"I shall not rest until the whole truth is uncovered and each of those brutally murdered is remembered," said prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Wednesday at the official commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the Volhynia massacre.
"Volhynia massacre was an extraordinary crime, a crime of ruthless genocide on an unprecedented scale in the Polish history," said Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki in Warsaw.
Polish President Andrzej Duda said "this is one of the most tragic and most painful events in Polish World War II history".
75th anniversary of the Volhynia Massacre. pic.twitter.com/jTRwottXeh
— Poland MOI (@PolandMOI) 11 lipca 2018
The massacre
The Volhynia massacre was an anti-Polish ethnic cleansing bearing the distinct characteristics of a genocide, carried out by Ukrainian nationalists.
The genocide took place between 1943-1945 and reached its peak in July and August 1943. The killings were carried by the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) and its military arm the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
According to the estimates by Polish historians, between 1943 and 1945, in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, Ukrainian nationalists killed about 100.000 Poles. Between 40-60 thousand died in Volhynia, 20-40 thousand in Eastern Galicia and at least 4.000 on the territory of today's Poland.
According to the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), until spring of 1945, as a result of Polish retaliation 10-12 thousand Ukrainians were killed. "Some of the Polish retaliation missions were war crimes. However, according to Polish historians, there is no comparison between Pollsh response and organized, anti-Polish cleansing done by OUN-UPA," reads the zbrodniawolynska.pl webpage run by the IPN.
Conflict about the past
On Monday in Brussels, European Council President Donald Tusk called upon the governments of Poland and Ukraine to ease the tensions over history. He emphasised, after the EU - Ukraine summit, that these tensions clearly show that not everyone has come to terms with the past.
Since April 2017, there is a conflict between Warsaw and Kiev regarding the imposed ban on research and exhumation of Polish war victims on Ukraine. The ban was introduced by the Ukrainian Remembrance Institute.
In recent days, discrepancies regarding events from Polish - Ukrainian history has been accentuated yet again, as both sides organized separate commemorations of the Volhynia Massacre.
Autor: gf / Źródło: TVN24 International, TVN24, PAP