an account of the violence that took place in the summer of 1943 in Southeastern Poland they came and smashed his head with an ax then they went in his wife was sleeping in bed when they struck the woman in the head with an axe then her son about 9 or 10 years old sprang up and cried stepan don't kill me I'll give you some bread this means that it was a man the child knew and that man struck the boy with an axe in the head and the child collapsed onto the floor the two eldest
boys were sleeping up on the warming stove out of sight and thus survived the killers were Ukrainian nationalists and their victims poles welcome to a day in history today the horrors of the Vol hindian massacres among the many things that the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine did was bring two groups of people together who nearly 80 years before had been at each other's throats literally today Poland and Ukraine are close allies and Poland has supplied Ukraine with billions of dollars of supplies equipment and weapons to help it fight off Putin's Invasion there are very few
people alive who experienced the events were going to tell you about today but if they were they would likely be shocked that Poland and Ukraine are so close what's more they would be be amazed that though it took 80 years to happen the president of Ukraine recognized that during the last half of World War II and for a time after the war was over he today on a day in history the massacres in volinia volin or volino no country lost a higher percentage of its population in World War II than Poland nearly one in five
polls lost their lives during the war including ethnic polls polish Jews and others almost 6 million Poes lost their lives during the war out of a pre-war population of 34 million when you then consider the number of people sent to the Nazi death camps during the war approximately 10 to 12 million people were killed in Poland from 1939 to 45 Poland is about the size of New Mexico and it became a graveyard unfortunately for Poland its geographic location has put it in the path of many other nations Kings and Empires to the north it Sweden
which occupied large swwa of Northern Poland for many years in the 17th and 18th centuries to the West is Germany and before 1871 the most powerful German Kingdom Prussia to the South were the Austrian and austr Hungarian Empires and to the east the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union which sometimes included the territory of today's Ukraine from 1772 to 1918 Poland's territory was divided between Prussia Germany Austria and Russia when World War I ended the polls aided by the terms of the Treaty of Versa won their independence in the southeastern region of Eastern Galicia a
large part of the population was ethnic Ukrainian in the province just to the north known as volinia in English volino in Ukrainian and polish before the Holocaust about 30% of the people in volinia were Jews most of the rest were poles along with some roma and a small ethnic group called The lmco until World War II most Poes and ukrainians in volinia got along so many ethnicities had lived shared and governed the region for so long that a sense of shared history and interdependence had developed making the outbreak of violence all the more shocking and
tragic on September 1st 1939 Hitler invaded Poland from the West just over 2 weeks later Stalin ordered the Red Army to occupy the Eastern portion of Poland squeezed by two of the most powerful countries on Earth the poles were doomed in eastern Poland the Red Army rounded up well-known polish nationalists intellectuals of almost all points of view except communists as well as teachers doctors bureaucrats and captured soldiers anyone the Soviets believed might lead or Inspire resistance to their rule in the first few weeks of the Soviet occupation tens of thousands of polls were shot in
Nazi occupied Western Poland the same thing happened except Communists were Target number one followed closely by nationalist polish army officers and Aristocrats and of course polish Jews though in 1939 to 40 the worst years of the Holocaust were in the future when the Nazis broke their non-aggression pact with Stalin on June 22nd 1941 they did the same thing to Eastern Poland that they had done in the west and within a very short time the Holocaust began in Earnest one of the first regions of the Soviet Union to fall to the Germans was Western Ukraine and
there the Nazis found a useful Ally in 1922 Ukraine became the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic the first half of the 20th century was as bloody and horrifying for most ukrainians as it was for most poles until 1917 when s Nicholas II abdicated in the face of Revolution the region was part of the Russian Empire after his abdication there was a power vacuum and various groups fight for power Ukrainian and Russian Bolsheviks fought Russian and Ukrainian white armies supporting a return of the royal family communist and socialist groups struggled against one another the Crimean Tartar and
cacs fought for an independent Crimea in Ukraine throughout the country but mainly in the western regions nationalist ukrainians of all Stripes from Democrats to ultra nationalists fought for an independent Ukrainian State all of these movements were crushed or suppressed in a variety of ways when the Soviet Red Army won the Russian Civil War against the whites in 1922 the man with the most power over Ukraine and the ukrainians in 1922 was Joseph Stalin Secretary of nationalities for the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1923 it was Stalin who was ultimately responsible for the brutal Crackdown on
any form of nationalism in Ukraine whether it came from the ukrainians Tatar kacs or other ethnic groups in the country throughout the country the leading men and women of the various nationalist movements in Ukraine were killed jailed or sent to Siberia where most died thousands of them the Ukrainian nationalists who survived either went into hiding or binded their time still throughout the 1920s and into the first 2 years of the 1930s a variety of underground groups circulated Nationalist and anti-soviet propaganda and to some extent carried out sabotage and delaying tactics against Stalin's big plan for
Ukraine the seizure of private farms and the formation of huge collectives where Farmers would be responsible for filling the somewhat arbitrary and unrealistic quotas of Wheat and other crops the Ukraine grew in immense quantities you can find information on many as aspects of Stalin's horrific rule on our Channel many factors caused the hollow deore or the great Ukrainian famine and that's a story for another video but suffice it to say that through intentional seizure of crops officials afraid to report accurate yields to Stalin bad weather and more a famine tore through Ukraine from 1932 to
1933 killing between 3.5 and 5 million people attempts to alleviate the suffering in Ukraine were mostly rejected by Stalin even once he found out the true scope of the disaster why because he and others in the Kremlin wanted to weaken the Ukrainian people and Crush Ukrainian nationalism to a large extent he did but the desire of many ukrainians especially in the western part of the country to become independent remained throughout the 1930s the spirit of Ukrainian nationalism went underground or into the country's forests hills and mountains waiting for its moment in 1926 Marshall Joseph pelski
one of the leading figures of the Polish government since 1918 staged a coup and put himself in power pazi believed that the western style democratic system put in place in Poland since 1918 was weak and was allowing Poland to be torn apart by Communists sponsored by the Soviet Union and various nationalist movements among the ethnic groups of the country the largest non-polish ethnic group aside from the Jews was the ukrainians while there were sizable numbers of ukrainians throughout much of Poland most lived in the southwest in and around the region of fenia before pilsudski's nationalist
coup most Poes and ukrainians in volin lived in relative Harmony many ukrainians in Poland were catholic but those who belonged to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church would generally left to worship as they pleased many if not most people in volinia could speak one another's language at least well enough to make themselves understood and there were significant numbers of Polish Ukrainian marriages most of the people in volinia also hated the Soviet Union and were conscious of the threat that it posed both groups of people had experienced Russian and Soviet rule firsthand unfortunately pazi and the men around
him believed the ukrainians in volinia and Eastern Galicia to be a threat to Poland and began enacting laws restricting the use of Ukrainian in public fired Ukrainian civil servants and replaced them with ethnic poles and put nationalist polls in positions of power throughout the region from 1926 to 1939 the ukrainians of Southeastern Poland experienced increasing levels of discrimination worse still polish government propaganda some of it subtle some of it not portrayed the ukrainians of Poland as primitive and backward or plotting to either separate from Poland or move to join the Ukrainian Soviet Republic piludi and
his men were vilant anti-communist and though nine out of 10 pre-World War II polish ukrainians would rather have eaten glass than join the Soviet Union the threat of communist expansion into Poland was enough to start to slowly turn neighbor against neighbor when the Soviet Union took over Eastern Poland in 1939 the Red Army and the Soviet Secret Police combed the countryside crushing any ideas of autonomy for the ukrainians of volinia fortunately or unfortunately depending on who you were the Soviets were not able to crush a group called The oun or organization of Ukrainian nationalists who
were hiding in the woods and forests of both Ukraine and volinia the story of the formation and Rise of the oun is complicated and best left to another time but by the outbreak of World War II the oun had splintered into two main groups o m led by Andre Melnick and O NB led by Stan Banda both groups were intensely nationalistic and both wanted an independent Ukraine however as time went by and both Soviet and polish repression continued the onb became the more powerful and influential group in Ukraine and the Nations around it mostly Russia
stepan Bandera's Legacy is problematic today a great many ukrainians while condemning the violent excesses of Bandera's movement and his cooperation with the Nazis during World War II also recognize him as one of the leaders of the pro-independence movement something which Ukraine only achieved in 1991 and is fighting for today a smaller group R Bandera but these are primarily Ultra nationalist ukrainians who have Fringe and Neo fascist beliefs most ukrainians today reject Bandera as being an anti-semite and collaborator who brought disgrace to their people through his and his followers' actions Bandera and the onb called for
an independent Ukraine which would include the region of volinia where ethnic ukrainians were the majority Bandera was anti-semitic in the extreme but believed that Jews and every other ethnic group should be driven from Ukrainian territory or what he thought should be Ukrainian territory driven or killed when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 they saw the Ukrainian nationalists of both OU groups as useful allies in crushing not only the Soviet system but also in their plans to eliminate the Jews of Ukraine while both oun groups advocated for a Ukraine free of foreigners at least
some of them believe that through negotiation pressure and the threat of violence non- ukrainians in Ukraine and volinia could be forced out of the country however both branches of the oun as well as other smaller groups and a large segment of the Ukrainian population were virulently anti-semitic when the Germans began the mass killing of Jews on Ukrainian territory the infamous Holocaust by bullets conducted by the SS Insight openin or special action groups the oun saw their chance to remove the Jews from Ukrainian life for good oun Ukrainian militia men aided the Nazis in locating deporting
and shooting Jews by the hundreds of thousands in volinia ukrainians working with the Nazis took part in the killing of perhaps 200,000 Jews and developed a reputation for extreme brutality even among the Nazis many historians believed that the actions of the on along with the actions of the many ukrainians who later worked as guards in termination camps such as soor and Treblinka exposed them to and encouraged them to take part in such unbelievable horror that they became numb to human suffering combined with the anti-polish feelings that had been growing in volinia and Ukraine since pudi's
coup and the rise of violent fascism throughout Europe by 1943 the ukrainians of the onb and other groups had accepted and even embraced the idea that all non- ukrainians in what they believed was Ukrainian territory should be eliminated in July 1943 Hitler's massive armored attacked at ksk was defeated by an even more massive Soviet Counterattack after ksk it was clear to most people that Nazi Germany would eventually be defeated throughout the summer and into the fall of 1943 the Soviets began to push the Germans steadily backward and were pushing into Ukraine and towards Poland Bandera
and the other radicals in the O believe that before the Soviets could take over and consolidate Ukraine at least Western Ukraine once again they needed to do two things set up a government and Proclaim an independent Ukrainian state which included volinia the Nazis had already done the ukrainians a favor by killing most of the Jews of Ukraine and as the Nazis pushed East in 1941 to 42 Stalin had deported the Crimean tartars to Siberia fearing they would join the Nazis and push for their own territory like the oun eastern Ukraine as we have seen in
the last two years during Putin's so-called Special Operation is populated by both ukrainians and ethnic Russians Bandera and the rest of the on realized that if they were going to form an independent nation it would have to be in one Western Ukraine and gain volinia the 's military Wing the UPA or Ukrainian Insurgent Army began a program of what polls called genocide in volinia large groups of dozens and sometimes hundreds of men and occasionally women began to raid polish Villages by 1943 many of these men had seen and participated in mass killings many times to
most of them killing became an everyday thing psychologists and sociologists have studied what happens to many people in these circumstances fueled by hatred or Injustice and given permission by their leaders and Society some people begin to enjoy killing they make a game of it not only killing for so-called political reasons but for sport exhilaration and like many addicts they have to do more and in more ways be warned now the killings in volinia were brutal beyond belief throughout the rest of 1943 and into the summer of 1944 the onb and UPA along with many Ukrainian
Villages who had been riled up by on propaganda as well as the actions of the pre-war polish government spread out through the countryside killing Poes and any remaining Jews they could find though there was plenty of gun violence one of the things that makes the killings in binia different was that much of the killing was done with the tools that any rural farm would have sides hammers knives and especially axes in hundreds of villages throughout that year and even for a short time after ukrainians went on a killing spree of course not all of the
vhenan ukrainians became murderers many of them have since been named the Ukrainian righteous for helping to save poles and Jews from death and anyone believed to be helping Poes or Jews was at risk of a horrible death throughout volinia Ukrainian husbands were forced to kill their polish wives forced meaning beaten or tortured within an inch of their lives and the half Ukrainian half polish children threatened those who refused were killed on the spot many accounts tell of men being brought to the center of the village their children or extended families being forced to watch while
they were bludgeoned with hammers or beheaded with axes in many places the Polish resistance Army the AK or armia kova sent men or weapons to polish villages to help defend them against the oun UPA but their ability to do that was limited by their struggle against the Nazis the first people killed were the men in many places women and girls were raped and then killed many old men women and children were locked inside churches which were set on fire in some places men who had seen too much and only came alive around violence and death
became almost unrecognizable as human beings eyes were gouged out living babies were torn apart The Unborn were cut from their mother's bellies people were set on fire the list is on almost endless by this time most German units in the area were rear Echelon Soldiers made up of older men who were under orders to not interfere but amazingly enough there are a number of accounts of German soldiers helping and evacuating polish civilians who had survived the horrors when the Red Army retook Soviet Ukraine and Poland they realized that things in volinia could spiral completely out
of control by 19 1945 the Polish AK had become a force to be reckoned with in battles with Soviet troops as well as polish militias had weakened the O by the end of the war the situation in volinia had turned into a cycle of Revenge it's important to know that while the majority of the killings in the region were done by the O UPA polish militias also roamed the countryside attacking Ukrainian villagers in Revenge and their brutality was not much different from that of their enemies feelings on this issue still run strong in Poland and
to a degree in Ukraine so accurate estimates of the numbers killed on both sides are hard to come by but in general historians from outside the region believe the number of poles killed could have been well over a 100,000 and the numbers of ukrainians nearing 15,000 what put a stop to the killing the Red Army and the Yalta agreements made by Stalin Church Hill and Roosevelt in February 1945 at the end of the war the borders of Poland were shifted West at the expense of Germany the Soviets took part of Eastern Poland and volinia was
annexed to Ukraine those poles who had survived and remained in the region were either sent to Poland or to Siberia today Po's make up less than 1% of the population of Ukraine on January 23rd 2023 Ukrainian president zalinski and Polish president Andre Duda met in laviv once a Polish City to discuss Poland's military aid to Ukraine while there they stopped at a church to honor the victims of what the poles call a genocide and many ukrainians still call a case of ethnic cleansing thank you for watching see you next time
