On May 13, 2003, the presidents of Ukraine and the Republic of Poland attended the ceremony of unveiling a memorial in Pavlokoma to the Ukrainian victims of the Polish- Ukrainian fratricidal war. The monument is intended as another step on the road to Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation following the unveiling of a memorial to Polish victims of the Volyn tragedy and a pantheon of Polish soldiers at Orliata Cemetery in Lviv. Unfortunately, the solemn ceremony only confirmed the biased attitude of the Polish side to these 60-year-old events and the lack of any desire to renounce stereotypes that were instilled by communist propaganda. These stereotypes are utilized by certain Polish circles that political scientists identify as extreme rightist or radical.
The solemn events in Pavlokoma, involving the Ukrainian and Polish leaders, were preceded by a series of openly anti-Ukrainian publications carried by the right-wing Polish media. For example, in the articles “The UPA Pantheon and Veterans’ Wrath” and “Will the Ukrainian President Say ‘I’m Sorry’?” the newspaper Nasz Dziennik (Our Diary) is outraged by the Ukrainian president’s appeal to Ukrainian veterans concerning reconciliation: “mutual forgiveness in the name of Ukraine, in the name of our children and great-grandchildren.” The authors call those Ukrainians who want the UPA recognized as a WWII combatant people who have “no understanding of basic morals,” and they want the Ukrainian president to apologize “for the Polish victims of the Ukrainian massacre.”
However, not all Polish newspapers were filled with such rhetoric. Rzeczpospolita, for example, carried an article entitled “Poland recognizes its guilt.” The journalist Piotr Koscinski formulated the problem this way: “Reconciliation with Ukraine: it took 60 years for the Polish government to officially honor the memory of all those Ukrainians who were murdered by Polish partisans after the War.”
But further on, Koscinski, like the authors of other articles in the Polish media, including those traditionally regarded as Ukraine-friendly, describes the goal of the two presidents’ visit to Pavlokoma as an opportunity to “bow their heads before the graves commemorating a tragedy that took place 61 years ago, when the Poles (a Polish partisan detachment) murdered 366 local Ukrainians in retaliation for the abduction and killing of 11 Poles (a crime some media attributed to Ukrainian nationalists and others to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army).
Despite documented evidence and recognition by the Polish side of the fact that a crime was perpetrated in Pavlokoma by members of Polish self-defense units and the former Armia Krajowa, the Council for the Protection of the Struggle and Martyrdom did not agree to the inclusion of an appropriate text on the Ukrainian victims’ gravestone. The inscription engraved on the tombstone, made in Ukraine, was coordinated with the Polish side. It reads: “In eternal memory of 366 victims, who died tragically on March 1-3, 1945.”
After placing wreaths at the foot of the memorial, the two presidents placed bouquets at the memorial cross bearing this inscription: “In memory of the Poles, residents of the village of Pavlokoma, who in 1939-45 perished at the hands of Ukrainian nationalists in the ‘inhuman’ land.” This was the inscription at the very moment when the presidents approached it.
However, a fragment of this inscription, which was omitted from the above-mentioned article, was not meant to be seen, nor was it seen, by the two heads of state, because during the flower-laying ceremony, that section of the cross with those lines was hidden beneath the red-and-white ribbon (the Polish national colors) fastened to the cross by a length of Scotch tape. The ribbon hid the words: “...who perished at the hands of Ukrainian nationalists.”
In Poland, the phrase “inhuman land” is used to denote Siberia and the Far East, where Poles (and Ukrainians!) were deported en masse during the first Soviet occupation of the territories of the Second Rzeczpospolita in 1939-1941, on the basis of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Several Polish residents of Pavlokoma were deported at that time.
Only one Polish newspaper focused on the striking difference between the inscriptions on the memorial crosses in Pavlokoma. Marcin Wojcechowski, a journalist with the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, wrote in a satirical article entitled “Pavlokoma: Let us follow this path” (May 15, p. 2) that he was surprised by the differences: “What is also surprising is the differing content of the inscriptions on the monument to the 366 Ukrainian victims of the bloody reprisals and the 9 Poles abducted earlier by the Ukrainian underground.” Wojcechowski asks why none of the murderers of the Ukrainians from Pavlokoma have been identified and sums up: “The differing inscriptions provoke a question from Ukrainians: is their memory simply being discriminated against in Poland?”
I remember the statement that the Polish president made in Pavlokoma: “We must discuss painful topics and our difficult past openly, step by step developing a uniform and fair assessment of all those Polish and Ukrainian war tragedies. All these tragic events... must be thoroughly explained through a dialogue involving politicians, historians, and ordinary people, and also through measures implemented by state institutions. After all, lasting understanding can be achieved only by relying on the truth. We cannot change our past, but we can prevent it from determining our future.”
The Polish historian of Ukrainian background, Yevhen Misylo, is the author of a book about Pavlokoma. Citing files stored at the Rzeszow branch of Poland’s Institute of National Memory, he states that an undisbanded detachment of the Armia Krajowa, numbering 60 men, took part in the destruction of the Ukrainian civilian population of Pavlokoma. The researcher, who has spent many years studying this question, says that there is no evidence that seven Poles were abducted from Pavlokoma by an UPA unit: “...at that time (from January until March 1945) there was not a single unit of Ukrainian insurgents operating within a radius of several dozen kilometers.” Misylo is convinced that the Poles were abducted by a Red Army unit.
I have discovered a document in the Polish Archive of New Acts — a booklet published by the Polish national-liberation underground — which supports Misylo’s assumption. The document paints a vivid picture of the situation in Rzeszow Province at the time, particularly in the vicinity of Dyniv in 1945. Below is this text (translated from the Polish).
THE UKRAINIAN PROBLEM
At the present moment the sowing of any seeds of hatred between Poland and Ukraine is fraught with danger above all for Poland, especially given existing political relations.
We have a Ukrainian problem, not to mention the territories seized by Russia, in our Rzeszow and Lublin voivodeships, and it should have been resolved by means of the so-called repatriation, as agreed upon by the governments of Poland and the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, for two years these territories have been the arena of Russia’s unprecedented and bloodiest exterminating intrigues on our lands. The UPA, i.e., the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, is operating in this territory. It targets Russia, but as a result of the treacherous Soviet game, frequently innocent Poles (author’s emphasis) are the victims. UPA groups, uniting into detachments numbering several thousand men, wage open combat with Zymerski’s subunits.
On 27.08.45, units of the so-called Banderites/UPA/ tried to break into Balyhorod from two sides.
Quite often the Polish Army must retreat before UPA detachments because the supply of ammunition for the PA depends on the Soviet authorities.
Every month an average of 60 arsons and 50 killings, mostly of Poles, takes place in these territories.
Here is also an incredible fact [concerning] whose hand is at work here. It is described in an Instruction of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers’ Party (No. 3/28/III/45/ZK) which documents incidents that took place on [October] 10, 1945, in Dyniv.
