Meat: Ukrainian Sensitivity to Podkarpacie

Murders, plunders, actions of extermination of the Polish population by Ukrainians resulted from far-reaching, deranged visions of chauvinists from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the glorified Ukrainian Insurgency Army.

These visions spread through the Borders of the Republic long before the outbreak of planet War II, and fueled by many Greek Catholic pops — who alternatively of acting as shepherds jumped into the shoes of patrons of crime — besides possessed Ukrainian civilians, who, according to the accounts of the witnesses of that period, lived like brothers.

Unfortunately, evil and hatred prevailed, and the wave of crime spread not only after Volyn and Podolu, but besides after the land of Lviv, Stanislaw, Zamość and Podkarpacie. And it is from Podkarpacie, specifically from the Lubacz district, that I would like to mention the memories of selected Witnesses of dramatic events which were prepared by Ukrainian bands before the end of the war.

These selected fragments of the memory of the Witnesses from Podkarpackie lands, which, if not for Operation “Wisła”, supported by erstwhile National Army guerrillas, Peasants Battalions and another honest and brave Poles, would absorb much more innocent Polish blood.

I stress: Poles from these areas were engaged in the operation “Wisła” not for political reasons, to strengthen the Stalinist occupation, but to have access to weapons and to save their children, wives, mothers and grandchildren from steppe bandits whom Ukraine present calls liberators and warriors for independence.

Report of the Witness Władysław Rachwal: In the period of April 1944, the murders on the Polish population in the full territory of Lubaczów began. The populace sought refuge behind San in the powiats located in the districts west of the territory of Lubaczów. The territory of Lubaczowo left masso. The road led through Las Bachorski [located between Lipina and Jarosław – JM]. The UPA bandits said the harvest came for them, so they murdered everyone: children, women, old people. The victims had broken bones of hands, legs, spine and another body distortions. The bodies of the murdered were so massacred by giving them various blows, punches, and another tortures with peculiar execution tools that in many cases it was hard to identify the murdered person. It was a beastly thing that can't be described.

Piotr Hell's account: In the Bacorski Forest, the Polish population fleeing San, soldiers of the Polish Army and russian soldiers were mass-killed. present there are human bones there. The UPA bandits brutally murdered their victims. They'd break bones, stick a wire in their eyes, knock out their eyes.

Michał Dzialski's account: This was in 1944, it is immediately after the liberation of the Lubacz territory from German occupation. I can't remember precisely the date, but I have a terrible image of the crime perfectly in my memory. Going, I met about 20 Polish Army soldiers murdered by a band in the Bachorski Forest. The view was terrible. The bodies of soldiers massacred, without uniforms, without underwear lay on the road.

It was 1944, right after the Soviets displaced German troops (see, for example, the interview with Władysław Zimon from Bornica in Podkarpacie). From that minute on, despite the fact that the war had actually ended, Podkarpacie began to drip with the blood of innocent Poles. Ukrainians — especially those present glorified behind the Bug of the Ukrainian Insurgency Army — began mass execution of our countrymen. They killed without a second thought.

In May 1945, after a series of drastic murders, they made a brazen appeal. This was a call full of lies and cynicism to make it easier for Ukrainians to gain land from Sanu to the east, preceded by the expulsion and execution of Polish residents — which was effectively hampered by guerrillas taking part in Operation Wisła.

With full awareness of the genocide carried out by its formation, especially in Volyn, UPA began to talk with words which could easy be confused with the communicative of the contemporary Sakiewiczs and others. There is no mention of Sarmatian Katyn (1652), martyrdom of St.Andrew Bobola, crimes on the Lviv Eagles, or inhabitants of Podlów villages. There is besides no mention of Ukrainian collaboration with the 3rd Reich, beastlyness, or genocide that they themselves prepared in Volyn or Podkarpacie — to which the inhabitants were addressed.

There is, however, a pile of lies about the supposedly shared past and the common conflict against the Soviets and Germany, and the invitation to fight the Bolsheviks together — the fight which the Ukrainians claim to have fought... quartering the bodies of Polish civilians.

The full call ends with, of course, a flag salute, which should be understood as “if you do not turn to our side, we will cut you to pieces”, as we have already proved. This is the sensitivity of Ukrainian heroes in full swing.

Have you read about this in Polish past books? Did mainstream, government media inform you of the sensitivity of Ukrainian heroes in Podkarpacie during and after planet War II?

The last Witnesses are inactive alive and remember the gehenna that Rusini prepared for them — since the war calling themselves Ukrainians. Many of them left their memories on paper. Others of those days remember in front of my cameras.

I am convinced that these memories are an effective weapon in the fight for the truth, and at the same time a brick in building a monument for those whose Ukrainian state and the Filoukrainian power settled in Poland are doomed to forget. Hundreds of accounts of these tragic times will shortly be published in a multivolume book publication, which I believe should be in the library of all Polish patriot, and its content should be passed on to subsequent generations.

Consider this article and all interviews with the Witnesses that I have prepared and published as a prelude to my latest book with memories of Poles who survived from the Ukrainian axe. Tom I is especially devoted to Poles murdered in Volyn, Podol and east Małopolska. In Volume II and others, the Witnesses from Podkarpacie and Zamość will speak.

I insist! I do not print these facts or memories to fuel hatred of the Ukrainians. I'm not saying this to get anyone to come at them, hurt them, or make them. On the contrary, I say so that they besides receive a lesson in past from us, which they will not learn in schools beyond the east border or in pop culture.

Poles, let us be people towards Ukrainians: Let us give them the fact — which they besides deserve as humans. Let us give them the fact and without complexes let us repeat that Poland will never be banded, and the Polish Nation will never let the glorification of criminals.

Jacek Międlar