On 11 July 1943, hundreds of Polish families in Volhynia (formerly eastern Poland) attended Sunday Mass. Far from gaining some respite from their wartime circumstances, these churchgoers – mostly women and children – became victims of one of the most horrific episodes of World War 2: Bloody Sunday.
In the early afternoon, the fascist Ukrainian Insurgent Army surrounded and attacked 167 Polish villages. The timing was designed to trap most of the populace in their places of worship. Armed with pitchforks, scythes and knives, the UPA and local supporters butchered their victims with a sadism surpassing even the most brutal horror movie:
“The victims were then tortured to death, regardless of age and gender. The few survivors depicted, among others: disemboweling, eyes gouged out, sawing in half, cutting off limbs, scalping, burning alive, flaying; babies were impaled on bayonets or picket fences; pregnant women were bayoneted in the belly. The methods were purposefully savage: the UPA hoped that the news of the massacres would cause the remaining Poles to flee in terror (and it did).”
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Approximately 8,000 people were slaughtered that day, their property looted then burned to the ground. The UPA instructed that where a Ukrainian had married a Pole, he/she would have to kill their spouse as well as any resulting children. Those who refused to carry out the order were often murdered along with their entire family. The massacres continued until 16 July, culminating in a death toll of at least 40,000 in just six days.
Ultimately it was just one episode of a three-year-long genocide: an attempt to rid Galicia and Volhynia of Poles to make way for a Nazi-allied Ukraine. Eventually the Armia Krajowa, hitherto busy sabotaging the Nazis, engaged in retaliatory action against the Ukrainians and managed to take control of Galicia in 1944, a few months ahead of the Warsaw Uprising. Sadly, for some 100,000 murdered Poles, it was already too late.
The video above, from the movie ‘Wołyń’, says more than can be put into words about the level of horror. It must be noted that while there were instances of Poles retaliating in kind, generally the Polish side conducted itself with far more honour & self-control – one AK commander, for example, ordered:
‘I forbid the use of the methods utilized by the Ukrainian butchers. We will not burn Ukrainian homesteads nor kill Ukrainian women & children in retaliation. The self-defence network must protect itself from the aggressors or attack the aggressors but leave the peaceful population & their possessions alone.’
These days, Polish-Ukrainian relations are much improved. Poland was immensely supportive of Euromaidan amidst a largely passive EU, & today there are roughly 2 million Ukrainians working in Poland, such that one Ukrainian mayor lamented ‘We have ended up with a whole generation that has gone’. As Randy Mcdonald puts it,
‘Notwithstanding their long history together, contemporary Poles & Ukrainians were long divided, with conflicting claims to pieces of territory & elements of identity. The city known to Poles as Lwów & to Ukrainians as L’viv was central.
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‘Had things gone differently after the end of the Soviet Union, it’s imaginable that once they were free of foreign rule, Poles & Ukrainians might have set to warring against each other. It’s to their credit that they chose not to do that, despite a sad & bloody history, & have tried to move ahead together, overcoming their past.’
