Known as the Volhynia Massacre, the killings which continue to cause tensions between the two countries, took place between 1943 and 1945 in disputed territories in the regions of Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.
Writing on X, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: “Today, on the 81st anniversary of the tragic events in the eastern territories of the former Second Republic of Poland, we pay tribute to the Poles who were murdered in Volhynia and Eastern Lesser Poland.”
Pertinently, it added: “May we never again let prejudice sow division between our nations.”
After paying tribute to the victims, President Andrzej Duda stressed the importance of facing up to the truth: “This challenge is particularly important today, when the full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine has been going on for two years, where not only the future of the country, but also of our region and the whole of Europe is being decided.”
Hinting at Russia’s desire to drive a wedge between Poland and Ukraine, Duda continued: “Common enemies do everything to divide us. They want to use our history and the suffering of our compatriots to further their interests.
“Therefore, let memory and truth, for Poles and Ukrainians, be the foundation on which we build the future of our nations.”
The massacres that took place in part of pre-war Poland but which is today part of western Ukraine, were carried out by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the ultra-nationalist Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).
Seen as an attempt to curtail the future post-war Polish state from staking claim to Ukrainian-majority areas, the widespread murder of Poles began in earnest on July 11, 1943, with the Kisielin Massacre.
Having surrounded a Catholic church, Ukrainian units hauled out between 60 to 90 Poles that had gathered inside and forced them to strip before mowing them down with machine gun fire.
While this was one of the better-known of all the massacres, in all 96 villages and settlements were targeted on that day alone - as such, since 2016, July 11 has been officially designated in Poland as a National Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Genocide.
The scale of the brutality still clouds Ukrainian-Polish relations despite the significant progress that has been made since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In view of this, several politicians have urged the public not to allow this bitter history to shape judgements or derail the need to present a united front against Putin’s Russia.
The Ukrainian point of view
The main difference in approach between Polish and Ukrainian historians rests on the terminology used to describe and evaluate the Volhynia Massacre.
Some Ukrainian historians tend to treat these events, which the perpetrators themselves called an “anti-Polish operation”, as a stage in the “second Polish-Ukrainian war of 1942−1947.”
The supporters of this argument regard the massacres of 1943-1945 as a continuation of the Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918−1919 for control over Lwów and Eastern Galicia, which ended in the Ukrainian defeat. More moderate Ukrainian researchers use the term “Volhynian tragedy.”
In contemporary Ukraine, Stepan Bandera - the leader of the OUN - and his forces are largely viewed as freedom fighters that attempted to reclaim Ukrainian land and forge an independent state.
