{"id":274598,"date":"2025-07-19T11:32:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T11:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/274598\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T11:32:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T11:32:11","slug":"genocide-or-tragedy-ukraine-poland-at-odds-over-volyn-massacre-of-1943-genocide-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/274598\/","title":{"rendered":"Genocide or tragedy? Ukraine, Poland at odds over Volyn massacre of 1943 | Genocide News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kyiv, Ukraine \u2013<\/strong> Nadiya escaped the rapists and killers only because her father hid her in a haystack amidst the shooting, shouting and bloodshed that took place 82 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe covered me with hay and told me not to get out no matter what,\u201d the 94-year-old woman told Al Jazeera \u2013\u00a0and asked to withhold her last name and personal details.<\/p>\n

On July 11, 1943, members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA), a nationalist paramilitary group armed with axes, knives and guns, stormed Nadiya\u2019s village on the Polish-Ukrainian border, killing ethnic Polish men and raping women.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey also killed anyone who tried to protect the Poles,\u201d Nadiya said.<\/p>\n

The nonagenarian is frail and doesn\u2019t go out much, but her face, framed by milky white hair, lights up when she recalls the names and birthdays of her grand- and great-grandchildren.<\/p>\n

She also remembers the names of her neighbours who were killed or forced to flee to Poland, even though her parents never spoke about the attack, now known as the Volyn massacre.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Soviets forbade it,\u201d Nadiya said, noting how Moscow demonised the UIA, which kept fighting the Soviets until the early 1950s.<\/p>\n

Nadiya said her account may enrage today\u2019s Ukrainian nationalists who lionise fighters of the UIA for having championed freedom from Moscow during World War II.<\/p>\n

After Communist purges, violent atheism, forced collectivisation and a famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, the UIA leaders chose what they thought was the lesser of two evils. They sided with Nazi Germany, which invaded the USSR in 1941.<\/p>\n

In the end, though, the Nazis refused to carve out an independent Ukraine and threw one of the UIA\u2019s leaders, Stepan Bandera, into a concentration camp.<\/p>\n

But another UIA leader, Roman Shukhevych, was accused of playing a role in the Holocaust \u2013 and in the mass killings of ethnic Poles in what is now the western Ukrainian region of Volyn and adjacent areas in 1943.<\/p>\n

\"Volyn\"People walk through the city streets on the 82nd anniversary of the Volyn massacre on July 11, 2025, in Krakow, Poland [Klaudia Radecka\/NurPhoto via Getty Images]
\nGenocide?<\/p>\n

Up to 100,000 civilian Poles, including women and children, were stabbed, axed, beaten or burned to death during the Volyn massacre, according to survivors, Polish historians and officials who consider it a \u201cgenocide\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s horrifying isn\u2019t the numbers but the way the murders were carried out,\u201d Robert Derevenda of the Polish Institute of National Memory told Polskie Radio on July 11.<\/p>\n

This year, the Polish parliament decreed July 11 as \u201cThe Volyn Massacre Day\u201d in remembrance of the 1943 killings.<\/p>\n

\u201cA martyr\u2019s death for just being Polish deserves to be commemorated,\u201d the bill said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom Poland\u2019s viewpoint, yes, this is a tragedy of the Polish people, and Poland is fully entitled to commemorate it,\u201d Kyiv-based analyst Igar Tyshkevych told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

However, rightist Polish politicians may use the day to promote anti-Ukrainian narratives, and a harsh response from Kyiv may further trigger tensions, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of these processes ideally should be a matter of discussion among historians, not politicians,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian politicians and historians, meanwhile, call the Volyn massacre a \u201ctragedy\u201d. They cite a lower death toll and accuse the Polish army of the reciprocal killing of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians.<\/p>\n

In post-Soviet Ukraine, UIA leaders Bandera and Shukhevych have often been hailed as national heroes, and hundreds of streets, city squares and other landmarks are named after them.<\/p>\n

\"Volyn\"People hold a banner with text referring to Polish victims of the Second World War Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Warsaw, Poland on 11 November, 2024 [Jaap Arriens\/NurPhoto via Getty Images]
\nEvolving views and politics<\/p>\n

\u201c[The USSR] branded \u2018Banderite\u2019 any proponent of Ukraine\u2019s independence or even any average person who stood for the legitimacy of public representation of Ukrainian culture,\u201d Kyiv-based human rights advocate Vyacheslav Likhachyov told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

The demonisation backfired when many advocates of Ukraine\u2019s independence began to sympathise with Bandera and the UIA, \u201cturning a blind eye to their radicalism, xenophobia and political violence\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

In the 2000s, anti-Russian Ukrainian leaders began to celebrate the UIA, despite objections from many Ukrainians, especially in the eastern and southern regions.<\/p>\n

These days, the UIA is seen through a somewhat myopic prism of Ukraine\u2019s ongoing war with Russia, according to Likhachyov.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s political establishment sees the Volyn massacre and armed skirmishes between Ukrainians and Poles as only \u201ca war related to the Ukrainians\u2019 \u2018fight for their land\u2019\u201d, according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher at Bremen University in Germany.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd during a war, they say, anything happens, and a village, where the majority is on the enemy\u2019s side, is considered a \u2018legitimate target\u2019,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

\"Ukraine\"People gather at the monument to Stepan Bandera to pay tribute to the UIA leader on his 116th birthday anniversary in Lviv, Ukraine, on January 1, 2025 [Ukrinform\/NurPhoto via Getty Images]<\/p>\n

Many right-leaning Ukrainian youngsters \u201cfully accepted\u201d Bandera\u2019s radicalism and the cult of militant nationalism, he said.<\/p>\n

Before Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion in 2022, thousands of far-right nationalists rallied throughout Ukraine to commemorate Bandera\u2019s January 1 birthday.<\/p>\n

\u201cBandera is our father, Ukraine is our mother,\u201d they chanted.<\/p>\n

Within hours, the Polish and Israeli embassies issued declarations in protest, reminding them of the UIA\u2019s role in the Holocaust and the Volyn massacre.<\/p>\n

Far-right activists began volunteering to fight Moscow-backed separatists in southeastern Ukraine in 2014 and enlisted in droves in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the situational threat to [Ukraine\u2019s] very existence, there\u2019s no room for reflection and self-analysis,\u201d rights advocate Likhachyov said.<\/p>\n

Warsaw, meanwhile, will keep using the Volyn massacre to make demands for concessions while threatening to oppose Ukraine\u2019s integration into the European Union, he said.<\/p>\n

As for Moscow, it \u201ctraditionally plays\u201d the dispute to sow discord between Kyiv and Warsaw, analyst Tyshkevych said, and to accuse Ukrainian leaders of \u201cneo-Nazi\u201d proclivities.<\/p>\n

\"Volyn\"Veterans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) hold flags near the grave of the unknown soldier of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) at Lychakiv Cemetery during the commemoration ceremony for Ukrainian defenders on October 1, 2023, in Lviv, Ukraine [Les Kasyanov\/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images]
\nIs reconciliation possible?<\/p>\n

Today, memories of the Volyn massacre remain deeply contested. For many Ukrainians, the UIA\u2019s image as freedom fighters has been bolstered by Russia\u2019s 2022 invasion, somewhat pushing aside reflection on the group\u2019s role in the World War II atrocities.<\/p>\n

For Poland, commemoration of the massacre has become a marker of national trauma and, at times, a point of leverage in political disputes with Ukraine.<\/p>\n

In April, Polish experts began exhuming the remnants of the Volyn massacre victims in the western Ukrainian village of Puzhniky after Kyiv lifted a seven-year moratorium on such exhumations. Some believe this may be a first step in overcoming the tensions over the Volyn massacre.<\/p>\n

Reconciliation, historians say, won\u2019t come easily.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way to reconciliation is often painful and requires people to accept historical realities they\u2019re uncomfortable with,\u201d Ivar Dale, a senior policy adviser with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, a human rights watchdog, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth [Poland and Ukraine] are modern European democracies that\u00a0 can handle an objective investigation of past atrocities in ways that a country like Russia unfortunately can not,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kyiv, Ukraine \u2013 Nadiya escaped the rapists and killers only because her father hid her in a haystack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[47632,6178,41776,2000,299,126,44400,2348,4582,13642,12,770,7661,37597,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-274598","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-border-disputes","9":"tag-conflict","10":"tag-crimes-against-humanity","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-features","14":"tag-genocide","15":"tag-history","16":"tag-human-rights","17":"tag-humanitarian-crises","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-poland","20":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","21":"tag-the-world-wars","22":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114879682737842875","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}