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The Witnesses
“Swing your sickle, swing your knife, at the ‘Liakh’ to take his life” — Accounts of the Survivors of the Volhynian Massacres
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What were the Volhynian Massacres?
The Volhynian massacres were anti-Polish genocidal ethnic cleansings conducted by Ukrainian nationalists.
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Chronology
1941/1942 — Ukrainians in Volhynia begin to form military detachments, partly for protection against the pacifications conducted by German units with the use of Ukrainian police. Birth of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrayins’ka Povstans’ka Armiya, UPA) led by the prewar Petlura-supporter Taras Bulba-Borovets.
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Ukrainians in Interwar Poland, 1918-1939
Having been annexed by its neighbors in the late 18th century, the Polish state, as reconstituted directly after WWI, had approx. 5 million Ukrainian inhabitants. This was roughly 16% of the population. In some south-eastern regions (Volhynia, Eastern Galicia) Ukrainians constituted the majority. Most Ukrainians from Volhynia and to the west in the Lublin Voivodeship were Orthodox Christians.
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September 1939 and the Soviet Occupation
he course of events sped up after the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. 110,000 of the one million soldiers of the Polish Army were Ukrainian. They fought arm-in-arm with the other soldiers of the Polish Army. At the same time, however, a Ukrainian nationalist terror flared up in Volhynia, particularly after the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939.
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The German Occupation, and the Holocaust
Many Ukrainians hoped that the Third Reich would help create a Ukrainian state. In the summer of 1941 Ukrainian inhabitants of many localities enthusiastically welcomed the arriving German detachments. Ukrainians erected arches to welcome the Germans and they put up Ukrainian flags. On 30 June OUN-B set up Jaroslaw Stećko government in Lvov. Germans, however, were not interested in this political offer and sent the OUN-B leaders (including Bandera) to concentration camps.
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The Genocide on Poles Conducted by the OUN-B and UPA
Following the mass deportations and arrests carried out by the NKVD and after the subsequent German repressions (e.g., deportation to the Reich to forced labor, arrests, detention in camps, and mass executions), by 1943 Poles constituted only 10−12 % of the entire population of Volhynia. Poles became an ethnic group deprived of most of its social activists, intellectuals, and military men. Thus, the Poles did not seek to create conflict situations.
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The Effects of the Volhynian Massacres
In 1944 the anti-Polish terror of the OUN-UPA shifted to Eastern Galicia (the Lvov, Stanisławów, and Tarnopol voivodeships) as well as to the Lublin region.
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