High above the town of Kremenets (Krzemieniec in Polish) there was a one time a huge fortress, a Castle. It has an amazing view of the city below, hundreds of feet below. We drove up the ruins and Wojtek and I walked around them, often on a very narrow, treacherous path with a steep drop off to land beneath. You can see some of the pictures I took of this historic castle here: http://poland.leonkonieczny.com/Poland%202011/Kremenets%20Zamek%20Ruins/index.html.
We spent the previous night in Kremenets, a very nice city. From my hotel room, I could look up and see the ruins of the Castle. If you pay particular attention to one of the photos, you can see something white and like a dome in the far distance. That is the Pochaiv Lavra, which I will cover in another post and it’s own set of pictures.
For many years, this area and city were a part of Poland. It is in the historic area known as Volhynia. But in Polish history, and in Polish hearts, it is a somewhat notorious area too, for the events that happened there beginning In March of 1943. It was in March of 1943 and continuing into 1944 and even into 1945 that the UPA, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, carried out the systematic murder of tens of thousands of Polish citizens. The criteria for this “ethnic cleansing” was only to be Polish. Some 40,000 – 60,000 (or more) Polish people were murdered, some quite brutally, by the UPA. And more were murdered in other areas as well. As a matter of fact, my great-grandfather’s brother was one of the casualties of this terrible even. You can read more about the massacres of the Poles in Volhynia here. But it was not just the murder of innocent men, women and children, it was also a concerted attempt to destroy all traces of anything Polish, truly ethnic cleansing.
Norman Davies writes about these events:
Villages were torched. Roman Catholic priests were axed or crucified. Churches were burned with all their parishioners. Isolated farms were attacked by gangs carrying pitchforks and kitchen knives. Throats were cut. Pregnant women were bayoneted. Children were cut in two. Men were ambushed in the field and led away. The perpetrators could not determine the province’s future. But at least they could determine that it would be a future without Poles.
Another observer reported this: “Ukrainian partisans burned homes, shot or forced back inside those who tried to flee, and used sickles and pitchforks to kill those they captured outside. In some cases, beheaded, crucified, dismembered, or disemboweled bodies were displayed, in order to encourage remaining Poles to flee.”
And a Roman Catholic priest sent this report to Rome: “In 1943, Ukrainians organized a terrible slaughter. Armed, they attacked Poles and murdered them with full cruelty: they cut down with axes, burned alive, gouged eyes and tore tongues, some were wrapped in barbed wire and thrown into pits.”
So, while the remnants of the castle are beautiful, there is also a sort of sadness in Polish hearts when they visit that region and recall the terrible events that took place there 70-some years ago, events that few outside of Poland remember to this day.
There was ethnic cleansing of Poles going on in other areas of Galicia, and estimates of the total number murdered range up to 100,000 people, maybe even more. It’s a sad part of history, but one that should not be forgotten.
At the end of World War II, the Russians did what the Ukrainians started, they redrew the border of Poland and forcibly relocated Poles from Ukraine into Poland. That’s how my Polish relative, originally from Ukraine, ended up in Poland.
Fortunately, today, most Poles and Ukrainians get along, in part fueled by a mutual dislike and distrust of the Russians, who have never done either nationality much of a favor.
