispering, in particular, older people did not succumb. The teacher primary school Maya Sokoliv, the wife of the head of the school, which was sent from the Soviet Union, Russian, together with her husband, mother and one-year-old son Slavik, were drowned in a well. From the Morelevsky family, the Bandera members killed their parents, daughter-in-law Irene (19 years old) and son Jozef (20 years old). Everyone except Irena was killed not far from the forest. Irena was taken to the hut by the leaders of the gang, kept in the basement, raped, and then thrown into the well. Irena was pregnant.

I. from Canada: “On the night of December 28, 1944, Bandera attacked our village Lozov, Ternopil region, over the Gnezdechnaya river. They tortured about 800 people. The first group of Bandera, after the signal of the rocket, beat the windows and broke down the doors, the second group killed, and the third robbed, after which they set fire to the houses ... "

V.M. from Canada: “Grabina village, Volodymyr-Volyn region. On August 29, 1943, on Sunday, the news came that Bandera's men were killing: Father ordered me to hide. When they entered our yard, my mother was there, who was immediately shot with a pistol. The father saw this and, coming out, said: "What do you need, because I have not done anything bad to you?" Bandera in response hit him in the head with an ax. The father fell, then the bandit also shot at him. The mother was killed immediately, and the sister on the third day. "

K.I. from Great Britain: “Germanovka. The attack took place in September 1943 at dawn. I was attacked by my close neighbors - Kostetsky. Holovaty and Zapletny. They beat me up and robbed me. On February 14, 1944, my cousin's wedding took place, not far from me, on our street. The young man worked at the post office and invited his boss, and when he left, the Bandera men killed him with a shot. Shooting began, grenades were thrown. All the wedding guests were killed, the hut was burned. The musicians were also killed, six of them were, among them were several Ukrainians. There were also several Ukrainians among the guests; they were also killed. 26 people were killed. One Ukrainian, a neighbor, allowed me to spend the night in his hut, but one day, coming from the church, he said that he could not hide me further, as the priest said: “Brothers and sisters, the time has come when we can repay the Poles, Jews and communists” ...

On August 30, 1943, Kupy, a Polish village in the Lyuboml district, was surrounded in the morning by the UPA "streltsy" and Ukrainian peasants, mainly from the village of Lesnyaki, who staged a massacre of the Poles. Everyone was killed, including women, children, old people. They killed in huts, in yards, in utility rooms, using axes, pitchforks, druchkas, and fired at those fleeing. Whole families were thrown into wells, covering them with earth. Pavel Pronchuk, a Pole, who jumped out of the shelter to protect his mother, was caught, put on a bench, his arms and legs were cut off and left so that he suffered longer. The Ukrainian family of Vladimir Krasovsky with two children was brutally tortured there. Of the 282 inhabitants of the village, 138 people were killed, including 63 children.

A few kilometers from Terebovlya is the village of Bavoriv, ​​where priests Karol Protsik and Ludwik Rutina were pastors. The organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in Smolyanets, at a meeting on October 28, 1943, sentenced these priests and organist Wisniewski to death for taking part in the funeral of Poles tortured by members of this organization. The execution of the sentence took place on 2.11.43. At about 18.00 a group of murderers burst into the church. The organist was shot on the spot, and priest Protsyk was dragged out of the room. Priest Rutina fled through the window, a grenade was thrown at him, but it did not explode. Ksenadz Protsik began to shout, he was pierced with a bayonet, tied up and taken to the forest. The body was never found. "

Bandera extremists said: "Demand blood for the number of blood, and finally Ukraine has come."

In the winter of 1943, towards evening, on the road from Uzhintsy, Bandera attacked a cart with Polish women from Karolinka, who were going to Maslenka to spend the night at Poloschanskys', hoping that it was not so dangerous there. They shot the wife of Jozef Poloshchansky and another woman.

P. Falkovskaya writes from Brazil: “Between Lutsk and Rivny there was the village of Palchi ... In 1942-43, the Bandera members tortured 18 people from her husband's relatives ... tortured, pulled out their tongues. An 86-year-old blacksmith was cut to pieces alive ... One Ukrainian had a Polish wife, so Bandera ordered his brother to kill him. The family fled from Kotov to Palchi, Bandera's men attacked them on the way, and that brother was between them. They killed the whole family - a Ukrainian father, a Polish mother and children. In the village of Zverev Bandera killed a whole family, then the Poles found a living infant who sucked the breast of the murdered mother.

F.B. from Canada: “Bandera's men came to our yard, caught our father and chopped off his head with an ax, and pierced our sister with a bayonet. Mother, seeing all this, died of a broken heart. "

Yu.V. from Great Britain: “My brother’s wife was Ukrainian and for the fact that she married a Pole 18 Bandera members raped her. She never recovered from this shock, her brother did not feel sorry for her and she drowned herself in the Dniester.

V.Ch. from Canada: "In the village of Bushkovitsy, eight Polish families were driven into a stodola, there they were all killed with axes and set on fire to a stodola."

Yu.Kh from Poland: “In March 1944, Bandera's men attacked our village of Guta Shklyana, among them was one named Didukh from the village of Oglyadov. Five people were killed. They shot, finished off the wounded. Yu Khorostetsky was cut in half with an ax. A young woman was raped. "

T.R. from Poland: “The village of Osmigovichi. 11. 07. 43, during the service of God, Bandera's men attacked, killed the worshipers, a week after that they attacked our village. Small children were thrown into the well, and those who were larger were locked in the basement and filled up. One Bandera member, holding the baby by the legs, hit his head against the wall. The child's mother screamed, she was pierced with a bayonet.

November 9, 1943, the Polish village of Parosle in the Sarny region. A gang of Ukrainian nationalists, pretending to be Soviet partisans, misled the villagers, who treated the gang during the day. In the evening, the bandits surrounded all the houses and killed the Polish population in them. 173 people were killed. Only two survived, who were littered with corpses, and a 6-year-old boy who pretended to be killed. A later examination of the dead showed the exceptional cruelty of the executioners. Babies were nailed to tables with kitchen knives, skinned from several people, women were raped, some had their breasts cut off, many had their ears, noses, eyes gouged out, and their heads cut off. After the massacre, they had a booze at the local headman. After the executioners left, they found a one-year-old child, nailed to the table with a bayonet, among the scattered bottles of self-rut and the remnants of food, and a piece of pickled cucumber, half-eaten by one of the bandits, was stuck in his mouth.

March 1943 In the outskirts of Guta, Stepanskaya, Kostopolsky district, Ukrainian nationalists deceived 18 Polish girls, who were killed after being raped. The bodies of the girls were folded in one row and a ribbon was put on them with the inscription: "This is how lyashki (polka) should die."

March 1943 locality Antonovka, Sarnensky district. Jozef Eismont went to the mill. The owner of the mill, a Ukrainian, warned him of the danger. When he was returning from the mill, Ukrainian nationalists attacked him, tied him to a pole, gouged out his eyes, and then cut him alive with a saw.

August 30, 1943, the Polish village of Ostrowki near Lyuboml. The village was surrounded by a dense ring. Ukrainian emissaries entered the village, offering to lay down their arms. Most of the men gathered at the school, which closed them down. Then they took five people out of the garden, where they were killed with a blow to the head and thrown into the dug holes. The bodies were folded in layers, sprinkled with earth. The women and children were gathered in the church, ordered to lie on the floor, after which they took turns shooting in the head. 483 people died, including 146 children.

On the night of March 21, 1943, two Ukrainians, Ischuk and Kravchuk, who were helping the Poles, were killed in Shumsk. April 1943, Belozerka. These same bandits killed the Ukrainian woman Tatiana Mykolik for having a child with a Pole. 05/05/43, Klepachev. They killed the Ukrainian Pyotr Trokhimchuk with his Polish wife. August 1943, Yanovka. Bandera killed a Polish child and two Ukrainian children, as they were brought up in a Polish family. August 1943, Antolin. Ukrainian Mikhail Mischanyuk, who had a Polish wife, was ordered to kill her and his one-year-old child. Due to the refusal, his neighbors killed him with his wife and child.

And this is a tiny fraction of all the evidence listed in the book "Gorkaya Pravda" by Viktor Polishchuk. Here they are - the heroes of modern Ukraine, the OUN and the UPA. This is an example of how they demand to be equal to Ukrainian and Russian children in United Ukraine.

During the activity of Ukrainian nationalists, about 100,000 Poles and Ukrainians were killed. And now the Kiev authorities offer Poland to forget everything.

But the Poles have long since responded to such proposals. There will be no forgiveness for Ukrainian animals - neither on earth, nor in hell. And the sky for the Ukrainian Nazis is closed forever.

"IF I FORGET ABOUT THEM, YOU ARE IN HEAVEN, FORGET ME"

In June 2016, there was an exchange of very interesting letters between representatives of Poland and Ukraine.

Former presidents of Ukraine, heads of a number of Ukrainian churches, state and public figures of the country on the eve of the 73rd anniversary of the events known as the "Volyn massacre", wrote a letter to the Polish people

“We ask forgiveness and equally forgive crimes and injustice - this is the only spiritual formula that should be the motive of every Polish and Ukrainian heart striving for peace and harmony ... As long as our peoples live, the wounds of history continue to hurt. But our peoples will live only when, in spite of the past, we learn to treat each other as brothers, ”the appeal says.

“The current war of Russia against Ukraine has brought our peoples closer together. Fighting against Ukraine, Moscow is leading an offensive against Poland and the whole world, ”the authors of the document say. They also ask Polish politicians to “refrain from reckless political statements about the past” that could be used by third parties.

The MPs from the ruling Law and Justice party decided to answer for the Polish people.

“The difference between us is not about the future, but general policy historical memory... The problem is in today's Ukrainian attitude towards the perpetrators of the genocide of Poles during the Second World War, the response says. - 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 fellow countrymen - defenseless women and children. "

"Muscovites, Poles, Jews to destroy in the fight"

The essence of this exchange of letters is as follows. The Ukrainian authorities, which get along well with Warsaw on the basis of their hostile attitude towards Russia, would like to get rid of the historical contradictions associated with the “Volyn massacre”.

In Poland, they also do not intend to aggravate contradictions, but there is a serious problem - the ideologists and performers of those events in Ukraine today are elevated to the rank of especially revered national heroes. Warsaw is not ready to ignore this, which follows from the response to the conciliatory letter.

The confrontation between Ukrainians and Poles continued for several centuries, but in the 20th century it was donned a new form.

Representatives of associations of Ukrainian nationalists began to practice terror against Poles even before the start of World War II, at a time when the lands of Western Ukraine were part of independent Poland.

At the beginning of World War II and before the German attack on the USSR, Ukrainian nationalists collaborated very actively with the Nazis. The ideologists of the nationalists hoped with their help to achieve the creation of an independent Ukrainian state.

This state was to become ethnically pure, free from those who Stepan Bandera and other leaders of the nationalists were recorded as "enemies".

In April 1941, the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) issued an instruction "Struggle and activities of the OUN during the war", where a separate section outlined the tasks and organization of the so-called "security service" (that is, security) after the start of aggression against the USSR.

It was emphasized that the "security service" "has the executive power to destroy elements hostile to Ukraine, which will become pests on the territory, and also has the ability to control social and political life in general."

The hostile elements - "Muscovites, Poles, Jews" - were supposed to "destroy in the struggle, in particular those who would defend the regime ... to destroy, mainly, the intelligentsia, which should not be allowed into any governing bodies, generally to make it impossible to" produce "the intelligentsia, access to schools, etc. ”.

"Rezuns" at work

The mass extermination of Poles in Western Ukraine began in 1943. Head of the "security service" of the OUN Nikolay Lebed in April 1943, he proposed "to clear the entire revolutionary territory of the Polish population." This proposal was approved by other leaders of the nationalists, since it was quite in the spirit of the general line determined by Stepan Bandera.

In fact, by April 1943, the massacre of Poles in Volyn and throughout Western Ukraine had already taken place.

On February 9, 1943, a detachment of Ukrainian nationalists under the command of Pyotr Netovich, disguised as Soviet partisans, entered the Polish village of Parosle near Vladimirtsa, Rivne region. The peasants, who had previously provided assistance to the partisans, warmly welcomed the guests. After a plentiful feast, the false partisans began to rape the girls. Before the murder, their breasts, noses and ears were cut off. Then it was the turn of the men - their genitals were cut off, they were finished off with blows of axes. Two teenagers, brothers Gorshkevichs, who tried to call real partisans for help, cut their stomachs, cut off their legs and arms, abundantly covered their wounds with salt, leaving the half-dead to die in the field. In total, 173 people were brutally tortured in this village, including 43 children.

When the real partisans returned to the village, they found a one-year-old child among the killed. Fighters for freedom of Ukraine pinned him with a bayonet to the boards of the table, stuffing a half-eaten cucumber into his mouth.

What the Banderaites did during the "Volyn massacre" is so monstrous and disgusting that it is difficult to understand how, in general, the representatives of the human race could think of such a thing.

In the units of the UPA there were so-called "rezuns" - militants who specialized in brutal executions. For reprisals, they used axes, knives and saws.

On March 26, 1943, a gang broke into the Polish village of Lipniki Ivan Litvinchuk nicknamed "Oak", now one of the heroes of the UPA revered in Ukraine. On that day, the people of "Dubovoy" killed 179 people, including 51 children.

The future first cosmonaut of Poland miraculously escaped in Lipniki Miroslav Germashevsky, who at that time was only two years old. His mother, fleeing from assassins, lost her child in the field. The boy was found alive, surrounded by corpses.

Residents of the Lipniki village (now defunct), near the town of Berezno, now the Rivne region, killed as a result of the actions of the UPA-OUN (b), 1943. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

"Cleansing the Ukrainian land": 125 ways to kill

Bandera did not spare anyone. In April 1944, during an attack on the village of Kuta, a 2-year-old Cheslav Khzhanovskaya stabbed with a bayonet in a crib. 18 year old Galina Khzhanovskaya Bandera took with them, raped and hanged at the edge of the forest.

They killed not only Poles, but also other non-Ukrainians. The UPA militants treated mixed families with particular hatred. In the same village of Kuta, a Pole Francis Berezovsky was married to a Ukrainian woman. His head was cut off and presented on a plate to his wife. The unhappy woman has gone mad.

In May 1943, the Bandera troops entered the village of Katarinovka, located in Volyn. Resident of this village Maria Boyarchuk was a Ukrainian woman who married a Pole. The "apostate" was killed along with her daughter, 5-year-old Stasya. The girl's belly was ripped open with a hoe.

In the same place for a 3-year-old Janusz Mekal before his death, his arms and legs were broken, and his 2-year-old brother Mareka Mekala stabbed with bayonets.

On July 11, 1943, UPA units simultaneously attacked, according to various estimates, from 99 to 150 villages and villages with a Polish population. They killed everyone in order to completely "cleanse the Ukrainian land."

The rhetoric of the fanatics of the Volyn massacre is, in fact, exactly the same as that of those who are going to “clean up the Ukrainian Donbass” today.

Polish historians, studying the "Volyn massacre", counted about 125 methods of killing, which were used in their reprisals "rezuny".

In the fall of 1943, in the village of Klevetsk, the militants decided to deal with the Ukrainian Ivan Aksyuchits... The middle-aged man had the courage to disagree with Bandera and not support them. For this, the "cutters" sawed it in half. This method of execution was chosen for Aksyuchits by his own nephew, who was a member of the UPA detachment.

On March 12, 1944, an UPA detachment and the 4th police regiment of the SS "Galicia" division jointly attacked the Polish village of Palikrovy. Both Poles and Ukrainians lived in the village. The murderers arranged a sorting of people. Having selected the Poles, they shot them with machine guns. A total of 365 people died, mostly women and children.

An eye for an eye

The description of the atrocities can be continued indefinitely. The "Volyn massacre" is confirmed by thousands of testimonies, countless photos, from which the blood runs cold, protocols of examinations of the graves of victims of mass murder.

A large-scale Polish study made it possible to identify the names of 36,750 Poles who became victims of the “Volyn massacre”. We are talking only about those who have reliably established the names and circumstances of death. The total number of victims is unknown to date. Only in Volhynia, it can reach 60,000 people, and in the whole of Western Ukraine we are talking about 100,000 killed.

Such actions could not remain unanswered. The formations of the Polish Home Army in 1944 carried out a series of retaliatory actions against the Ukrainians living in the territory of modern Poland.

The largest such action is the attack on the village of Sagryn on March 10, 1944. The Poles killed several hundred Ukrainians, and the village was burned down.

The scale of the Poles' response, however, was not so significant. The number of victims of the retaliatory Polish terror is estimated at 2-3 thousand people, although modern Ukrainian historians insist that this number should be multiplied by 10.

Exemplar

After the end of the war, the Soviet Union and Poland, in which a regime friendly to the USSR was established at that moment, decided to close this issue forever. By joint efforts, the detachments of both Ukrainian and Polish executioners were defeated.

On July 6, 1945, an agreement was signed between the USSR and Poland “On the exchange of population”. Poles living in the territories that became part of the USSR moved to Poland, Ukrainians who previously lived in Polish lands went to Soviet Ukraine. This “resettlement of peoples” has affected over 1.5 million people in total.

Gdansk. Monument to the Poles destroyed by the OUN - UPA in Volyn and eastern Poland in 1943-1945. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

Until the collapse of the socialist camp both in the USSR and in Poland little was said and written about the "Volyn massacre" so as not to spoil friendly relations.

But no friendship can make today's Poland and Ukraine forget about these events. Moreover, the official Kiev sees the real heroes of the nation in the flayers-"cuts", on the examples of which the younger generation needs to be educated.

The Volyn massacre, or it is also called the Volyn tragedy - under this name the monstrous interethnic political conflict that took place in 1943 on the territory of Volyn went down in history. During these events in March 1943, the massacres of the Polish population by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) took place, and the retaliatory actions taken by the Polish side led to the destruction of Ukrainians living in Volyn and Ternopil.

These bloody events of the middle of the 20th century are still one of the most mysterious episodes of the Second World War, and historians have been trying to figure out for many years what provoked this tragedy. Too many reasons had accumulated by that time, including territorial claims, geopolitical interests, confessional differences, and even historical grievances. But the events of 70 years ago affect not only the relations between the Ukrainian and Polish people, they are related to the entire European civilization.

Causes of the conflict

The origins of this Polish-Ukrainian conflict

should be sought in the past, which closely united these two neighboring Slavic peoples, as well as in mutual grievances and misunderstandings that have been accumulating in their relations for centuries.

• For a very long time (in the 16-18 centuries), the Ukrainian lands were under the rule of the Commonwealth, and this was accompanied by uprisings and riots, which were raised by the Ukrainians. The Polish authorities, in turn, brutally suppressed the Ukrainian national liberation movement. The feeling of mutual enmity between the two neighboring peoples persisted for centuries.
• In 1918-1920 there was an armed conflict between Poland and Ukraine. As a result, the lands of Western Ukraine became part of the Polish Republic. The Ukrainians have since believed that it was Poland that prevented them from creating an independent Ukrainian state.
• In the pre-war period, Poland pursued a policy of Polonization in its eastern territories: Ukrainian schools were liquidated, native language, the Orthodox Church was persecuted. The Polish authorities began a massive resettlement of Poles to Ukrainian lands, which caused hatred from the local population.
• The activities of the OUN, created in 1929, were anti-Polish in nature and were directed against the Polish state. Members of this organization not only staged protests and sabotage, but also plundered Polish institutions and attacked Polish landowners. With the coming to power of Stepan Bandera, punitive and terrorist acts were increasingly organized. In turn, the Polish authorities, in order to suppress such actions, carried out with particular brutality a military-police operation known as "Pacification" (appeasement). We can say that the same events were repeated exactly the opposite already in 1943.
• During World War II, the Polish-Ukrainian conflict intensified and acquired a pronounced criminal character, the apogee of which was the Volyn events.

Volyn events

Cases of the extermination of the Polish and Ukrainian population had happened before, but they acquired a large-scale character in the spring of 1943. It was then that the leadership of the OUN decided to expel the Poles living there from the Volyn lands. At first, these actions were to apply only to those who collaborated with the German administration, then to immigrants from Poland who arrived in the interwar period, and ultimately it affected all persons of Polish nationality living in Volyn.

At the end of 1942, the first clashes between the Ukrainians and the Poles began, which gradually turned into an armed conflict. In Volyn at that time, the OUN armed more than twenty thousand people, who were a serious and threatening military force.

The peaceful Polish population had a chance to survive, because at first the UPA offered the Poles to voluntarily leave for their ethnic homeland - Poland. But the leaders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, being at that moment in London, did not want to lose Volhynia in any way, so they gave an order not to leave this territory. Everyone understood that a serious conflict was brewing, which neither side tried to prevent. And then a terrible tragedy happened, which drowned the Volyn villages in blood.

The first attack on a Polish settlement took place in April 1943 - it was the village of Yanova Dolina. As a result of the punitive action, the UPA units killed about 800 civilians of Polish nationality.

The event known as the Volyn massacre reached its peak in mid-July, when a simultaneous attack on 150 villages and colonies with a Polish population was organized. These brutal punitive operations were accompanied by terrible violence and brutality. The detachments that committed this terrible atrocity were called "rezuns", because they did not spare anyone - neither children, nor women, nor the elderly. Raiding into Polish villages, the bandits exterminated the population without firing a single shot, using knives and scythes, and villages and farms were most often burned.

In addition to the UPA soldiers, residents of Ukrainian villages also took part in the bloody bacchanalia.

Detachments of the Home Army, together with the police, which consisted mainly of Poles, retaliated, and also began to carry out raids, but on Ukrainian villages.

Until now, the exact number of victims of this terrible tragedy is unknown. Historians say that in the summer of 1943, about 80 thousand people of Polish nationality were killed in Volyn and Ternopil oblast, and the number of casualties among Ukrainians reached 2-3 thousand.

The path of forgiveness and reconciliation

In the post-war period in the USSR, this event was not widely advertised, and they turned to it only after the collapse of the country. The leadership of independent Ukraine allowed the Poles to investigate directly at the scene of the tragedy. As a result, mass graves were discovered and the remains were exhumed.

70 years after the conflict, Poland and Ukraine agreed that this was a tragedy for both sides, but the Polish population suffered much more, and only mutual forgiveness and reconciliation will help descendants to overcome the consequences of those terrible times.