KYIV – After attending the NATO summit on July 8, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko took an unprecedented step towards Ukrainian-Polish reconciliation by visiting the Volyn Massacre Victims Memorial in Warsaw. He placed a wreath, lit a candle and knelt on his right knee before its main column.
Mr. Poroshenko’s gesture – the first official visit by a Ukrainian politician to the memorial since it opened three years ago – came at a time when cooperation between the neighbors is critical in the face of ongoing Russian military aggression. It also came during a wave of unprecedented anti-Ukrainian sentiments in Poland.
On June 26, Polish radicals attacked a Ukrainian Catholic prayer procession in Przemysl (Peremyshl) that had occurred annually, injuring a participant. On July 3, a Ukrainian rock band was banned from entering Poland despite having done so 20 times before. On July 6, the Polish Sejm discussed whether to designate the Volyn massacres as genocide.
“The majority in the Polish Parliament is leaning towards this harsh option regardless of the consequences, which will be worsened Polish-Ukrainian relations,” said Volodymyr Viatrovych, the head of the Institute of National Memory of Ukraine and the author of “The Second Polish-Ukrainian War. 1942-1947.”
During a July 14 discussion in Kyiv, Mr. Viatrovych highlighted what he thinks to be the source of the increase in anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Poland, which he called the “tabloidization” of the painful chapters in history between the two nations, particularly the Volyn massacres in 1943-1944.
To this day, no complete study has been performed on just how many people died in the massacres that erupted on July 11, 1943, between neighboring Polish and Ukrainian villages on the territory of the present-day Volyn Oblast.
The best rough estimate Mr. Viatrovych could offer was 38,000-40,000 casualties on the Polish side and 15,000-20,000 among Ukrainians, which he stressed was not proven.
“Truly, there is no historical research, confirmed document or understood methodology to count the victims,” he said.
Polish historian Wladyslaw Siemaszko claims to have confirmed 18,000 Polish dead based on verbal accounts of eyewitnesses and Polish historians reached a consensus of 60,000, Mr. Viatrovych said.
“But these figures were inadequate for Polish politicians, who rounded it up to 100,000 in a Sejm resolution in 2013. Today, from their podiums, they talk about more than 100,000,” he said.
“Such inflating of the number killed doesn’t honor their memory but dishonors it. It devalues the deaths of those thousands who were truly killed and waters them down with imagined losses. But that hasn’t stopped Polish politicians since larger numbers are converted into bigger political capital,” Mr. Viatrovych commented.
That was apparent at the July 6 hearing of the Sejm, Poland’s lower house of Parliament, when most of the members repeatedly referred to “genocide” and began their speeches by referring to “more than 100 villages attacked” the night of July 11, 1943.
Ukrainian historians agree that such a large-scale operation couldn’t have been conducted by the ragtag Ukrainian forces. Only 12 villages can be confirmed to have been attacked that night, Mr. Viatrovych said.
Elzbieta Borowska of the populist Kukiz’15 party loaded her remarks with descriptions of the vilest acts alleged to have been committed by the Ukrainians, including heads smashed by hammers, children tied to trees, nails pulled from fingers and live animals sewn inside women.
She warned of the glorification of “Banderism” and a cult of Bandera being taught in Ukrainian schools.
Spurring on the politicians and historians, in the view of Mr. Viatrovych, has been the Polish mass media, both television and print, which has largely portrayed the warfare as a one-sided affair in which Ukrainians did virtually all of the killing.
In this vicious cycle, “media messages influence historiographical concepts, rather than historical research forming media messages – and through them public opinion,” he said.
Further contributing to the one-sided portrayals will be a film currently under production to be released in the fall, directed by Wojciech Smarzowski.
After 20 years of media coverage, the number of Poles thinking that only Poles were the victims in the Volyn massacres dropped to 52 percent in 2013 from 61 percent in 2003, Mr. Viatrovych said.
At the same time, those who believe that both Poles and Ukrainians were killed dropped to 9 percent in 2013 from 38 percent in 2003, he said. Moreover, 52 percent of respondents in 2013 thought only Ukrainians were responsible, while only 3 percent believed both Poles and Ukrainians committed killings.
This laid the groundwork for the clamor to recognize the massacre as genocide, with three such bills currently registered in the Sejm, all of which include the language of “more than 100,000 killed” in the Volyn “genocide,” which had been referred to as a “massacre” as late as 2013, when the memorial in Warsaw was erected.
On July 7, the Polish Senate approved a resolution calling upon the Sejm to establish July 11 as a national day of memory for the victims of the genocide committed by Ukrainian nationalists against the citizens of the Second Rzeczpospolita in 1939-1945, with 60 senators voting in favor and 23 against.
Mr. Viatrovych referred to the proposed seven-year period for the alleged genocide by Ukrainians as absurd, especially considering that Poles suffered far greater mass murders at the hands of the invading Germans and Soviets during this time period.
“In a sickly attempt, these politicians are trying to score cheap political dividends from a Ukraine that has been weakened by war,” he said.
The Sejm will consider the proposal between July 19 and 22. Although former Polish President Lech Kaczynski prevented politicians from exploiting the topic during his term, Mr. Viatrovych doesn’t see such leadership from the current president, Andrzej Duda, and expects the resolution will be approved.
That’s in spite of extensive Ukrainian attempts at depoliticization, including the organization of an annual forum of Polish and Ukrainian historians. The Polish Parliament rejected a June proposal by the Verkhovna Rada, led by its chairman, Andriy Parubiy, to draft a joint statement on the Volyn massacres, as had been done in 2003, or to establish a common day of memory for both countries.
Rejected in their attempts, Ukrainian national deputies registered a draft resolution on July 13 declaring it unacceptable for the Polish Parliament to recognize the Volyn massacres as genocide and that such a decision would be interpreted as a step towards worsened relations between the two countries.
Needless to say, the Russian mass media has been actively reporting on this spiraling conflict. In this context, history seems to be repeating itself, Mr. Viatrovych said.
The Soviets manipulated tensions between the two peoples to encourage fighting between them, as was the case in Volyn and Halychyna during the war, he said. As a result, both Poles and Ukrainians were unprepared for the Soviet front that returned in 1944.
Mr. Poroshenko’s July 8 gesture followed a letter published on June 3 and signed by Ukrainian political, religious and intellectual leaders – including former Presidents Leonid Kravchuk and Viktor Yushchenko – that asked for forgiveness for the crimes committed.
In response, their counterparts among Poland’s elite – including former Presidents Lech Walesa, Aleksandr Kwasniewski and Bronislaw Komorowski – published a letter on July 4 thanking Ukrainians for their apology and, in return, asking for forgiveness for crimes committed by Poles. It was not signed, however, by any politicians of the ruling coalition.
As recognized by both letters, the tensions over history play into the hands of the Russian government, which has waged a campaign to divide the Western world in response to the sanctions imposed for its occupation and aggression in Ukraine.
“Threats are easier to handle together,” the Polish letter said. “We will continue to admire you, and we will unite in the struggle with the aggressor, which for more than two years has occupied a part of Ukrainian lands and is trying to prevent the fulfillment of your hopes to live in a united Europe.”
Unfortunately, the ruling politicians and the media in Poland have overlooked these attempts, Mr. Viatrovych said. Nor did Mr. Poroshenko’s visit to the Volyn memorial get the attention in Poland that it deserved.
“The president’s gesture at the memorial in Warsaw was very strong,” he said. “Unfortunately, from what I can tell, it didn’t resonate so strongly in Poland. The Polish mass media didn’t erupt [with news] about what happened at the memorial. It’s possible the coverage of the NATO summit overshadowed it. But it didn’t become a breakthrough moment.”