Photos of UPA's victims

[MichaelB_PL]

Originally Posted by ukebandit

payback is a *****;my family lost over 11 members to those "brave Polish cavalry" boxheads with their noses in the air,...polacki do sracki...lol

Both Poles and Ukrainians did murder civilian population... If you hate Poles for murdering your relatives, then do you also hate yourself and other Ukrainians for murdering relatives of other people, like the Polish children on the photos I've posted on the beginning of this thread?

Do you realise that the Polish victims on the photos were also human beings exactly like your relatives?

[Hannia]

Michael, you bought into your Grandfather's narrow-minded version of what went on during the Interwar Yrs?

Did Grandfather really think that Ukrainian Churches could be burned and Ukrainian women and children killed
w/o impunity?

Poles were not the victims. They were the aggressors.

AFTER WW1 ended, Poland engaged in 6 major conflicts of aggression w/its neighbors. Even Lithuanians, once
in partnership w/the Kingdom of Poland, didn't want anything to do w/Reconstituted Poland. These are facts.

As more and more KGB documents are released out of Moscow, the Polish version of what the UPA actually did
or did not do, is being rewritten by historians,

and your ignorance and bad manners are showing.

[MichaelB_PL]

Originally Posted by Hannia

Michael, you bought into your Grandfather's narrow-minded version of what went on during the Interwar Yrs?

It depends on what do you exactly call a "narrow-minded" version.

BTW, do you realise that both sides have their own "narrow-minded" versions and that there is a possibility that your own views are actually based upon a incomplete, selective narrow-minded version?

Did Grandfather really think that Ukrainian Churches could be burned and Ukrainian women and children killed
w/o impunity?

1. It is true that Ukrainian Churches were burned, but no burned church is worth a human life.

2. About those "Ukrainian women and children killed" - what exactly do you mean? There were pacification actions directed at OUN and their supporters, during which Ukrainians were very often beaten and terrorised, but actual deaths were rather rare.

3. The actions from #2 happened as a response to the terrorist activities of OUN, like acts of arson of Polish private property and attacks on goverment officials.
Here's a good place to ask a question similiar to your question: "Did the OUN activists think that waging attacks against the Poles will go unpunished?".

4. During the pacification actions, Polish troops have confiscated over 1000
rifles and over 500 short firearms - it's quite likely that at least some of the owners of these weapons tried to put up a fight and were effectively armed guerillas who died as soldiers, but it was more convinient to the Ukrainian nationalist movement to claim that they were actually innocent civilians, "murdered" by the Poles.

Poles were not the victims. They were the aggressors.

So you are saying that those people on the photos, including the little children, were also agressors, not victims?

AFTER WW1 ended, Poland engaged in 6 major conflicts of aggression w/its neighbors. Even Lithuanians, once
in partnership w/the Kingdom of Poland, didn't want anything to do w/Reconstituted Poland. These are facts.

Facts? Not really - it's true that there have been wars, but you use the term "conflicts of agression" in a very odd manner and seem to blame the Poles for everything.

For example Lithuanians - after WWI they wanted to have the city of Wilno/Vilnius, because it was their historical capitol... but there was a problem - according to the German census of 1916, there were 50.2% Poles in the city, 43.5% Jews and... 2.6% Lithuanians.

As more and more KGB documents are released out of Moscow, the Polish version of what the UPA actually did
or did not do, is being rewritten by historians,

Actually, it is not being rewritten and it will not be - because it's generally true. I know that many Ukrainians retell a myth claiming that the mass murders made by UPA have been actualy done by NKVD - and in some isolated cases this was true, but generally the bulk of these murders have been done by UPA.

Generally, why it is a myth:

1) The bulk of the mass murders was done in Volhynia in 1943. In 1943 the front line was very very far from Volhynia and the territory was controlled by Germans - how could the NKVD do it?

2) Reports made by AK (Polish guerillas, controlled by goverment in London, generally a anti-communist force) identify the assailants as Ukrainian/UPA.

3) Reports made by survivors of attacks identify the assailants as Ukrainians - very often Ukrainians from the same village. Many survivors were saved by other Ukrainians, who helped them hide from the slaughter.

and your ignorance and bad manners are showing.

What ignorance and what bad manners exactly?

It is not my fault that many Ukrainians on this board consider UPA to be heroes, choosing to deny or ignore the acts of mass murder of Polish population commited by that formation and the extremist, totalitarian nature of their ideology.



Michael

[Hannia]

About those "Ukrainian women and children killed" - what exactly do you mean?
There were pacification actions directed at OUN and their supporters, during which
Ukrainians were very often beaten and terrorised, but actual deaths were rather rare.
_______________________________________________________

Michael, I actually had an aunt that I never got to know, because she was clubbed to death
by a gang of Polish thugs on horses. She and five other girls, between the ages of 12 and 14,
were cleaning grave sites in preparation of a Ukrainian holy day, and only one girl survived.

There are MANY such stories of Polish pacification of Ukrainians.

You obviously grew up w/Grandfather's tales of bitter glory and have no empathy for anyone else's
historical truth.

Poland had not become the conqueror of much of Eastern Europe, because it was passive and loving.
There was a very good reason for Poland not existing as a geopolitical entity for appx 125 yrs prior to WW1.
Europe had enough and okayed the partitioning.

From the reading I have been doing re EU lately, no one is thrilled w/Poland's attitude within the group. Currently
the going whisper among the EU delegates re Poland is: the more things change, the more they remain the same.

[MichaelB_PL]

Originally Posted by Hannia

About those "Ukrainian women and children killed" - what exactly do you mean?
There were pacification actions directed at OUN and their supporters, during which
Ukrainians were very often beaten and terrorised, but actual deaths were rather rare.
_______________________________________________________

Michael, I actually had an aunt that I never got to know, because she was clubbed to death
by a gang of Polish thugs on horses. She and five other girls, between the ages of 12 and 14,
were cleaning grave sites in preparation of a Ukrainian holy day, and only one girl survived.

There are MANY such stories of Polish pacification of Ukrainians.

I'm sorry for what happened to your aunt and the remaining girls and that's a horrible story, but that what I've read, the Pacification was based mostly on destruction of property and random beatings, beatings which led to death in some cases, but it was in no way a mass murder operation.

You obviously grew up w/Grandfather's tales of bitter glory and have no empathy for anyone else's
historical truth.

What kind of empathy do you mean and what would you expect?

I'm sure that the "Polish thugs on horses" were real and that things like you described did happen - but do you realise that the "Ukrainian murderers with axes" were equally real?

Sure, the Polish people do not mention things like the Pacification or the 1943+ Polish mass murder of Ukrainian civilians too often and many of them do not even know about it - but the Ukrainians are exactly the same - for example, I've seen a few Ukrainian webpages about UPA, and "somehow" none of them mentions the mass murder of civilians done by UPA, they also give no information about the extremist, fascist nature of UPA's ideology.

Basically, there are two fake versions of history - in the first one the Poles never did anything wrong and were "innocent victims", while in the second one the Ukranians never did anything wrong and were "innocent victims".

Poland had not become the conqueror of much of Eastern Europe, because it was passive and loving.

You are mistaken - do a search on the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and it's conquests - the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth got most of it's non-Polish territory from Lithuanian.

Image:Lithuanian state in 13-15th centuries.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There was a very good reason for Poland not existing as a geopolitical entity for appx 125 yrs prior to WW1.
Europe had enough and okayed the partitioning.

By using the same logic, I could write a similiarily ridiculous statement like "There was a very good reason for Ukraine not existing as a geopolitical entity for hundreds of years before WW1".

Europe did't "have enough" - there were to strong, expansionistic powers of Russia, Prussia and Austria and that's it - BTW, the first and the last of them - Russia and Austria, were the reason for which Ukraine was not independent after the fall of the Pol-Lit Commonwealth.

Judging by that sentence, I got the impression you do not really care about historical truth at all , but simply wanted something nasty about Poland in order to make me feel bad.

From the reading I have been doing re EU lately, no one is thrilled w/Poland's attitude within the group. Currently
the going whisper among the EU delegates re Poland is: the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Actually, if you would read more carefully , you would know that of all EU countries, Poland and Lithuania are the two countries which have done the most for freedom in Belarus and democracy in Ukraine (during the Orange revolution).
On the other hand, the country which clashes the most with Poland - Germany, is the very country which wants to build underwater oil pipeline together with "Comrade Putin" - which will help Russia to circumvent oil transfer countries like Poland and Ukraine.

[Kathy]

I think Michael makes a valid point which many in the Ukrainian diaspora did not wish to confront. We were so entrenched in our hatred of communism (with good reason), that we failed to recognize that the interwar period in Western Ukraine was not without some issues. Anti Semitism was rampant, and that is something which, until recently, Ukrainians refused to recognize. Some still do not. There was also a real hatred of Poles. Moreover, because archives from the area were not available, and many members of UPA formed part of the wave of Ukrainian immigrants from among DP's, the ability to track the truth was not always easy. I think there is also some of the "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" in this, and those were brutal times for everyone. Can we really judge it one way, Michael? It is complex.

Now that Soviet archives have been opened, historians, both Ukrainian historians in the West and in Ukraine, are telling the truth, both the good and the bad. It serves no one not to acknowledge UPA's crimes against humanity, even if we support their goals of an independent, non communist Ukraine. We cannot move forward without acknowledging the past.

Similarly, Poles should recognize their own criminal activity against Ukrainians. Michael, I don't think there was a family in Western Ukraine that did not lose, or know of a neighbour who did not lose, a child to the so called "pacification". My Grandmother, God rest her soul, lost a nephew. He was 15, and was beaten to death. My Godfather, God rest his soul, was half Polish. His maternal uncle was a Polish administrator who gave my Godfather a good job. But my Godfather eventually left, because he could not stand what he witnessed. He saw many, many boys beaten to death. He was bitter and even though he was half Polish, spoke fluent Polish, and was raised solely by his Polish mother and her family (his father died when he was a child) he hated Poles to his dying breath. I don't know anyone who emigrated from that time who did not tell similar stories. Many Ukrainians before WWII were bitter about policies of "Polonization". Now, those same things (other than Polonization) may very well have been happening to Polish peasants in Poland, but a foreign occupier is always more reviled. And Michael, those policies did not end in WWII - something that has been noted before here, and the killing continued into the early 1950's. Brutality was matched with brutality by both sides. Let us also not forget the forcible removal of 150,000 Ukrainians from their ancestral lands in "Operation Vistuala".

There was a lot of "give and take" and both sides of the debate must recognize their own inhumanity.

Have you read Jan Gross' fascinating books?

Edit - Until fairly recently, Poland has probably been Ukraine's greatest ally with the EU, and pushed repeatedly for Ukraine's admittance. That will not happen, the EU has stated, until Ukraine's banking laws become more transparent. And that will not happen until Ukraine elects honest politicians, more willing to work for all Ukrainians rather than themselves which, unfortunately, is not Ukraine's reality at the moment.

The pipeline would have been built even without German double dealing, because Russia thinks it will save them over $1 billion annually in transit fees.

[MichaelB_PL]

Originally Posted by Kathy

I think Michael makes a valid point which many in the Ukrainian diaspora did not wish to confront. We were so entrenched in our hatred of communism (with good reason), that we failed to recognize that the interwar period in Western Ukraine was not without some issues. Anti Semitism was rampant, and that is something which, until recently, Ukrainians refused to recognize. Some still do not. There was also a real hatred of Poles.

Yes, there are many such issues, both from the interwar period and from WWII, which I think are quite rarely known or acknowledged.

You've mentioned antisemitism - AFAIK, it was heavily spread both among Polish and Ukrainian population of the region.

As for hatred of Poles (and the corresponding hatred of Ukrainians), I think it was sort of a long chain reaction with multiple "guilty parties" on both sides - the biggest problem with analysing this is that it's hard to determine when to start - around the end of WWI, or much earlier, during the years of the Commonwealth.

Leaving the cossacks and nobles from few hundred years ago alone, we might start looking at the end of WWI and at the Polish-Ukrainian war of 1918 - Ukrainians wanted to create independent Ukraine in an area in which they've constituted the majority, but that area contained the city of Lwow(Lviv), which had Polish majority instead and which was one the most important centers of Polish culture.

It's hard to blame Ukrainians for wanting to create their state on area where they have been the majority and it's hard to blame Poles for not wanting to allow one of the major Polish cities to be put under foreign occupation - I think it was a very bad situation to begin with - both sides had valid, sensible claims, but these claims were mutually exclusive - and it led to a conflict.

I think that the situation simply continued later - Poles probably simply remembered the war and remembered one occurance which some today Ukrainians know about, but which had one aspect which might be easily overlooked by an Ukrainian - I mean the seizing of Lwow/Lviv and what did it mean to the (Polish) majority of the population of the city.

Basicly the Polish citizens of a big city which was one of the leading centers of Polish culture, saw foreign, Ukrainian soldiers seizing control and proclaiming that now it is the city of Lviv and now it will be "Ukraine" - and they have fought against the occupation, fighting to free the city they were the majority in, fighting against Ukrainian troops.

To the Poles, that was an act of imperialism and an attempt made by Ukrainians to be the next foreign occupiers - and it probably did have an impact upon Polish attitude toward Ukrainians in the interwar period.

AFAIK Later the Poles tried to eliminate the danger of any kind of reoccurance of the 1918 occupation of Lwow/Lviv and tried to polonise the Ukrainians, to slowly undermine their culture and replace it with Polish one.

They were opposed by the Ukrainian nationalists, some of whom were very determined in their beliefs and who entered a path of confrontation, becoming terrorists who might be called similiar to the IRA or ETA. The terrorists responded to the unjust Polish opression in a equally unjust manner and started to attack goverment officials, burn Polish private property - and they've brought a even more unjust Polish response - the Pacification, which we did discuss in this thread before, during which a certain number of completely innocent Ukrainian civilians died - which of course caused immense hatred of Poles and without doubt contributed to the even more unjust mass murders of Polish in the Volhynia and other provinces.

Moreover, because archives from the area were not available, and many members of UPA formed part of the wave of Ukrainian immigrants from among DP's, the ability to track the truth was not always easy.

Yes, personally I get a strong impression that the OUN-B political option did succeed in spreading it's own, heavily biased version of history among the Ukrainian diaspora, causing most of the Ukrainians in the US or Canada to be completely unaware of the fact that their knowledge of Ukraine's history is de facto a propaganda product of a particular political organisation.

I think there is also some of the "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" in this, and those were brutal times for everyone. Can we really judge it one way, Michael? It is complex.

I think that any kind of judging is secondary... first thing which must be done in my opinion is clearing the white spots, establishing the facts - there will be always subjective opinions, but facts are facts.

I have to go now and I can't write some things I wanted to write...


Michael