Ludobojstwo Dokonane Przez Nacjonalistow Ukrainskich Na Polakach W Wojewodztwie Stanislawowskim 1939-1946, by Szczepan Siekierka, Henryk Komanski, and Eugeniusz Rozanski. 2008. Wroclaw
The Istriebitielne Bataliony: A Forced Answer to the OUN-UPA Genocide of Poles in the Southeastern Part of Eastern Galicia: A Comprehensive Work
THE GENOCIDE CONDUCTED BY THE UKRAINIAN NATIONALISTS AGAINST POLES IN THE STANISLAWOW VOIVODSHIP, 1939-1946, is the title of this monumental work. This is a one-volume encyclopedia and is packed with detail. It not only extensively documents the Ukrainian genocide of Poles, but, like the other volumes in this series, also contains many photos of Polish families, Polish villages, and destroyed Polish churches.
UKRAINIANS WON’T REPENT, SO DO NOT FORGIVE THE UKRAINIANS
Eyewitness Grazyna Drobnicka disagrees with her Catholic teaching to forgive. (p. 304). There is a time to forgive and a time to withhold forgiveness. She has revisited the area, and found that, not only do Ukrainians fail to acknowledge their genocide of Poles, but they actually try to blame the Poles. Many other Ukrainians blissfully pretend that the genocide on Poles never happened. Moreover, in Ukraine, the UPA cutthroats are glorified. Monuments are built to them. (Since she wrote this 15 years ago now, this tendency has intensified).
Therefore, Poland will never forgive and never forget. Not at least until the Ukrainians unambiguously confront their massive genocidal crime against the Poles.
THE TOLL OF THE OUN-UPA GENOCIDE
In the Stanislawow Voivodship alone, based on detailed tabulation, the UPA (so-called Ukrainian Insurgent Army) is known to have murdered 12,259 Poles at 430 known locations. (p. 812). The UPA burned 32,265 farmsteads. (p. 812). Owing to incomplete coverage, the projected Polish death toll, for the Stanislawow Voivodship alone, is approximately 22,000 Poles. (p. 9, 11, 812).
The foregoing data is based upon interviews of 1,215 eyewitnesses and 357 publications. (pp. 813-826). All the 1,215 eyewitnesses are identified by name. (pp. 827-847).
THE UKRAINIAN ROAD TO MURDER
During the September 1939 German-Soviet conquest of Poland, the Stanislawow area became a bridge for some Polish forces to flee to Romania. Ukrainian irredentists came out of the woodwork and disarmed and murdered some of the fleeing Polish soldiers. Once some Polish forces returned from Romania, captured the guilty Ukrainians, and after a field trial, shot or hanged the Ukrainian murderers. (p. 294).
The later OUN-UPA genocide of Poles (1943-on) was, in part, an outgrowth of the massive Ukrainian collaboration with the German Nazis (1942-on) in conducting the Holocaust. (p. 294). The collaborationist Ukrainian police took large part not only in killing the Jews, but also the main role of combing the forests to unmask the hideouts of those Jews that had fled the ghettos and gone into hiding. (p. 502).
Soon after the systematic German-Ukrainian murder of the local Jews, there was growing talk among Ukrainians about the need of “doing to the Poles what had been done to the Jews.” (p. 186, 299). Some of the Ukrainian priests used genocidal blood-and-soil (BLUT UND BODEN) language in their sermons, speaking of the need of removing all the Polish weeds from the sacred Ukrainian soil. (p. 47. See also p. 43, 302). The collaborationist Ukrainian police became the nucleus of the UPA. A group of Poles in hiding overheard the UPA murderers singing, “We got rid of the Jews; now we get rid of the Poles…” (p. 422).
In some respects, the UPA genocide of Poles surpassed the Nazi German Holocaust. The UPA required Ukrainians, in mixed marriages, and under penalty of death, to kill their Polish spouses and half-Polish children. (e. g., p. 362, 429, 515). Not even the Nazis required the Germans in German-Jewish marriages to kill their Jewish spouses and half-Jewish children!
POLES WERE SOMETIMES ABLE TO DEFEND THEMSELVES
The Stanislawow area is not usually known as a focus of the A. K. (Home Army). It is therefore interesting to learn that some of the Polish villages had an A. K. (Armia Krajowa) presence that deterred the UPA from engaging in murderous attacks. These villages included Broszniow-Osada (p. 17), unidentified locations in Kolomyja County (p. 233), Lukowiec Wiszniowski (pp. 402-403, 415), Lukawiec Zurawski (p. 423), Chromohorb (p. 570), Stryj (p. 579), and Lukowca and Korczun (p. 599).
Occasionally, Hungarians in the service of the German occupants defended the Poles from the UPA or dissuaded the UPA from attacking in the first place. (p. 192, 233, 524, 579). God bless the Hungarians.
POLES ARE FORCED TO JOIN SOVIET-APPROVED UPA-FIGHTING BATTALIONS
The Red Army drove the German occupants out in mid-1944. The UPA murders commonly ceased for a few months, but then started up again, taking advantage of the fact that most of the Polish men had subsequently been drafted into the Soviet-led armies. This left the Polish settlements at the mercy of the UPA, and defended only by women, children, and old men. (p. 234). Note the irony of the UPA resuming the genocide of Poles even though it was obvious that these territories were not going to return to Poland in any case.
At first, the Soviets did not care about the ongoing UPA murders of Poles but turned against the UPA when it also began to murder Soviet officials. (p. 358, 784). The Soviet authorities established UPA-fighting militias called the Istriebitielne Bataliony (strebki). This legitimized the possession of firearms owned by the earlier Polish defensive units (p. 252, 282, 402) and enabled the Poles to legally acquire additional weapons from the Soviets. (p. 306, 515). The strebki also included Ukrainian units that were opposed to the UPA. (p. 362).
Poles took part in these destruction battalions because there was no other way to protect the Poles from the ongoing murderous UPA attacks. (p. 10, 358, 718). This forced the Poles to become a fodder for Communist propaganda purposes, in that the NKVD was held up as the one and only organization that allowed the Poles to be armed and to defend themselves. (p. 10). (Perhaps the delay of 1-2 years, of the Soviets in expelling the Kresy Poles, owed to an intentional Soviet desire to take advantage of the predicament of the Poles by exploiting them as a force against the UPA.)
The Soviet support for the Polish strebki was too half-hearted to stop all the UPA attacks. (p. 234). Moreover, it appears that the Soviets played both sides. The Soviet authorities sometimes double-crossed the Polish strebki by suddenly arresting its A. K. members. (p. 403). The Soviets insisted that the Polish-led strebki capture UPA members alive, and not kill them, under severe penalty. By contrast, Russian-led strebki units that killed UPA members commonly escaped punishment. (p. 192). At the same time, the Soviet authorities hanged captured UPA members, notably at the city of Stanislawow (p. 512) and in Stryj (p. 597). Go figure.
It was a win-win situation for the Soviet Communists. They used the Poles against the UPA (to fight it), and earlier used the UPA against Poles (to “persuade” the Poles to leave these Soviet-annexed territories).
In 1962, fully 18 years after the Kresy had been annexed by the Soviets a second time, and most of the Poles expelled, the de-Polonization of the Kresy took another turn. Nikita Khrushchev renamed Stanislawow (district and city) Ivano-Frankivsk, the name it has to this day.
—
Detailed village-by-village catalogues that document the Ukrainian OUN-UPA genocide of Poles (reviewed) are also available for the remaining voivodships of southeastern Poland:
Lwow
Tarnopol
https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/ukrainian-upa-genocide-of-poles-komanski/
Wolyn
https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/ukrainian-upa-genocide-of-poles-siemaszko/
