Salvete Omnes,
long, long time ago, on or about July 7, 1943 2nd lieutenant of the Peasants Battalions Zymunt Jan Romel, born in 1915 and a noted Polish poet and 'diamont,' went on horseback to meet with the representatives of the UPA in order to negotiate a ceasefire and stop to the massacred of Polish villages in Wolyn (Volhynia), massacres that had started in February 1943. His two companion, guide Witold Dobrowolski and Home army officer Krzysztof Markiewicz , and Zygmunt were tortured for three days and nights by the henchmen from UPA, and finally murdered by the most heinous method of killing a human being: being ripped apart by four horses, on the eve of July 11, 1943, or on the eve of Bloody Sunday.
So, today is the 80th anniversary of that Bloody Sunday, July 11, 1943.
For Poles around the world it is a day of remembrance of our fellow 'Polonians' who just for being Polish were murdered in most horrific and cruel manner throughout then eastern and south-eastern Poland (Riga Treaty 1921 borders).
Historians - Wladyslaw Siemaszko, Ewa Siemaszko, Tumothy Snyder etc - say at least 98 settlements with Polish inhabitants were attacked and massacred on that day in the Wolyn (Volhynia ) Land. Numbers are conjectural since the current Ukrainian state has prohibited the official Polish archaeologists and forensic scientists from conducing exhumations and burials of the victims.
Please note that the victims of those horrible massacred were mostly girls and women, children from teenagers to newborns babies and old men and women. Buildings were torched , Polish Catholic churches despoiled and brought to ruins,which is curious since the perpetrators were at least nominally Greek-Catholics. Polish
This article claims 100,000 Poles were butchered in those massacres - from 1943-45, but numbers are larger and the very time period of those massacres lasted much longer. Numbers are not known precisely, and most are guesses, however educated they may be.
In 1945 and after the lands south and south-east to the new Polish-Soviet Union border were subject to intensive Ukrainisation, and any and all remains of the former Polish villages and settlements were obliterated and replaced with their new Ukrainian (then very much the Soviet Socialist Republic) identity. There were 300 Roman Catholic churches throughout the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lutsk in 1939, but in 2009 only 30 remained, while 40 churches were forcibly taken by the Greek-Catholic Ukrainian church.
Who were the perpetrators - Ukrainian nationalists from OUN-B & UPA, Self-defense Kushch Units, Ukrainian and Ruthenian peasants commandeered by these nationalist butchers and villains, rotten fruits of the poisonous tree created by the likes of Dmytro Dontsov and Stepan Bandera, Chomiak/ Mykhailo Khomiak, Shukhevych et al- ardent Nazi collaborators and acolytes of Nazi ideology. Weapons with which they carried the genocide - from the German provided 1930-40s modern military weaponry to farms tools and implements - pitchforks, axes, saws, hammers, sickles, knives and wooden clubs.
The current war (February 2022 to present) between Ukraine (absolutely supported and aided by NATO, especially USA and Poland) and Russia puts this anniversary and the whole genocide somewhere in the 'forgotten news box.' Especially since the important NATO summit is taking place in Vilnus, Lithuania (nota bene Kaunas Lithuanians allied with Stalin's USSR and then with Hitler's Nazi Germany and actively killed many thousands - eg Ponary massacre -of ethnic Poles and Polish-Jewish citizens between 1939-44) today, and all Polish goverment officials - president, prime minister, foreign affairs minister et al went over there, apparently forgoing the difficult genodicium atrox issues.
So there will be no resolution to the most pressing issue - the exhumation and proper catholic burial of the Polish victims - it is this demand that the Polish clergymen, patriots and relatives of the victims have been clamoring for from independent Ukraine since 1991.
There are very few movies about this genocide - the latest Polish production is 'Wolyn' by Smarzowski, while during the Communist Poland they made two movies about the fighting between Polish army and security police forces and UPA in the Bieszczady region - Ogniomistrz Kalen and Zerwany Most.
there have been marches throughout Poland starting last weekend, and will continue, including in Warsaw and other large cities - the citizens remember and demand exhumation, identification and proper burial of the victims of this geoncidium atrox - eg 70th anniversary, 2013 march
Maestro Andrzej Pitynski created a monument that may be finally erected this fall in Jarocin, southern Poland.
Pacem Aeternam
Valete
ps
I have read many times over that but for the friendly Ukrainian neighbors many more Polish children, women and elderly would have perished in those 1943-47 massacres.
I had a landlady in NYC who was , as a 8 year old girl, an orphaned survivor of one such massacre and help at the same time. Because when the UPA bandits killed her mother and younger brother, then her brother and she hid in the attic of their house and the her neighborly Ukrainian friend discovered them there, told no one and told her surviving brother and she to run to their aunt's farm some 10-15 km away. These kids, less than 10 years old, run those kilometers at night and arrived at their aunt's house. They all went to Lutsk and from there were sent by the German occupational orders on slave labor train to Germany. They worked and survived in those slave labor conditions in Germany until liberated by the US forces in May 1945. Emigrated to US and lived happily ever after.
Glory to the righteous and humane Ukrainian neighbors, many thousands of whom were killed by UPA murderers for helping Poles in Volhynia and eastern Poland.
