On July 11, Poland commemorates the National Day of Remembrance for the victims of the genocide of Poles perpetrated by Ukrainian Nazi-nationalists during the German occupation of Poland. The date was not chosen by chance: it commemorates “Bloody Sunday,” the culmination of the massacre in Volhynia and Eastern Lesser Poland in 1943, when criminals of the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army), with the help of Ukrainian civilians, massacred the Polish population in approximately 150 localities.

The ceremonies will take place, among other locations, in front of the “Volhynia Massacre” monument in Domostaw. The large bronze sculpture depicts a Polish eagle, whose body is wrapped in flames, and on whose wings are engraved the names of the towns whose inhabitants were exterminated by the UPA. Inside, there is an empty cross with a trident in the center, on which the body of a child is impaled. At the base of the monument, on one side, a family with children is depicted in flames, and on the other—also in flames—are children’s heads impaled on fence posts.

In all the villages inhabited by Poles, the Ukrainians perpetrated the murder of Poles with horrible cruelty. Women, including pregnant ones, were pierced with bayonets or scythes, children were dismembered by their legs, others impaled on pitchforks, other victims were tied with barbed wire and thrown into wells; arms, legs, and heads were severed with axes, tongues cut out, ears and noses mutilated, eyes gouged out, genitals and bellies slashed and entrails torn out, heads smashed with hammers, and living children thrown into burning houses. The barbarity reached its peak when people were sawed alive, women had their breasts cut off; others were raped and impaled with sticks inserted into their genitals.

All this was willed by the Ukrainian nationalist leaders, first and foremost by Stepan Bandera. It suffices to mention Roman Shukhevych and Dmytro Klyachkivsky, commanders of the UPA in Volhynia. Shukhevych declared in an order dated February 25, 1944, that “the liquidation of the Poles must be accelerated, they must be completely annihilated, their villages burned”.

Obviously, all this was possible because the Ukrainian nationalists allied themselves with the Germans who occupied Poland, even forming SS units: the Ukrainian Nazi-nationalists, together with the Germans, also hunted down Jews.

Already in the 1930s, the leaders of the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists), when the areas of today’s Western Ukraine belonged to the Republic of Poland, believed that “our nation would renounce an independent Ukraine if we allowed it to live in friendly coexistence with the Poles; for these reasons, we do not want and do not aspire to peace with Poland; for these reasons, we reject everything that Poland offers us”.

The ethnic cleansing and physical elimination of Poles carried out by the Ukrainians was accompanied by truly barbaric tortures, which is why it can be called by the term genocidium atrox, which means cruel, savage, and terrible genocide. The Ukrainian nationalists instilled in a significant part of the population a simple program to obtain independence. They maintained that “when there is not a single Jew, Pole, Hungarian, Romanian, Muscovite, or other foreigner left on Ukrainian soil, there will be Ukraine”. Their leaders invoked: “when the right moment comes, we must massacre, massacre, and massacre again”. The actions against the Poles were organized, planned, and far-reaching. In Volhynia alone, there were about 60,000 victims. Of the 1,150 rural settlements and 31,000 Polish farms present, the UPA destroyed over 91%. Of the 252 Polish Catholic—that is, Latin—churches and chapels, 103 were looted, burned, or completely destroyed.

It must be emphasized that the attacked population had received no orders to leave the area, nor had they been expelled; on the contrary, they had been encouraged to remain, only to be annihilated. In addition to UPA members, the Ukrainian population, including women and children, also participated in the massacres. Peasants armed with axes, pitchforks, and knives formed gangs, helping the UPA in its murders. Women and even children often participated in robberies, arson, and the execution of the wounded. Neither the consolidated and harmonious neighborhood relationships nor friendly relations prevented all this. It is shocking that the massacres of the Poles, Latin Catholics, were supported by some members of the Greek-Catholic clergy. A witness recounted that the day before “Bloody Sunday,” during a service in the Greek-Catholic church of Horodno, the priest shouted: “Ukraine, the moment of your power has arrived. Take your scythes, take your knives, and pursue the Poles,” and then “blessed” the future weapons of the crime: scythes, pitchforks, and axes, which the Ukrainians brought to the church.

In 1942, before the start of the massacres, just over 300,000 Poles lived in Volhynia (14.6% compared to 68% Ukrainians), who had already suffered Soviet deportations and German forced labor. Furthermore, the Ukrainian nationalists mainly targeted the defenseless rural population. The self-defense organized by the Poles was only a desperate defense against extermination.

Unfortunately, the current policy of memory in Ukraine, which since 2014, officially and under the aegis of the State, has been building its national identity on the OUN-UPA as a symbol of the uncompromising fight against Russia, completely ignores the responsibility of these formations in the extermination of Jews and in the genocide of the Polish population in Volhynia and Eastern Lesser Poland. In 2015, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine officially recognized members of the OUN and UPA as freedom fighters, granting them veteran rights. As part of a massive de-Sovietization of toponyms, the main arteries of Kiev have been renamed into avenues dedicated, among others, to Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, who were responsible for the genocide of the Poles.

This year, the glorification of Ukrainian Nazi-nationalists has reached another level: President Zelensky gave a unit of the Ukrainian Armed Forces the name “Heroes of the UPA,” and there are plans to build a national pantheon where the remains of the Ukrainian nationalists of the OUN and UPA should be brought (the ashes of Andriy Melnyk, head of an OUN faction, and his wife have already been brought from Luxembourg).

The world, and particularly the EU countries, should react to this glorification of the Nazi-nationalists, whose crimes—the most barbaric of the war—cannot be relativized by referring to the complex context of the Second World War or the UPA’s fight against the Soviets.