Mirosław Szumiło, Dmytro Klyachkivsky "Klym Savur" - the main perpetrator of the Volhynian genocide | przystanekhistoria.pl

The Neighbors’ Blood. Genocide in Volhynia and Galicia 1943-1945 exhibition prepared by the Lublin Branch of the IPN’s National Education Office

Polish-Ukrainian Historical Disputes over the Volhynian Massacres

The anti-Polish drive of the pro-Bandera Ukrainian underground during World War II, together with the subsequent Polish retaliation it largely spawned, undoubtedly mark the bloodiest period of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict in the 1940s. This conflict raged in territories which were within Poland’s interwar borders (basically, the country’s south-east), and which, taken as a whole, had nearly co-equal Polish and Ukrainian populations.

Criminal Investigations

Genocide is a legal category. The Volhynian massacres have all the traits of genocide listed in the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which defines genocide as an act “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”

The Ukrainian Righteous

According to a range of testimonies, many Ukrainians helped their Polish neighbors whose lives were in danger.

What were the Volhynian Massacres?

The Volhynian massacres were anti-Polish genocidal ethnic cleansings conducted by Ukrainian nationalists.