Poland celebrates the National Remembrance Day of the Volyn tragedy victims for the first time at the state level. On July 11, 1943 the detachments of Ukrainian nationalists attacked 150 Polish villages at once in Volyn, massacring 100,000 people. A year ago, the Polish Sejm called the Volyn massacre a genocide and urged Kiev not to turn the killing squads into heroes.
Verkhovnaya Rada criticized this decision. Memorial actions under the slogan "Stop, Bandera!" are taking place these days throughout Poland. Marina Naumova has the details. He remarks that even nature cries with those who came on Tuesday to Volynsky Square in Warsaw. Hero of the Soviet Union, Mirosław Hermaszewski, reckons himself among Kresovians, Poles, who lived in Kresy till the 1940s on the territory of the present Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania. Ukrainian nationalists didn't spare mercy on anyone. The only Polish cosmonaut himself almost died when the killing squads of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army came to the village of Lipniki, where his family lived. Running from banderovtsy, Hermaszewski's mother dropped her baby in the field. He spent almost all the night lying in the snow but his family managed to find and save him. Those who perished at the hands of banderovtsy are forever in our hearts.
UPA executed all the residents of the village only for the fact that they were Poles. Today many Polish provinces commemorate the tragic events that happened exactly 74 years ago. Memorial processions are organized throughout the country. Candles are lit and special worship services take place in churches. This day is commemorated at such a level for the first time. 11th of July is the official Genocide Remembrance Day in Poland. The genocide was committed by the UPA during World War II. A year ago, the Polish Sejm recognized the Volyn massacre as genocide, and urged Ukraine not to heroize the killing squads who tormented to death tens of thousands of Poles, Jews, Czechs, Armenians, and Gypsies. For a long time, Polish authorities tried to avoid this subject inconvenient for Polish-Ukrainian relations. But the Kresovians insisted on restoring historical justice and pay tribute to the memory of the perished. And for the official Warsaw it was increasingly difficult to ignore what had happened on the day which went down in history as "bloody Sunday."
Back in 1943, UPA, Stepan Bandera's Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists military wing conducted mass ethnic cleansing. Bloody events reached their climax on July 11th. The killing squads surrounded 150 villages, mostly inhabited by Polish people, and massacred all the civilians. They picked out eyes, cut off ears, cut off women's breasts, and ripped men's stomachs open. Edward Dembski recalls that his father would cry when he told him about the day his mother's mutilated body was brought to him. She ran to the neighboring village for food and found herself in the epicenter of the bloody events.
Today, the Kresovians don't hope anymore that Ukrainian authorities will repent and will start to build relations with Poland based on historical truth. They constantly learn about new facts of the heroization of Bandera and Shukhevych. We can't ignore it. Ukraine's actions are unacceptable. They memorialize bandits, and that hurts us. During memorable actions, the Kresovians opposed the creation of monuments to banderovtsy, and opposed the destruction of Polish monuments in Ukraine, and naming streets after the people who initiated the genocide of the Polish population. In memory of the tortured, they carried in the center of the Polish capital posters saying "We Won't Forget Volyn" and "Stop, Bandera!" Marina Naumova, Nikita Bunakov Alexander Naumov, Pavel Timofeev Vesti from Poland.
