Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia

Rare card · No. 45780

The massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia were carried out in German-occupied Poland by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), with the support of parts of the local Ukrainian population, against the Polish minority in Volhynia, Eastern Galicia, parts of Polesia, and the Lublin region from 1943 to 1945. The UPA's actions resulted in up to 100,000 Polish deaths. The peak of the massacres took place in July and August 1943. These killings were exceptionally brutal, and most of the victims were women and children. Other victims of the massacres included several hundred Armenians, Jews, Russians, Czechs, Georgians, and Ukrainians who were part of Polish families or opposed the UPA and impeded the massacres by hiding Polish escapees. The killings were an attempt at ethnic cleansing to prevent the post-war Polish state from asserting its sovereignty over Ukrainian-majority areas that had been part of the pre-war Polish state. The decision to force the Polish population to leave areas...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Władysława Siemaszków, Ludobójstwo, page 1294, from Henryk Słowiński collection, Public domain