Genocide or tragedy? Ukraine, Poland at odds over Volyn massacre of 1943

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Kyiv, Ukraine – Nadiya escaped the rapists and killers lone due to the fact that her begetter hid her successful a haystack amidst the shooting, shouting and bloodshed that took spot 82 years ago.

“He covered maine with hay and told maine not to get retired nary substance what,” the 94-year-old pistillate told Al Jazeera – and asked to withhold her past sanction and idiosyncratic details.

On July 11, 1943, members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA), a nationalist paramilitary radical equipped with axes, knives and guns, stormed Nadiya’s colony connected the Polish-Ukrainian border, sidesplitting taste Polish men and raping women.

“They besides killed anyone who tried to support the Poles,” Nadiya said.

The nonagenarian is frail and doesn’t spell retired much, but her face, framed by milky achromatic hair, lights up erstwhile she recalls the names and birthdays of her grand- and great-grandchildren.

She besides remembers the names of her neighbours who were killed oregon forced to fly to Poland, adjacent though her parents ne'er spoke astir the attack, present known arsenic the Volyn massacre.

“The Soviets forbade it,” Nadiya said, noting however Moscow demonised the UIA, which kept warring the Soviets until the aboriginal 1950s.

Nadiya said her relationship whitethorn enrage today’s Ukrainian nationalists who lionise fighters of the UIA for having championed state from Moscow during World War II.

After Communist purges, convulsive atheism, forced collectivisation and a famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, the UIA leaders chose what they thought was the lesser of 2 evils. They sided with Nazi Germany, which invaded the USSR successful 1941.

In the end, though, the Nazis refused to carve retired an autarkic Ukraine and threw 1 of the UIA’s leaders, Stepan Bandera, into a attraction camp.

But different UIA leader, Roman Shukhevych, was accused of playing a relation successful the Holocaust – and successful the wide killings of taste Poles successful what is present the occidental Ukrainian portion of Volyn and adjacent areas successful 1943.

Genocide?

Up to 100,000 civilian Poles, including women and children, were stabbed, axed, beaten oregon burned to decease during the Volyn massacre, according to survivors, Polish historians and officials who see it a “genocide”.

“What’s horrifying isn’t the numbers but the mode the murders were carried out,” Robert Derevenda of the Polish Institute of National Memory told Polskie Radio connected July 11.

This year, the Polish parliament decreed July 11 arsenic “The Volyn Massacre Day” successful remembrance of the 1943 killings.

“A martyr’s decease for conscionable being Polish deserves to beryllium commemorated,” the measure said.

“From Poland’s viewpoint, yes, this is simply a calamity of the Polish people, and Poland is afloat entitled to commemorate it,” Kyiv-based expert Igar Tyshkevych told Al Jazeera.

However, rightist Polish politicians whitethorn usage the time to beforehand anti-Ukrainian narratives, and a harsh effect from Kyiv whitethorn further trigger tensions, helium said.

“All of these processes ideally should beryllium a substance of treatment among historians, not politicians,” helium added.

Ukrainian politicians and historians, meanwhile, telephone the Volyn massacre a “tragedy”. They mention a little decease toll and impeach the Polish service of the reciprocal sidesplitting of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians.

In post-Soviet Ukraine, UIA leaders Bandera and Shukhevych person often been hailed arsenic nationalist heroes, and hundreds of streets, metropolis squares and different landmarks are named aft them.

Evolving views and politics

“[The USSR] branded ‘Banderite’ immoderate proponent of Ukraine’s independency oregon adjacent immoderate mean idiosyncratic who stood for the legitimacy of nationalist practice of Ukrainian culture,” Kyiv-based quality rights advocator Vyacheslav Likhachyov told Al Jazeera.

The demonisation backfired erstwhile galore advocates of Ukraine’s independency began to sympathise with Bandera and the UIA, “turning a unsighted oculus to their radicalism, xenophobia and governmental violence”, helium said.

In the 2000s, anti-Russian Ukrainian leaders began to observe the UIA, contempt objections from galore Ukrainians, particularly successful the eastbound and confederate regions.

These days, the UIA is seen done a somewhat myopic prism of Ukraine’s ongoing warfare with Russia, according to Likhachyov.

Ukraine’s governmental constitution sees the Volyn massacre and equipped skirmishes betwixt Ukrainians and Poles arsenic lone “a warfare related to the Ukrainians’ ‘fight for their land’”, according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher astatine Bremen University successful Germany.

“And during a war, they say, thing happens, and a village, wherever the bulk is connected the enemy’s side, is considered a ‘legitimate target’,” helium explained.

Many right-leaning Ukrainian youngsters “fully accepted” Bandera’s radicalism and the cult of militant nationalism, helium said.

Before Russia’s full-scale penetration successful 2022, thousands of far-right nationalists rallied passim Ukraine to commemorate Bandera’s January 1 birthday.

“Bandera is our father, Ukraine is our mother,” they chanted.

Within hours, the Polish and Israeli embassies issued declarations successful protest, reminding them of the UIA’s relation successful the Holocaust and the Volyn massacre.

Far-right activists began volunteering to combat Moscow-backed separatists successful southeastern Ukraine successful 2014 and enlisted successful droves successful 2022.

“In the situational menace to [Ukraine’s] precise existence, there’s nary country for reflection and self-analysis,” rights advocator Likhachyov said.

Warsaw, meanwhile, volition support utilizing the Volyn massacre to marque demands for concessions portion threatening to reason Ukraine’s integration into the European Union, helium said.

As for Moscow, it “traditionally plays” the quality to sow discord betwixt Kyiv and Warsaw, expert Tyshkevych said, and to impeach Ukrainian leaders of “neo-Nazi” proclivities.

Is reconciliation possible?

Today, memories of the Volyn massacre stay profoundly contested. For galore Ukrainians, the UIA’s representation arsenic state fighters has been bolstered by Russia’s 2022 invasion, somewhat pushing speech reflection connected the group’s relation successful the World War II atrocities.

For Poland, commemoration of the massacre has go a marker of nationalist trauma and, astatine times, a constituent of leverage successful governmental disputes with Ukraine.

In April, Polish experts began exhuming the remnants of the Volyn massacre victims successful the occidental Ukrainian colony of Puzhniky aft Kyiv lifted a seven-year moratorium connected specified exhumations. Some judge this whitethorn beryllium a archetypal measurement successful overcoming the tensions implicit the Volyn massacre.

Reconciliation, historians say, won’t travel easily.

“The mode to reconciliation is often achy and requires radical to judge humanities realities they’re uncomfortable with,” Ivar Dale, a elder argumentation advisor with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, a quality rights watchdog, told Al Jazeera.

“Both [Poland and Ukraine] are modern European democracies that tin grip an nonsubjective probe of past atrocities successful ways that a state similar Russia unluckily tin not,” helium said.

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