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Geography

Background Information

  • Volhynia is located in between eastern Poland and western Ukraine
  • It is not a country, but a region that overlaps both Poland and Ukraine
  • Polish-Ukrainian tensions had existed for centuries earlier due to territorial, religious and political differences, however the two groups co-existed and frequently interacted on many different levels
  • After WWI, Poland and Ukraine fought to claim the city of Lviv, populated by Poles but surrounded by Ukrainians (Polish-Ukrainian War)
  • Poland came out victorious, giving cause for anger and resentment on behalf of the Ukrainians
  • During the Soviet invasion and annexation of Volhynia, the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists), an extreme militaristic, nationalist organization, decided to purge the area of Poles

Polish Massacre in Volhynia

Olivia Capraro and Rachael Ramos

7. Extermination (Genocide)

5. Polarization

3. Dehumanization

1. Classification

  • The murders reached a mass scale in the spring and summer of 1943
  • July 11th, 1943, "Bloody Sunday"
  • 167 villages were attacked
  • OUN tells the Ukrainian peasants about atrocities Poles have supposedly committed in order to harbour anti-Polish sentiments
  • In early 1943, the OUN absorbed other Ukrainian self-defence groups, becoming the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army)
  • approximately 5000 policemen defected to the UPA with their weapons
  • in between late March and early April, 7000 people were killed
  • Poles, along with Jews, communists and Soviet activists are seen as lower class citizens are the Germans take over the area in 1941
  • many are arrested, deported or executed
  • Nationalism is on the rise; instead of seeing each other as neighbours, Poles and Ukrainians focus more on differences
  • After years of being forced to assimilate into Polish culture, extremist Ukrainian nationalist groups decided to cleanse Volhynia of all traces of Polish life
  • the few who survived took refuge with friendly Ukrainian families
  • The UPA spread leaflets and propaganda encouraging Ukrainians to murder Poles
  • Ukrainians and Poles are no longer allowed to marry
  • people were murdered brutally, shot or killed with axes, pitchforks or by any weapon available
  • they were often tortured, their villages burnt and buried in mass graves
  • Casualties are estimated to be in between 15,000 and 40,000 Polish civillians

4. Organization

8. Denial

6. Preparation

2. Symbolization

  • On February 9th, 1943, a UPA group pretending to be Soviet partisans attacked the village of Parosla
  • this is considered to be a prelude to the massacre
  • After the Soviets invade the area in 1939, Ukrainians start to refer to Poles as 'liakh', a derogatory term
  • OUN-B had several goals in their ideology:
  • a pure nation and language
  • glorification of violence
  • totalitarianism
  • They were an extremist faction who admired traits of Nazism
  • After the German occupation, members of the OUN were encouraged to join German police units
  • this is where they learned brutal killing methods
  • The Polish and Ukrainian governments are still trying to reconcile these events
  • the Polish side has begun to acknowledge its role regarding Ukrainian oppression pre-WWII
  • the Ukrainian government has not yet issued an apology
  • There is much debate whether the actions of the OUN-UPA qualify as genocide, or it is 'ethnic cleansing with genocidal qualities'
  • In only 150 out of 1,500 Volhynian localities are there graves with crosses commemorating the Volhynian massacres
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