Tragic events in Volyn 1943-1944. Photo documents

In Poland the Volyn massacre is remembered very well.
This is a scan of the pages of a Polish book:

A list of ways in which the Ukrainian Nazis dealt with civilians:

. Driving a large, thick nail into the skull of the head.
. Ripping off hair and skin from the head (scalping).
. Carving of an “eagle” on the forehead (the eagle is the coat of arms of Poland).
. Eye gouging.
. Circumcision of the nose, ears, lips, tongue.
. Piercing children and adults through with stakes.
. Punching a sharpened thick wire right through from ear to ear.
. Cutting the throat and pulling out through the hole of the tongue.
. Knocking out teeth and breaking jaws.
. Tearing the mouth from ear to ear.
. Gagging of mouths with tow while transporting still living victims.
. Rolling the head back.
. Crush the head by placing it in a vice and tightening the screw.
. Cutting and pulling narrow strips of skin from the back or face.
. Broken bones (ribs, arms, legs).
. Cutting off women's breasts and pouring salt on the wounds.
. Cutting off the genitals of male victims with a sickle.
. Piercing a pregnant woman's stomach with a bayonet.
. Cutting open the abdomen and pulling out the intestines of adults and children.
. Cutting the abdomen of a woman with an advanced pregnancy and inserting, for example, a live cat instead of the removed fetus and suturing the abdomen.
. Cutting open the abdomen and pouring boiling water inside.
. Cutting open the belly and putting stones inside it, as well as throwing it into the river.
. Cutting open a pregnant woman's belly and pouring broken glass inside.
. Pulling out veins from groin to feet.
. Placing a hot iron into the vagina.
. Insertion into the vagina pine cones top side forward.
. Inserting a sharpened stake into the vagina and pushing it all the way down to the throat.
. Cutting a woman's front torso with a garden knife from the vagina to the neck and leaving the insides outside.
. Hanging victims by their entrails.
. Insertion into the vagina or anus glass bottle and its breaking.
. Cutting open the belly and pouring feed flour inside for hungry pigs, who tore out this feed along with intestines and other entrails.
. Chopping/knife/sawing off arms or legs (or fingers and toes).
. Cauterization inside palms on a hot stove in a coal kitchen.
. Sawing through the body with a saw.
. Sprinkling hot coal on bound feet.
. Nailing your hands to the table and your feet to the floor.
. Chopping an entire body into pieces with an ax.
. Nailing the tongue to the table with a knife small child, which later hung on it.
. Cutting a child into pieces with a knife.
. Nailing a small child to a table with a bayonet.
. Hanging a male child by his genitals from a doorknob.
. Knocking out the joints of a child's legs and arms.
. Throwing a child into the flames of a burning building.
. Breaking a baby's head by picking him up by the legs and hitting him against a wall or stove.
. Placing a child on a stake.
. Hanging a woman upside down from a tree and mocking her - cutting off her breasts and tongue, cutting her stomach, gouging out her eyes, and cutting off pieces of her body with knives.
. Nailing a small child to a door.
. Hanging from a tree with your feet up and scorching your head from below with the fire of a fire lit under your head.
. Drowning children and adults in a well and throwing stones at the victim.
. Driving a stake into the stomach.
. Tying a man to a tree and shooting him at a target.
. Dragging a body along the street with a rope tied around the neck.
. Tying a woman's legs and arms to two trees, and cutting her stomach from the crotch to the chest.
. A mother and three children, tied together, are dragged along the ground.
. Confining one or more victims with barbed wire, watering the victim every few hours cold water in order to come to one’s senses and feel pain.
. Burying alive up to the neck in the ground and later cutting off the head with a scythe.
. Ripping the torso in half with the help of horses.
. Tearing the torso in half by tying the victim to two bent trees and then freeing them.
. Setting fire to a victim doused in kerosene.
. Placing sheaves of straw around the victim and setting them on fire (Nero's torch).
. Impaling a baby on a pitchfork and throwing him into the flames of a fire.
. Hanging on barbed wire.
. Ripping off the skin from the body and pouring ink or boiling water into the wound.
. Nailing hands to the threshold of a home.

In June 2016, very interesting letters were exchanged between representatives of Poland and Ukraine.

Former presidents of Ukraine, heads of a number of Ukrainian churches, government and public figures of the country on the eve of the 73rd anniversary of the events known as the “Volyn Massacre” addressed a letter to the Polish people

“We ask for forgiveness and equally forgive crimes and injustice - this is the only spiritual formula that should be the motive of every Polish and Ukrainian heart striving for peace and harmony... As long as our peoples are alive, the wounds of history continue to bring pain. But our peoples will live only when, despite the past, we learn to treat each other as brothers,” the address says.

“Russia’s current war against Ukraine has brought our peoples even closer together. By fighting against Ukraine, Moscow is leading an offensive against Poland and the whole world,” the authors of the document say. They also ask Polish politicians to “refrain from making reckless political statements about the past” that could be used by third parties.

Members of parliament from the ruling Law and Justice party decided to answer for the Polish people.

“The difference between us concerns not the future, but the general politics of historical memory. The problem is today’s Ukrainian attitude towards those responsible for the genocide of Poles during World War II,” the answer says. “In Poland, at the state and local levels, we do not honor people who have blood on the hands of innocent civilians. We are concerned about the selectivity of historical memory, in which an open declaration of sympathy for Poland is paired with the glorification of those who have the blood of our fellow countrymen on their hands - defenseless women and children.”

“Muscovites, Poles, Jews should be destroyed in the struggle”

The essence of this exchange of letters is as follows. The Ukrainian authorities, who get along well with Warsaw due to their hostile attitude towards Russia, would like to get rid of the historical contradictions associated with the Volyn Massacre.

Poland is also not in the mood to aggravate contradictions, but there are serious problem— the ideologists and perpetrators of those events in Ukraine today have been elevated to the rank of especially revered national heroes. Warsaw is not prepared to ignore this, as follows from the response to the conciliatory letter.

The confrontation between Ukrainians and Poles continued for several centuries, but in the 20th century it took on a new form.

Representatives of Ukrainian nationalist associations began to practice terror against Poles even before the start of World War II, during the period when the lands of Western Ukraine were part of independent Poland.

At the beginning of the Second World War and before the German attack on the USSR, Ukrainian nationalists very actively collaborated with the Nazis. Nationalist ideologists hoped with their help to achieve the creation of an independent Ukrainian state.

This state was supposed to become ethnically pure, freed from those whom Stepan Bandera and other nationalist leaders were listed as “enemies.”

In April 1941, the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) issued an instruction “The struggle and activities of the OUN during the war,” where a separate section stipulated the tasks and organization of the so-called “bezpeka service” (that is, security) after the start of aggression against the USSR.

It was emphasized that the “security service” “has the executive power, using state means, to destroy elements hostile to Ukraine that will become pests on the territory, and also has the ability to control socio-political life in general.”

Hostile elements - “Muscovites, Poles, Jews” - were supposed to be “destroyed in the struggle, in particular those who will defend the regime... to destroy, mainly, the intelligentsia, which should not be allowed into any governing bodies, to generally make it impossible to “produce” the intelligentsia, access to schools, etc.”

"Rezuny" at work

Mass extermination of Poles in Western Ukraine started in 1943. Head of the “security service” of the OUN Nikolay Lebed in April 1943 he proposed to “clear the entire revolutionary territory of the Polish population.” This proposal was approved by other nationalist leaders, since it was quite in the spirit of the general line defined by Stepan Bandera.

In fact, by April 1943, the killings of Poles in Volhynia and throughout Western Ukraine had already become widespread.

On February 9, 1943, a detachment of Ukrainian nationalists under the command of Pyotr Netovich, under the guise of Soviet partisans, entered the Polish village of Parosle near Vladimirets, Rivne region. The peasants, who had previously provided assistance to the partisans, warmly welcomed the guests. After a hearty feast, the false partisans began to rape the girls. Before being killed, their chests, noses and ears were cut off. Then it was the turn of the men - their genitals were cut off and they were finished off with blows from axes. Two teenagers, brothers Gorshkeviches Those who tried to call real partisans for help had their stomachs cut open, their legs and arms cut off, their wounds generously covered with salt, leaving the half-dead to die in the field. In total, 173 people were brutally tortured in this village, including 43 children.

When the real partisans returned to the village, they found a one-year-old child among the dead. Ukrainian freedom fighters pinned him to the boards of the table with a bayonet, stuffing a half-eaten cucumber into his mouth.

What Bandera’s followers did during the “Volyn Massacre” is so monstrous and disgusting that it is difficult to understand how representatives of the human race could even think of such a thing.

In the UPA detachments there were so-called “rezuns” - militants who specialized in brutal executions. For reprisals they used axes, knives and saws.

On March 26, 1943, a gang broke into the Polish village of Lipniki. Ivan Litvinchuk nicknamed "Dubovy", now one of the heroes of the UPA revered in Ukraine. On that day, Dubovoy’s people killed 179 people, including 51 children.

The future first cosmonaut of Poland miraculously escaped in Lipniki Miroslav Germashevsky, who was only two years old at the time. His mother, fleeing from the killers, lost her child in the field. The boy was found alive surrounded by corpses.

Residents of the village of Lipniki (now defunct), near the city of Berezno, now Rivne region, killed as a result of the actions of the UPA-OUN(b), 1943. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

“Cleansing the Ukrainian land”: 125 methods of killing

Bandera's men spared no one. In April 1944, during an attack on the village of Kuty, a 2-year-old Czeslaw Chrzanowska stabbed to death with a bayonet in a child's crib. 18 year old Galina Khzhanovskaya Bandera's men took me away, raped me and hanged me on the edge of the forest.

They killed not only Poles, but also other non-Ukrainians. UPA militants treated mixed families with particular hatred. In the same village of Kuty, a Pole Francis Berezovsky was married to a Ukrainian woman. His head was cut off and presented to his wife on a plate. The unfortunate woman has gone crazy.

In May 1943, Bandera’s troops entered the village of Katarynivka, located in Volyn. Resident of this village Maria Boyarchuk was a Ukrainian who married a Pole. The “apostate” was killed along with her daughter, 5-year-old Stasya. The girl's stomach was ripped open with a hoe.

There's also a 3-year-old Janus Mekal before his death, his arms and legs were broken, and his 2-year-old brother Marek Mekal stabbed with bayonets.

On July 11, 1943, UPA units simultaneously attacked, according to various estimates, from 99 to 150 villages and hamlets with a Polish population. They killed everyone in order to completely “cleanse the Ukrainian land.”

The rhetoric of the fanatics from the time of the “Volyn Massacre” is, in fact, exactly the same as that of those who are going to “cleanse the Ukrainian Donbass” today.

Polish historians, studying the “Volyn Massacre”, counted about 125 methods of killing, which were used by “rezuny” in their reprisals.

In the fall of 1943, in the village of Klevetsk, militants decided to deal with a Ukrainian Ivan Aksyuchits. The middle-aged man had the courage to disagree with Bandera and not support them. For this, the “cutters” sawed him in half. This method of execution was chosen for Aksyuchits by his own nephew, who was part of the UPA detachment.

On March 12, 1944, a UPA detachment and the 4th police regiment of the SS division "Galicia" jointly attacked the Polish village of Palikrovy. Both Poles and Ukrainians lived in the village. The killers organized a sorting of people. Having selected the Poles, they shot them with machine guns. A total of 365 people died, mostly women and children.

An eye for an eye

The description of the outrages can be continued ad infinitum. The “Volyn massacre” is confirmed by thousands of witness testimonies, countless photographs that make the blood run cold, and records of inspections of the graves of victims of massacres.

A large-scale Polish study made it possible to establish the names of 36,750 Poles who became victims of the Volyn Massacre. We are talking only about those whose names and circumstances of death have been reliably established. Total number The casualties are currently unknown. In Volyn alone it can reach 60,000 people, and in all of Western Ukraine we are talking about 100,000 killed.

Such actions could not go unanswered. Formations of the Polish Home Army in 1944 carried out a series of actions of retaliation against Ukrainians living in the territory of modern Poland.

The largest attack of this kind is considered to be the attack on the village of Sagryn on March 10, 1944. The Poles killed several hundred Ukrainians and burned the village.

The scale of the Poles' response, however, was not so significant. The number of victims of the retaliatory Polish terror is estimated at 2-3 thousand people, although modern Ukrainian historians insist that this number should be multiplied by 10.

An example to follow

After the end of the war Soviet Union and Poland, which at that moment had established a regime friendly to the USSR, decided to close this issue forever. By joint efforts, the detachments of both Ukrainian and Polish executioners were defeated.

On July 6, 1945, an agreement “On population exchange” was concluded between the USSR and Poland. Poles who lived in territories that became part of the USSR moved to Poland, Ukrainians who previously lived in Polish lands, went to Soviet Ukraine. This “migration of peoples” affected a total of over 1.5 million people.

Gdansk Monument to the Poles destroyed by the OUN-UPA in Volyn and eastern Poland in 1943-1945. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

Until the collapse of the socialist camp in both the USSR and Poland, little was said and written about the “Volyn Massacre”, so as not to spoil friendly relations.

But no amount of friendship can make today’s Poland and Ukraine forget about these events. Moreover, official Kyiv sees the “cutters” as true heroes of the nation, whose examples should be used to educate the younger generation.

The Volyn massacre was the ethnic cleansing of Western Ukraine from non-Ukrainians in 1943-44. Mainly they slaughtered Poles (there were the most of them), and a bunch of other non-Ukrainians. The purge was carried out by militants from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). That's what they were called - rezuns.

Even the Germans were amazed at their sadism - gouging out eyes, ripping open bellies and brutal torture before death were commonplace. They killed everyone - women, children... Below the cut are photos that it is better not for the impressionable to look at. (14 photos)

It all started literally from the first days of the war... Thanks to the research of Canadian historian John-Paul Khimki, we can see the events of that summer with our own eyes. According to the historian, the Germans in 1941 were helped by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists under the leadership of Stepan Bandera. "Bandera" established a short-term government, headed by a convinced anti-Semite. This was followed by arrests, bullying and executions of Jews. Thanks to cooperation with the Germans, the OUN hoped to achieve recognition of the independence of Ukraine.

The key participant in the pogrom was Bandera’s “people’s militia,” which they created on the very first day of the Germans’ arrival. The policemen wore civilian clothes with armbands white or the colors of the Ukrainian flag. More details here: http://xoxlandia.net/pogrom-vo-lvove/

On February 9, 1943, Bandera members from the gang of Pyotr Netovich, under the guise of Soviet partisans, entered the Polish village of Parosle near Vladimirets, Rivne region. The peasants, who had previously provided assistance to the partisans, warmly welcomed the guests. Having eaten their fill, the bandits began to rape women and girls. Before being killed, their chests, noses and ears were cut off. Then they began to torture the rest of the village residents. Men were deprived of their genitals before death. They finished off with ax blows to the head.
Two teenagers, the Gorshkevich brothers, who tried to call real partisans for help, had their bellies cut open, their legs and arms cut off, their wounds generously covered with salt, leaving them half-dead to die in the field. In total, 173 people were brutally tortured in this village, including 43 children.
When the partisans entered the village on the second day, they saw piles of mutilated bodies lying in pools of blood in the villagers’ houses. In one of the houses, a dead man lay on a table among scraps and unfinished bottles of moonshine. one year old child, whose naked body was nailed to the boards of the table with a bayonet. The monsters stuffed a half-eaten pickled cucumber into his mouth.

One night, Bandera’s men brought a whole family from the village of Volkovya to the forest. They mocked unfortunate people for a long time. Then, seeing that the wife of the head of the family was pregnant, they cut her stomach, tore out the fetus from it, and instead stuffed a live rabbit into it.
One night, bandits broke into the Ukrainian village of Lozovaya. Over 100 peaceful peasants were killed within 1.5 hours. A bandit with an ax in his hands burst into Nastya Dyagun’s hut and hacked to death her three sons. The youngest, four-year-old Vladik, had his arms and legs cut off.

One of the two Kleshchinsky families in Podyarkov was martyred by the OUN-UPA on August 16, 1943. The photo shows a family of four - spouses and two children. The victims' eyes were gouged out, they were hit on the head, their palms were burned, they tried to chop off the top and lower limbs, as well as hands, puncture wounds throughout the body, etc.

One night, bandits broke into the Ukrainian village of Lozovoye and killed over 100 of its residents in an hour and a half. In the Dyagun family, Bandera killed three children. The youngest, four-year-old Vladik, had his arms and legs cut off. The killers found two children in the Makukh family: three-year-old Ivasik and ten-month-old Joseph. The ten-month-old child, seeing the man, was delighted and laughingly stretched out her arms to him, showing her four teeth. But the ruthless bandit slashed the baby’s head with a knife, and cut off the head of his brother Ivasik with an ax.

“They surpassed even the sadistic German SS men with their atrocities. They torture our people, our peasants... Don’t we know that they cut small children, smash them stone walls their heads so that the brain flies out of them. Terrible brutal murders are the actions of these rabid wolves,” cried Yaroslav Galan. With similar anger, the atrocities of the Banderaites were denounced by the OUN of Melnik, the UPA of Bulba-Borovets, and the government of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic in exile, and the Union of Hetmans-Sovereigns, settled in Canada.

Lots of photos here: http://xoxlandia.net/banderovcy-na-volyni-i-ix-zverstva/

Evidence of the former Bandera.

“We all wore banderas, slept in our huts during the day, and walked around the villages at night. We were given tasks to strangle those who sheltered Russian prisoners and the prisoners themselves. The men did this, and we women sorted through clothes, took away cows and pigs from dead people, the cattle were slaughtered, everything was processed, stewed and put into barrels. Once, 84 people were strangled to death in one night in the village of Romanov. Elderly people and old people were strangled, and small children were strangled by the legs - once, they hit their heads on the door - and they were done and ready to go. We felt sorry for our men that they would suffer so much during the night, but they would sleep off during the day and the next night they would go to another village.

We were given an order: Jews, Poles, Russian prisoners and those who hide them, to strangle everyone without mercy. Young, healthy guys were taken into the detachments to strangle people. So, from Verkhovka, two Levchuk brothers, Nikolai and Stepan, did not want to strangle them and ran home. We sentenced them to death.

In Novoselki, Rivne region, there was one Komsomol member, Motrya. We took her to Verkhovka to old Zhabsky and let’s get a heart from a living person. Old Salivon held a watch in one hand and a heart in the other to check how long the heart would beat in his hand.”

Completely here: http://topwar.ru/2467-zverstva-banderovcev.html

However, organizing a massacre of the Polish minority in the West. In Ukraine, the leaders of the Rezuns forgot about the Ukrainian minority in South-Eastern Poland. Ukrainians lived there among the Poles for centuries, and at that time they numbered up to 30% of the total population. The “exploits” of Bandera’s rebels in Ukraine came back to haunt Poland and local Ukrainians.

In the spring of 1944, Polish nationalists carried out a series of actions of retaliation against Ukrainians in South-Eastern Poland. As usual, innocent civilians were harmed. According to various estimates, from 15 to 20 thousand Ukrainians were killed. The number of Poles who were victims of the OUN-UPA is about 80 thousand people.

The new pro-communist government established in liberated Poland by the Red Army and the Polish Army did not allow the nationalists to organize full-scale actions of revenge against the Ukrainians. However, Bandera’s killers achieved their goal: relations between the two nations were poisoned by the horrors of the Volyn massacre. Their further living together became impossible. On July 6, 1945, an agreement “On population exchange” was concluded between the USSR and Poland. 1 million Poles went from the USSR to Poland, 600 thousand Ukrainians - in the opposite direction (Operation Vistula), plus 140 thousand Polish Jews went to British Palestine.

It’s a paradox, but it was Stalin who turned out to be the man who resolved the national issue in Western Ukraine in a civilized manner. Without cutting off heads and disemboweling children, through population exchange. Of course, not everyone wanted to leave their homes; relocation was often forced, but the basis for the massacre - the national stripe - was eliminated.

The Poles have published dozens of volumes of such facts of genocide, none of which Bandera’s supporters have refuted.

Today's Banderaites love to tell how the UPA supposedly fought the German occupiers too...
On March 12, 1944, a gang of UPA militants and the 4th police regiment of the SS division "Galicia" jointly attacked the Polish village of Palikrovy (former Lviv voivodeship, now the territory of Poland). It was a village with a mixed population, approximately 70% Poles, 30% Ukrainians. Having kicked the residents out of their houses, the police and Bandera began to sort them according to their nationality. After the Poles separated, they were shot with machine guns. 365 people died, mostly women and children.

Photo documents

Photo taken from the book by Alexander Corman, Genocide of the UPA Polish Population and from the archives

Photo 1 - ZAMOJSZCZYZNA, Lubelskie Voivodeship, 1942. The corpses of frozen unknown Polish children are a joint work of the Nazis and Ukrainian chauvinists due to the careful implementation of the secret plan “Generalplan Ost (GPO”), as well as “Ukraineaktion” Photographer unknown . (za: Jacek E. Wilczur, Nie przeminie z wiatrem: Ojszyzna nie udziela urlop?w), Warszawa 1997, Agencja Wydawnicza CB Andrzej Zasieczny, s. 199).

Photo 2 - TARNOPOL - Tarnopol voivodeship, 1943 (?). One of the trees on a country road, over which the OUN-UPA terrorists hung a banner with the inscription translated into Polish: “The road to independent Ukraine.” On each tree, the executioners created so-called wreaths from Polish children. Photographer unknown. The photo was published thanks to Vladislav Zalogovich.

Photo 3 - LIPNIKI, Kostopol County, Lutsk Voivodeship. March 26, 1943. A resident of the Lipniki colony - Yakub Varumzer without a head, the result of a massacre committed under the cover of darkness by OUN-UPA terrorists. As a result of this Lipniki massacre, 179 Polish residents died, as well as Poles from the surrounding area seeking shelter there. These were mostly women, old people and children (51 - aged from 1 to 14 years), 4 Jews and 1 Russian in hiding. 22 people were injured. 121 Polish victims were identified by name and surname - residents of Lipnik, who were known to the author. Three aggressors also lost their lives. Photographer Sarnowski - the above photo, as well as further ones regarding Lipnik. The above photograph, as well as the following ones related to Lipniki, were published thanks to Alexander Kuryat.

Photo 4 - LIPNIKI, Kostopol County, Lutsk Voivodeship. March 26, 1943. Some Poles who survived the OUN-UPA massacre inspect the burned Polish courtyards and identify the killed Poles. In the foreground is the burnt Polish People's House, and in the background stands Jerzy Skulski by the fence.

Photo 5 - LIPNIKI, Kostopol County, Lutsk Voivodeship. March 26, 1943. In the foreground are the children - Janusz Bielawski, 3 years old, son of Adele; Roman Bielawski, 5 years old, son of Czeslawa, as well as Jadwiga Bielawska, 18 years old and others. These listed Polish victims are the result of a massacre committed by the OUN-UPA.

Photo 6 - LIPNIKI, Kostopol County, Lutsk Voivodeship. March 26, 1943. The corpses of Poles - victims of the massacre committed by the OUN - UPA - were brought for identification and burial. Behind the fence stands Jerzy Skulski, who saved a life thanks to the firearm he had (visible in the photo).

Photo 7 - LIPNIKI, Kostopol County, Lutsk Voivodeship. March 26, 1943. View before the funeral. Brought to to the People's House Polish victims of the night massacre committed by the OUN - UPA.

Photo 9 - LIPNIKI, Kostopol County, Lutsk Voivodeship. March 26, 1943. The central fragment of the mass grave of Poles - victims of the Ukrainian massacre committed by the OUN - UPA (OUN - UPA) - before the funeral near the People's House.

Photo 10 - LIPNIKI, Kostopol County, Lutsk Voivodeship. March 26, 1943. In a mass grave lies Jadwiga Bielawska, visible in the central part of the photograph with her head wrapped, in connection with big hole in the forehead and head, torn by an explosive bullet used by the OUN - UPA.

Photo 11 - LIPNIKI, Kostopol County, Lutsk Voivodeship. March 26, 1943. The final fragment of a mass grave laid near the People's House in Lipniki, in which Polish victims of the massacre committed by the OUN - UPA are located before falling asleep.

Photo 12 - LIPNIKI, Kostopol County, Lutsk Voivodeship. March 26, 1943. Filling up the mass grave of victims of the massacre committed by the OUN - UPA on the Poles. In the background, against the backdrop of a horse-drawn cart, stands Josef Belawski in a light sweater, and in the upper left corner stands Wladyslaw Belawski, the brother of Kamila Germaszewska. The funeral took place without a memorial service.

Photo 13 - KATARZYN?WKA, Lutsk district, Lutsk voivodeship. May 7/8, 1943. There are three children on the plan: two sons of Piotr Mekal and Aneli from Gwiazdowski - Janusz (3 years old) with broken limbs and Marek (2 years old), bayoneted, and in the middle lies the daughter of Stanislav Stefaniak and Maria from Boyarchuk - Stasya (5 years old) with a cut and open belly and insides out, as well as broken limbs. Crimes committed by OUN - UPA (OUN - UPA). Photographer unknown. A photocopy of the original A - 6816 was published thanks to the archive.

Photo 14 - KATARZYN?WKA, Lutsk district, Lutsk voivodeship. 7/8 May 1943. View before the funeral of the victims of the brutal attack on, among others, the spouses P. Mekal and S. Stefaniak, as well as their children, perpetrated by the OUN - UPA in the Katarzynivka Colony. Photographer unknown. A photocopy of the original B - 7618 was published thanks to the archive.

Photo 15 - HOLOPECZE (CHO?OPECZE), Goroczow County, Lutsk Voivodeship. July 1943. The content of the entry on the back of the photograph in the original writing is as follows: “killed by Ukrainians in the village of Kholopeche. They had an impressive farm. (Zhatrutse parish, Gorokhov county (this is all that is written on the original) / - / Photographer unknown. The above photograph was published thanks to Teresa Radziszewska.

Photo 16 - MATASZ?WKA, Lutsk district, Lutsk voivodeship. October 16, 1943. Funeral of six Polish victims killed by the UPA in Matashovka. Lying in the coffins on the left are: Franciszek Świetlicka, 42 years old, his daughter Stanisława Świetlicka, 13 years old, and Andrzej Kuznicki. According to the source, F. Świetlicki “was stabbed on the hands with knives, which he used to protect Stanislava Świetlicka, whose entire shoulders were cut with knives, and her insides were also on the outside (:), Andrzej Świetlicki had half his head cut off” The photographer is unknown. Publication: Society of Lovers of Volyn and Polesie, Volyn of our ancestors. Traces of Life - Time of Destruction, Warsaw, 2003, Publishing house von Borowiecki.

Photo 17 - VLADINOPOL (W?ADYNOPOL), region, Włodzimierz county, Lutsk voivodeship. 1943. On the plan there is a murdered adult woman named Shayer and two children - Polish victims of Bandera's terror, attacked in the house of the OUN - UPA. Photographer unknown. Demonstration of the photograph designated W - 3326, thanks to the archive.

Photo 18 - WYTOLDOWKA, region, Włodzimierz county, Lutsk voivodeship. July 11 (?) 1943. One unknown Polish victim out of at least five in the forest called Sieniavszczyzna. The crime was committed by the OUN-UPA. Photographer unknown. The above photograph is designated W - 11577, shown thanks to the archive.

Photo 19 - PODJARK?W, Bobrka County, Lwów Voivodeship. August 16, 1943. One of the two Kleshchinsky families in Podyarkov was martyred by the OUN - UPA on August 16, 1943. The plan shows a family of four - spouses and two children. The victims' eyes were gouged out, they were hit on the head, their palms were burned, they tried to chop off their upper and lower limbs, as well as their hands, they had puncture wounds all over their bodies, etc. The photographer is unknown. The photo was published thanks to the archive.

Photo 20 - PODJARK?W, Bobrka County, Lwów Voivodeship. August 16, 1943. Kleshchinski is the father of a Polish family in Podyarkov, consisting of four people, who was tortured by members of the OUN - UPA. A disfigured face, a gouged out eye, a wound from a blow to the head, chopped wounds and other signs of torture are noticeable. Photographer unknown. Publication of a photograph thanks to the archive.

Photo 21 - PODJARK?W, Bobrka County, Lwów Voivodeship. August 16, 1943. Kleshchinsky’s palm is visible, burned, most likely, on a hot stove coal furnace, during the attack carried out by the OUN-UPA. Photographer unknown. The photo was published thanks to the archive.

Photo 22 - PODJARK?W, Bobrka County, Lwów Voivodeship. August 16, 1943. Kleshchinska, from a Polish family of four, was martyred by the OUN-UPA. Visible are a gouged out eye, head wounds, an attempt to chop off a hand, as well as traces of other torture. Photographer unknown. The photo was published thanks to the archive.

Photo 23 - PODJARK?W, Bobrka County, Lwów Voivodeship. August 16, 1943. Kleshchinska, a member of a Polish family in Podyarkov - a victim of an OUN-UPA attack. The result of an ax blow from an attacker who tried to cut off his right arm and ear, as well as the torment caused, is a round puncture wound on the left shoulder, as well as a wide wound on the forearm right hand, probably from its cauterization. Photographer unknown. The photo was published thanks to the archive.

Photo 24 - PODJARK?W, Bobrka County, Lwów Voivodeship. August 16, 1943. Results of torture inflicted by the OUN - UPA Kleshchinskaya, from a Polish family of four in Podyarkoveya Photographer unknown. Photo published thanks to the archive

Photo 35 - ISTROWKI (OSTR?WKI) and WOLA OSTROWIECKA, Luboml County, Lutsk Voivodeship. August 1992. The result of the exhumation of victims carried out on August 17 - 22, 1992 massacre Poles located in the villages of Ostrowki and Vola Ostrovetska, committed by OUN-UPA terrorists. Ukrainian sources from Kyiv have reported since 1988 total victims in the two listed villages are 2,000 Poles. Photo: Dziennik Lubelski, Magazyn, nr. 169, Wyd. A., 28 - 30 VIII 1992, s. 9, za: VHS - Produkcja OTV Lublin, 1992.

Photo 44 - B?O?EW G?RNA, Dobromil County, Lwów Voivodeship. November 10, 1943. On the eve of November 11 - National Holiday Independence - the UPA attacked 14 Poles, in particular the Sukhaya family, using various cruelties. The plan shows the murdered Maria Grabowska (maiden name Suhai), 25 years old, with her 3-year-old daughter Kristina. The mother was bayoneted, and the daughter had a broken jaw and a lacerated abdomen. Photographer unknown. The photo was published thanks to the victim’s sister, Helena Kobezhitskaya.

Photo 45 - LATACZ, Zalishchyky County, Tarnopol Voivodeship. December 14, 1943. One of the Polish families - Stanislav Karpyak in the village of Latach, killed by a UPA gang of twelve people. Six people died: Maria Karpyak - wife, 42 years old; Josef Karpiak - son, 23 years old; Vladislav Karpyak - son, 18 years old; Zygmunt or Zbigniew Karpiak - son, 6 years old; Sofia Karpyak - daughter, 8 years old and Genovef Chernitska (nee Karpyak) - 20 years old. Zbigniew Czernicki, a one-and-a-half-year-old wounded child, was hospitalized in Zalishchyky. Visible in the photo is Stanislav Karpyak, who escaped because he was absent. The photographer from Chernelitsa is unknown.

Photo 48 - POWCE (PO?OWCE), region, Chortkiv county, Tarnopol voivodeship, forest called Rosohach. Close-up 26 naked corpses of Polish residents of the village of Polovetse, taken from January 16 to 17, 1944, to a forest more than ten kilometers away, called Rosohach, and tortured there by the UPA. In the foreground, ropes are visible on the necks and legs of the victims, which were probably used to strangle the victims. Photographer unknown - Kripo employee

Photo 49 - POWCE (PO?OWCE), region, Chortkiv county, Tarnopol voivodeship, forest called Rosohach. Photo of Polish residents of the village of Polowce, driven away on the night of January 16-17, 1944, brutally murdered in the forest near Jagielnitsa, called Rosohach. The crimes of genocide were committed by the UPA. Photographer unknown - Kripo employee The photograph is marked W - 3459 and is also in the archive collections .

Photo 50 - POWCE (PO?OWCE), region, Chortkiv county, Tarnopol voivodeship, forest called Rosohach. Exhumed in a forest called Rosohach, Polish victims of the village of Polovetse, taken away on the night of January 16-17, 1944, and tortured by the UPA. Type of official identification of corpses by the German occupation authorities in the presence of forest service workers and others. Photographer unknown - Kripo employee

Photo 51 - POWCE (PO?OWCE), region, Chortkiv county, Tarnopol voivodeship, forest called Rosohach. Polish victims of the village of Polovetse, hijacked on the night of January 16-17, 1944, and tortured by the UPA in a forest called Rosohach. A child is visible in the middle. Photographer unknown - employee of "Kripo" The photograph is marked W - 3460, also located in the archive collections.

Photo 52 - POWCE (PO?OWCE), region, Chortkiv county, Tarnopol voivodeship, forest called Rosohach. The exhumed Poles were residents of the village of Polovtse in a forest called Rosohach, hijacked by the UPA on the night of January 16-17, 1944, and killed. The victims were stripped by the terrorists. The executioners stole the clothes. Photographer unknown - Kripo employee. The photograph in the archive collections is designated as W - 3421.

Photo 53 - BUSZCZE, Brzezany County, Tarnopol Voivodeship. January 22, 1944. On the plan, one of the victims of the massacre is Stanislav Kuzev, 16 years old, tortured by the UPA. We see a ripped open stomach, as well as puncture wounds - a wide one and a smaller round one. On a critical day, Bandera’s men burned several Polish courtyards and brutally killed at least 37 Poles, including 7 women and 3 small children. 13 people were injured. Photographer unknown. The photograph, as well as the following ones related to Bush, were published thanks to the priest Bishop Vaclav Shetelnitsky.

Photo 54 - BUSZCZE, Brzezany County, Tarnopol Voivodeship. January 22, 1944. Poles - Ignacy Zamoyski, 60 years old, and Katarzyna Zamoyska, 15 years old - victims of a massacre committed by the UPA in the village of Buszcze. In the center we see a loop of thick rope, obviously an instrument of torture. Photographer unknown.

Photo 55 - BUSZCZE, Brzezany County, Tarnopol Voivodeship. January 22, 1944. One of the victims of the massacre committed by the UPA in the village of Busche was a young Polish woman, Anna Mazyakowska. We see that the victim is tied with a thick rope. Nearby lies a ball of this rope. Photographer unknown.

Photo 56 - BUSZCZE, Brzezany County, Tarnopol Voivodeship. January 22, 1944. One of the Polish victims of the UPA in the village of Busche is Agafia Zamoyska, 50 years old. Photographer unknown.

Photo 57 - BUSZCZE, Brzezany County, Tarnopol Voivodeship. January 22, 1944. The victim of the Bandera murder committed by the UPA in the village of Busche is Pole Michal Kuzev, 60 years old. Photographer unknown.

Photo 68 - PALIKROWY, Brody County, Tarnopol Voivodeship. March 12, 1944. In the village of Palikrowy, at least 365 Poles died - men, women and children, as well as two Jews. Many died from cruel torture, for example, their noses and ears were cut off and they were thrown into the fire with their hands tied behind them. The rest were shot. The names, surnames and ages of 267 victims are known. On the monument erected by the Ukrainian Soviet power, the inscription is made in Ukrainian, which is in Polish language reads: “At this place - on March 12, 1944, 365 residents of Palikrova were shot. Eternal memory to them” It is silent that those executed were Poles, and the perpetrators of this crime of genocide were Ukrainians - SS men from the SS-Galicia division together with the UPA. After committing the murders, the attackers stole valuable movable property, as well as livestock, and burned Polish yards. Photographer unknown. The photo was published, probably thanks to Tadeusz Twardowski.

Photo 69 - MAGDAL?WKA, Skalat County, Tarnopol Voivodeship. Katarzyna Gorwach from Habły, 55 years old, mother of the Roman Catholic priest Jan Gorwach. View from 1951 after plastic surgery. UPA terrorists almost completely cut off her nose, as well as her upper lip, knocked out most of her teeth, gouged out her left eye and seriously damaged her right eye. On that tragic March night in 1944, other members of this Polish family died a cruel death, and their property was stolen by the attackers, such as clothes, bed linen and towels. Photographer unknown. The photo was published thanks to Stefania Rashtar.

Photo 70 - SZARAJ?WKA, Bilgoraj County, Lubelskie Voivodeship. March 1944. On the plan there is an unknown victim in Sharaiovka. One of the many Polish victims of the terror of Ukrainian platoons, companies, and rarely battalions subordinate to the SS-Galicia police regiments operating in the southern Ljubel region. Particularly fierce terror was carried out by a special SS-Galicia unit called SS - Kampgruppe “Beyersdorf” Photographer unknown. The photograph, designated W - 2273, is presented thanks to the archive.

Photo 71 - BILGORAJ (BI?GORAJ), Lubelskie Voivodeship. February - March 1944. View of the district town of Bilgoraj, burned in 1944. The result of an extermination campaign carried out by the SS-Galicia. Photographer unknown. The photograph, designated W - 1231, is presented thanks to the archive.

Photo 75 - POZNANKA HETMA?SKA, Skalat County, Tarnopol Voivodeship. March 1944. The photograph shows a Polish victim of Bandera's attack. According to the source, his face was mutilated and his eyes were gouged out. Photographer K. Chutkowski.

Photo 76 - POZNANKA HETMA?SKA, Skalat County, Tarnopol Voivodeship. March 1944. Another victim of the UPA after the massacre of Polish residents of Poznanka Hetmanska. We see a blanket stained, most likely, with the blood of the victim. Photographer K. Chutkowski.

Photo 77 - POZNANKA HETMA?SKA, Skalat County, Tarnopol Voivodeship. March 1944. One of 21 unknown Polish victims, brutally killed by Bandera during the attack. In the photograph we see a disfigured face and eye sockets after the eyes were gouged out. The rest of the body is covered. Photographer T. Chutkowski.

Valiant soldiers of the SS division "Galicia" are preparing to shoot Polish partisans.

Photo 80 - BELŽEC (BE??EC), region, Rawa Ruska county, Lwów voivodeship. June 16, 1944. We see the ripped open belly and the insides from the outside, as well as a hand hanging from the skin - the result of an attempt to chop it off. The case of OUN - UPA (OUN - UPA). Photographer unknown. The photo was published thanks to M. Stashko.

Photo 81 - BELŽEC (BE??EC), region, Rawa Ruska county, Lwów voivodeship. June 16, 1944. An adult woman with a visible wound of more than ten centimeters on her buttock, as a result of a strong blow with a sharp instrument, as well as small round wounds on her body, indicating torture. Nearby is a small child with visible injuries on his face. Photographer unknown. The photo was published thanks to M. Stashko.

Photo 82 - LUBYCZA KR?LEWSKA, region, Rawa Ruska county, Lwów voivodeship. June 16, 1944. Fragment of the execution site in the forest. A Polish child is among the adult victims killed by Bandera. The mutilated head of a child is visible. The photographer of both the above photo and the following about the victims in the forest near Lubycza Krolewska is probably Tadeusz Żelechowski, a lieutenant in the Home Army. This and the following photographs were published thanks to the archive.

Photo 83 - LUBYCZA KR?LEWSKA, region, Rawa Ruska county, Lwów voivodeship. June 16, 1944. A fragment of the forest - the execution site. A child lying on the ground among adults are Polish victims killed by Bandera.

Photo 84 - LUBYCZA KR?LEWSKA, region, Rawa Ruska county, Lwów voivodeship. June 16, 1944. A fragment of the forest near the railway track near Lubycha Krolevskaya, where UPA terrorists cunningly detained passenger train message Belzec - Rawa Ruska - Lvov and shot at least 47 passengers - Polish men, women and children. Beforehand they mocked living people, just as they later mocked the dead. They used violence - punches, beatings with rifle butts, and a pregnant woman was pinned to the ground with bayonets. Dead bodies were desecrated. They stole the victims' personal documents, watches, money and other valuable items. The names of most of the victims are known. Photographer Tadeusz Zelechowski.

Photo 85 - LUBYCZA KR?LEWSKA, forest area, Rawa Ruska County, Lwów Voivodeship. June 16, 1944. A fragment of the forest - the execution site. Polish victims, killed by Bandera, lie on the ground. In the central shot is a naked woman tied to a tree.

Photo 86 - LUBYCZA KR?LEWSKA, forest area, Rawa Ruska County, Lwów Voivodeship. June 16, 1944. Small child, killed by bandits from the UPA during a massacre committed on passengers of Polish nationality from a train detained by cunning. The archival designation of the photograph is W - 3429.

Photo 87 - LUBYCZA KR?LEWSKA, forest area, Rawa Ruska County, Lwów Voivodeship. June 16, 1944. A fragment of the forest - the place of execution of passengers on the train Belzec - Rawa Ruska - Lviv. Polish victims of Bandera's terror lie on the ground.

Photo 123 - MILNO, Zborow County, Tarnopol Voivodeship. Skulls of victims killed by the UPA on the day of the National Independence Day - November 11, 1944. The human skulls visible in the photograph were found almost half a century after the tragic incident. Photographer unknown. Illustration from: Edward Prus, “UPA - the Insurgent Army or the Rezunov Kureni?”, Wroclaw, 1997, Northom Publishing House, p. 131.

Photo 124 - CZORTK?W, Tarnopol Voivodeship. Two, most likely, Polish victims of Bandera's terror. There are no more detailed data regarding the names of the victims, nationality, place and circumstances of death. Photographer unknown. The photo was published thanks to Josef Opatsky, pseudonym Mogor, and also thanks to the archive

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July 11, 1943 is considered to be the day of the most massive extermination of the ethnic Polish civilian population, as well as civilians of other nationalities on the territory of Volyn, by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) - the armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists - OUN (b).

How the conflict arose

Many historians (especially Polish) rightly call the events that took place in Volyn from February 1943 to February 1944 an ethnopolitical conflict. In common parlance, these events have long been called the Volyn massacre. Ukrainian historians desperately defend themselves and lie, reducing this tragedy to retaliatory actions of the Home Army against the Ukrainian civilian population (such actions took place, but they were precisely retaliatory, and most importantly - on a much smaller scale). There is a grain of truth in the thoughts of the Kyiv and Lvov falsifiers of history: they write that Bandera’s supporters first of all wanted to prevent the future Polish state from laying claim to these lands. In the interwar years, Volyn was really controlled from Warsaw, and now, to prevent this from happening, Bandera’s supporters chose to slaughter thousands of peaceful Poles... So, in 1943, the UPA, with the support of the local Ukrainian population (this is also important, their hut was not on the edge) began mass extermination Poles, as well as civilians of other nationalities found next to the Poles: Jews, Russians, Ukrainians, Armenians, Czechs...

OUN parade

Massacre

The conflict apparently had deep roots, the contradictions between Ukrainians and Poles in Volyn accumulated for centuries, and under Polish rule, in the 1920-1930s, they noticeably worsened, but not to the level of cutting each other down. Everything changed during the Second World War and the German occupation: the Nazis began to actively pit both peoples against each other. Already in 1942, the first cases of extermination of Poles and Ukrainians were recorded, but a radical escalation began in the spring of 1943. It was then that the Volyn regional branch of the OUN (b) decided to expel all Poles from these lands. First, actions began against the Poles who served in the German administration and guarded forests and state lands, and later against all Poles who had the misfortune of living in rural areas. The peak of action came on July 11, 1943. On this day Ukrainian nationalists 150 Polish settlements were attacked. The Poles were destroyed not only by armed Banderaites, but also by ordinary residents of Ukrainian villages, who lived for years with their Polish neighbors. Only Polish partisan self-defense units could fight back, but most of they were destroyed by UPA militants. Polish partisans from the Home Army, in retaliation, also began to attack Ukrainian villages and Bandera bases, and local residents were also killed.

Victims and consequences

One of the most controversial issues in disputes between historians and politicians from Poland and Ukraine is still the number of victims of the Volyn massacre. Many Polish researchers settle on the figure of 50-60 thousand dead Poles, and the scale of the response actions of Polish military formations is estimated at 2-3 thousand Ukrainian civilians. At the end of the 1990s, a joint commission of Polish and Ukrainian historians was created to cover these events, but the approaches, as one might expect, were different. In 2003, on the 60th anniversary of the tragedy, the presidents of Ukraine and Poland Leonid Kuchma and Alexander Kwasniewski adopted a joint statement “On reconciliation on the 60th anniversary of the tragic events in Volyn,” in which they regretted the confrontation between the two peoples. But Warsaw and Kyiv failed to reconcile. In June 2016, the Polish parliament immortalized the memory of “the victims of the genocide committed by Ukrainian nationalists against citizens of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1939-1945.” In the same year, Polish director Wojciech Smarzowski shot the feature film “Volyn”, where the tragedy is depicted so openly and horribly that the film was immediately banned for distribution in Ukraine.