Misplaced Pages

Pawłokoma massacre: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editNext edit →Content deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 10:50, 10 July 2010 editChaosdruid (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers27,205 editsm clean up, typos fixed: Roman-Catholic → Roman Catholic using AWB← Previous edit Revision as of 06:00, 5 November 2010 edit undoLvivske (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, Rollbackers26,347 edits removed Category:Massacres of Poles in Volhynia using HotCatNext edit →
Line 53: Line 53:
] ]
] ]
]


] ]

Revision as of 06:00, 5 November 2010

The monument conmemorating the Ukrainian civilians murdered on 3 March 1945 in Pawłokoma by local Polish self-defence units and an Armia Krajowa detachment

Pawłokoma massacre concerns the murder at the end of World War II, of Ukrainian civilians by Poles, in Pawłokoma 40 km west of Przemyśl in Poland, on March 3, 1945. The village of Pavlokoma was first mentioned in 1441. Documents from 1585 note that Byzantine rite churches functioned there. In the period before the outbreak of the Second World War there were 1370 residents: 1190 Ukrainians, 170 Poles and 20 Jews.

Prelude

According to Canadian historian Petro Potichny . from 1938-41 after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact the village was located in the Drohobych oblast and annexed to the Ukrainian SSR. During the Soviet occupation 16 villagers were arrested. during the subsequent German occupation 9 Ukrainian were arrested and 193 were deported as Ostarbeiters to Germany. Among those murdered by the Poles in 1943 was the active community leader, teacher and bandurist Mykola Levytsky.

One story reports that on January 21, 1945 a unit of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army appeared in the village, and kidnapped seven Poles and one pro-Polish Ukrainian woman, including the commune leader of Pawłokoma - Kacper Radoń. They never returned to village, and were assumed to have been killed. Polish community is trying to discover their place of burial from the Ukrainians. However there was no response. Poles from nearby Dynow and from Pawłokoma appealed to the mayor of powiat to send troops in order to extract information about the missing people. These meetings turned into anti-Ukrainian demonstrations. After that it was decided to retaliate.

Another story reported by Polish-Ukrainian historian Eugeniusz Misiło, it that the Poles kidnapped and murdered in Pawłokoma by UPA, in reality were kidnapped by Soviet NKVD, in an attempt to start a series of retaliations.

Massacre

On 2–3 March 1945, approximately 366 (or 150 according to Zdzislaw Konieczny) Ukrainian and a few Polish inhabitants of Pawłokoma were murdered, by a formerArmia Krajowa unit, commanded by Józef Biss "Wacław" aided by Polish self-defense groups from nearby villages. The victims were herded into a local church, interrogated (some were possibly tortured) and then taken to a local cemetery where they were executed. Only women with small children (below 10 years old) survived.

The massacre believed to be an act of retaliation for an earlier alleged murder by Ukrainian Insurgent Army of 9 (or 11) Poles in Pawłokoma and unspecified number of Poles killed by UPA in neighbouring villages.

Aftermath

The Ukrainian insurgents launched a retaliatory action against the Polish civilians in Pawłokoma and Borowica villages (approximately 77 Poles were killed), and burned Borowica to the ground.

Pawłokoma massacre is one of the better known examples of Ukrainian civilians murders by different Polish groups in February-April 1945. Similar massacres followed soon in other nearby villages, including Łubna, Małkowice and Piskorowice.

September 4, 1945 after a hard and brutal interrogation, Józef Biss was sentenced to seven years in a prison for involvement in anti-Communist partisans and evasion of a military service. for his part in the massacre of Ukrainians in this village.

The Ukrainian church in which the Ukrainian villagers were murdered was destroyed by the Roman Catholic parishioners of the village in 1965. All that is left is part of the bell tower. The Ukrainian cemetery was transformed into a rubbish dump.

Several bodies of the victims were exhumed in 1952. The Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) has been conducting an investigation of the crime since 20 September 2001. The ongoing investigation is (as of May 2006) still inconclusive.

On May 13, 2006 Polish president Lech Kaczyński and Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko attended a ceremony at the site in order to pay tribute to the victims, and to encourage historical reconciliation between Poland and Ukraine. After celebrating panychydy Presidents also paid tribute to all Polish victims who died from UPA bullets in Pawłokoma.

Controversy

While various sources differ on specific issues like the number of the victims or the details of the massacre, all agree that the Ukrainian villagers were murdered by Poles and that an Armia Krajowa unit either participated directly or assisted in the killings. The Pawłokoma memorial places the number of victims at 365, the figure supported by IPN and a number of Polish historians It is however questioned by a Polish historian Zdzisław Konieczny, author of a book on the Pawłokoma massacre claiming that some 150 Ukrainian men suspected of UPA membership had been killed, while women and children were ordered to leave in the direction of Bircza and Sanok.

Notes

  1. "One of the key figures involved in the research is Peter J. Potichnyj. Born in a Ukrainian family in a village in what was then eastern Poland, Potichnyj experienced the horrors of the war firsthand. Soviet secret police executed his father. Poles massacred most of the people in his village. In 1945, at age 14, he joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA, and fought against the Soviets until 1947. He eventually became a historian at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and helped edit 77 volumes about the Ukrainian underground." In Ukraine, movement to honor members of WWII underground sets off debate. The Washington Post. January 8, 2010
  3. Zdzisław Konieczny, Był taki czas. U źródeł akcji odwetowej w Pawłokomie, Przemyśl 2005, ISBN 83-88172-26-3
  4. (Misiło, Pawłokoma ..., p. 20)
  5. Ak was disbanded 19 January 1945
  6. ^ Jan Maksymiuk: Ukraine, Poland Seek Reconciliation Over Grisly History in Radio Free Europe NEWS article, May 12, 2006
  7. Misiło, Pawłokoma ..., p. 13
  8. According to Polish-Ukrainian historian Eugeniusz Misiło, the Poles allegedly murdered in Pawłokoma by UPA, in reality were kidnapped by Soviet NKVD, in an attempt to start a series of retaliations. (Misiło, Pawłokoma ..., p. 20)
  9. Misiło, Pawłokoma ..., pp.19,20
  10. Józef Biss story
  11. http://www.gazeta.lviv.ua/articles/2005/06/16/6201/
  12. http://www.umoloda.kiev.ua/number/672/158/24426/
  13. Sowa, Stosunki ..., p. 286
  14. Konieczny, Był taki czas ...
  15. Maksymiuk, Ukraine...

References

See also

Categories: