Ukraine's Ambassador to Poland Vasil Bodnar admitted that UPA was among the criminals who murdered Poles. At the same time he combined these acts with crimes committed by people associated with the Polish underground. specified comparison covers the fundamental difference between individual crimes and organized genocide of the Polish population.
Guilty and immediate reservation
Vasil Bodnar referred to the work of the Ukrainian Insurgency Army for crimes in Poles. According to the “Tygodnik Solidarność”, the ambassador stated that there were criminals in UPA who killed Poles. However, he added that criminal acts besides occurred on the Polish side and in the Polish underground.
The first part of this message is simply a step towards truth. The another builds a false symmetry. A reliable communicative is not about silence of crimes committed by Poles. all crime should be named and investigated. However, individual or retaliatory acts must not be utilized to blur the work of the organization which conducted the planned action against the Polish civilian population.
IPN talks about organized genocide
The Institute of National Memory clearly indicates that the CNS-B and UPA were co-responsible for organizing and carrying out genocide of the Polish civilian population in the east Borders of the Second Republic. The mass murders began on Volyn in 1943, and their apogee fell on July. panic later besides included east Małopolska and another areas.
The attacks were aimed to a large degree at civilians. full families and villagers died. The demolition of Polish settlements and temples served to remove Polish presence from these lands. This distinguishes the genocidal policy of the CNS-UPA from the crimes of circumstantial people or branches, even if the Polish side besides had acts requiring condemnation.
The Polish Underground State represented the continuity of the legal state fighting the occupiers. It did not make a program to physically destruct the Ukrainian civilian population. The work of perpetrators on the Polish side cannot be transferred to the full underground or utilized as a historical counterweight for planned cultural cleansing.
Memory is not an obstacle to safety
Poland has an interest in protecting Ukraine from Russian aggression. Russia remains a threat to our security. This does not mean, however, that there is simply a work of silence about Volyn or the adoption of a language that breaks down work as if both sides were pursuing a comparable extermination policy.
A mature partnership requires truth. You request approval to search, to exhume, to bury and to commemorate the victims permanently. Poland does not request collective work from contemporary Ukrainians. He demands simple justice against the murdered citizens of the Second Republic.
The designation of Ukrainian victims of crimes committed by Poles is the work of an honest state. However, this work does not entitle to blur the scale, intent and organized nature of the CNS-UPA genocide. Each case should be assessed according to the facts and not according to the diplomatic request to build a comfortable balance sheet.
Poland needs a clear position
The quality of Polish abroad policy is at stake. A country that gives up the fact about its victims loses its weight towards its partners and the trust of its citizens. aid for the assaulted Ukraine and the hard defence of Polish memory are not contradictory. Both come from national realism.
Warsaw should anticipate from Kiev a clear condemnation of genocide, freedom of search and the end of public glorification of people and formations liable for killing Poles. No hatred of the Ukrainian people. No revenge. But besides without symmetry that turns historical fact into diplomatic compromise.
Source: Banderism / Ukraine (monitor PL)
