Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Wołyń 1939-1944. Historia, pamięć, pojednanie, by Władysław Filar. 2009. RYTM, Warszawa

The OUN-UPA Genocide of the Poles of Wolyn (Volhynia): All the Canned Exculpations Examined and Refuted

Nowadays, the WWII Ukrainian genocide of the Poles has finally gotten some belated attention, while some commentators have insisted that Poles “forget about it and move on”, especially in the name of “good will”.  The fact that Ukrainians, to this day, deny their genocide against the Poles, is glaring. It creates all the more reason that Poles never forgive or forget. Funny how Jews are never told to “forget about the Holocaust and move on”.

This scholarly work utilizes Polish, Ukrainian, German, Jewish, and Soviet sources. Far from being anti-Ukrainian, Filar the author acknowledges past Polish wrongs against Ukrainians (p. 26-on), and mentions the efforts of anti-separatist and Polonophile Ukrainians (e. g., p. 47: Including members of the prewar center-right UNDO, and some Petlurites).

UNCONTROLLED OR UNDISCIPLINED UKRAINIAN BANDS?

Laughable excuses about the Ukrainian murders of Poles being the deeds of undisciplined Ukrainian individuals, acting on their own, are preposterous. On July 11, 1943, for example, over 160 [typo? 60] rural Polish settlements were near-simultaneously attacked in an obviously well-coordinated genocidal action. (p. 185, 190). This was undoubtedly a well-planned and well-executed genocidal operation that was the exact opposite of “undisciplined Ukrainian individuals acting on their own”!

UKRAINIAN VENGEANCE FOR PAST POLISH WRONGS?

Ukrainian UPA apologists try to create a false symmetry and false reciprocity in acts involving Poles and Ukrainians. Whatever the injustices that Poles had done to Ukrainians, they were relatively minor. There never was an instance when Poles had conducted a brutal genocide against innocent Ukrainian men, women, and children.

Note also that, if we use tit-for-tat thinking, the Ukrainians could have done a retaliatory genocide against the Russians for the genocidal Holodomor. But of course this would never happen, as the Russians would respond with equally barbaric ferocity, and we would see Ukrainians hanging from every tree.

POLES THE NAZI COLLABORATORS? EXCUSE ME!

Ukrainian apologists do an inversion of reality when they blame Poles for “siding with the Germans against the Ukrainians”. Ironically, long before WWII, the OUN had secretly obtained weapons from the Third Reich for use in their acts of terror against Poles and against peace-loving Ukrainians! It is farcical to see Ukrainians complaining about Poles finally playing the German card against Ukrainians, when the Ukrainians had for so long been playing the German card against the Poles!

Oft-repeated Ukrainian complaints about WWII Polish collaborationism are laughable in view of the vastly larger scale of Ukrainian collaborationism with the Germans. (p. 178). Specifically, in the GG (Polish-majority area), there was 1 (one!) Polish Schutzmannschaft Battalion (Nr. 202) in existence against 7 Ukrainian battalions. In the German-occupied portion of Ukraine, the same single Polish battalion contrasted with no less than 64 Ukrainian battalions serving the Nazis!

Ironically, the nontrivial appearance of German-serving Polish police in Volyn (in mid-1943) was itself facilitated by the partial (though not total!–p. 201) earlier desertion of the Ukrainian collaborationist police, in March-April 1943 (pp. 74-75), to join the UPA! If it wasn’t for the earlier Ukrainians collaborationism, this never would have happened in the first place.

SO POLISH COOPERATION WITH GERMANS AND SOVIETS PROVOKED THE UPA GENOCIDE??

Ukrainian apologists continue to invert reality, and to blame the Polish victim. Let us do a reality check.

Filar provides a timeline that decisively debunks the reality-inversion of UPA-apologists. For instance, Polish-German and Polish-Soviet cooperation against Ukrainians, far from serving as some kind of excuse for the UPA genocide against Poles, came well AFTER its start, and in defense against it.

UKRAINIANS VS. POLES: SO THE “POLES STARTED IT”?

Since mid-1941, the Ukrainian collaborationist police had been instrumental in the destruction of Volyn’s Jews. (pp. 110-111). Ukrainian units killed Poles long before Polish units killed Ukrainians. This went back to the 1939 war. By November 1942, Ukrainian police were helping Germans destroy local Polish villages. (p. 166). Already during 1942, the OUN had been frequently murdering Polish individuals and families. (p. 167).

The large-scale OUN-UPA genocide of Poles began in early 1943. (p. 168). In contrast, the first Volhynian Polish guerilla units weren’t deployed until mid-July 1943. (p. 8). Once again, Polish reactions came after the Ukrainian actions, and not the other way around.

SO THE POLES SERVED THE GERMANS IN THE PACIFICATION OF UKRAINIAN VILLAGES?

The timing of events, once again, refutes the Ukrainian apologists. No German-serving Polish police units existed in Wolyn until March 1943 (pp. 198-199)(and as confirmed by Soviet guerilla sources: pp. 186-187), and these didn’t become appreciable until June 1943 (p. 187)–long AFTER the start of the UPA genocide of Volyn’s Poles, and then largely as a form of self-defense against it.

The Polish Underground reluctantly tolerated Polish collaborationism owing to the otherwise-untenable situation facing the Poles. (p. 188). The sole-existing Polish SCHUTZMANNSCHAFT Battalion, 202, didn’t arrive from Krakow until May 1943 (p. 182) to wreak its revenge. However, this came AFTER the first genocidal wave of UPA terror against Polish villages and, besides this, was a drop in the ocean compared with the earlier murderous Ukrainian actions against Poles.

It is untrue that Germans commonly used ethnic Polish police to attack Ukrainian settlements. Whether intentionally or not, the Germans used Polish-speaking Germans (Silesians and VOLKSDEUTSCHE) for such purposes, and these were commonly mistaken by Ukrainians for ethnic Poles. (p. 201).

SO THE POLES PROVOKED THE UPA GENOCIDE BY SIDING WITH THE SOVIETS? LAUGH

Ukrainian apologists complain that the Poles played the Soviet card against Ukrainians, when Ukrainians had long earlier been playing the Soviet card against Poles. Ironic to the excuse that Polish-Soviet cooperation somehow justified genocide, its Ukrainian counterpart went back to 1939. (pp. 42-43). Reality check: Well after the start of the OUN-UPA genocide, Poles were reluctant to contact Soviet partisans for help because the latter would confiscate the Poles’ meager firearms. (p. 168). Though there were Polish Communists among Soviet partisans as early as February 1943 (p. 204), Polish-Soviet cooperation didn’t become significant until much later, and then because the Poles, facing genocide at the hands of the UPA, had no other choice.

BLAMING POLES FOR DEFENDING THEMSELVES: SO THE POLES PROVOKED THE UPA GENOCIDE BY (BELATEDLY) FIGHTING BACK?

The Ukrainian blame-the-victim tactics again invert reality. In actuality, strongly-defended Polish villages (samoobrony) didn’t become common until June 1943 (p. 174), 186), which was many months AFTER the start of the UPA genocidal attacks on multitudes of heretofore-unarmed Polish villages.

By early 1944, they, together with the full deployment of the 27th Volhynian Division of the AK (Polish Home Army), caused the relative safety of the surviving Polish communities situated between the Bug and Stochod (Stokhod) Rivers. (p. 174).

UNILATERAL OUN-UPA GENOCIDE AND THE MYTH OF A POLISH-UKRAINIAN WAR

All the foregoing add up to the inescapable fact that, at least until the latter half of 1943, there was no semblance of any “Polish-Ukrainian war”. (p. 355). Until that time, Polish blood had been cheap–six months of unilateral, unanswered slaughter of mostly-defenseless Polish men, women, and children by the OUN-UPA. The Polish-Ukrainian War came later. The Polish-Ukrainian war was the outcome, not the cause, of the UPA genocide of Poles.

SO “BOTH SIDES” ENGAGED IN GENOCIDE? HARDLY

Although there were some AK (ARMIA KRAJOWA, or Home Army) units which later retaliated savagely (p. 154), AK-sponsored reprisals were belated and, even then, were very limited. In fact, the total number of Volhynian Ukrainians killed by the AK, 2,200 (p. 111), pales in comparison with the 50,000-60,000 Volhynian Polish victims. [Some sources estimate 70,000 or more, and this does not include the Poles murdered by Ukrainians in other parts of the prewar Kresy.]