Bandera atrocities. Volyn massacre

02.07.2021 -

The Volyn massacre is the ethnic cleansing of Western Ukraine from non-Ukrainians in 1943-44. Mostly Poles were slaughtered (there were most of them), well, and the rest of the non-Ukrainians to the heap. The purge was carried out by militants from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). That's what they called them - rezuny.

Even the Germans were amazed at their sadism - gouging out eyes, ripping open stomachs and brutal torture before death were commonplace. They killed everyone - women, children ... Under the cut there are photos that it is better not to look at the impressionable. (14 photos)

It all started literally from the first days of the war ... Thanks to the research of the Canadian historian John-Paul Khimki, we can see the events of that summer with our own eyes. According to the historian, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists under the leadership of Stepan Bandera helped the Germans in 1941. "Bandera" established a short-term government, headed by a staunch anti-Semite. This was followed by arrests, bullying and executions of Jews. Through cooperation with the Germans, the OUN hoped to achieve recognition of the independence of Ukraine.

The key participant in the pogrom was the Bandera "people's militia", created by them on the very first day of the arrival of the Germans. The policemen wore civilian clothes with white armbands or the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Details here: http://xoxlandia.net/pogrom-vo-lvove/

On February 9, 1943, Bandera from the gang of Pyotr Netovich, under the guise of Soviet partisans, entered the Polish village of Parosle near Vladimirets, Rivne region. The peasants, who had previously provided assistance to the partisans, warmly welcomed the guests. After eating plenty, the bandits began to rape women and girls. Before they were killed, their chests, noses and ears were cut off. Then they began to torture the rest of the villagers. Men were stripped of their genitals before they died. Finished off with blows of an ax on the head.
Two teenagers, the Gorshkevich brothers, who tried to call real partisans for help, had their bellies cut open, their legs and arms cut off, their wounds were poured with salt, leaving the half-dead to die in the field. In total, 173 people, including 43 children, were brutally tortured in this village.
When the partisans entered the village on the second day, they saw in the houses of the villagers piles of mutilated bodies lying in pools of blood. In one of the houses on the table among the leftovers and unfinished bottles of moonshine lay a dead one-year-old child, whose naked body was nailed to the boards of the table with a bayonet. The monsters put a half-eaten pickled cucumber into his mouth.

From the village of Volkovya one night, Bandera brought a whole family into the forest. For a long time they mocked the unfortunate people. Then, seeing that the wife of the head of the family was pregnant, they cut open her stomach, tore out the fetus from it, and instead they pushed in a live rabbit.
One night, the bandits broke into the Ukrainian village of Lozovaya. Over 100 peaceful peasants were killed within 1.5 hours. A bandit with an ax in his hands broke into the hut of Nastya Dyagun and hacked to death her three sons. The smallest, four-year-old Vladik, cut off his arms and legs.

One of the two Kleshchinsky families in Podyarkovo was tortured to death by the OUN-UPA on August 16, 1943. The photo shows a family of four - a wife and two children. The victims' eyes were gouged out, they were hit on the head, their palms were burned, they tried to cut off the upper and lower limbs, as well as the hands, stab wounds were inflicted on the whole body, etc.

One night, bandits broke into the Ukrainian village of Lozovoe and killed over 100 of its inhabitants in an hour and a half. In the Dyagun family, a Bandera man hacked to death three children. The smallest, four-year-old Vladik, cut off his arms and legs. In the Makukh family, the killers found two children - three-year-old Ivasik and ten-month-old Joseph. The ten-month-old child, seeing the man, was delighted and laughingly stretched out her hands to him, showing her four cloves. But the ruthless bandit slashed the baby's head with a knife, and cut his head with an ax to his brother Ivasik.

“They surpassed even the sadistic German SS with their atrocities. They torture our people, our peasants... Don't we know that they cut small children, smash their heads against stone walls so that their brain flies out of them. Terrible brutal murders - these are the actions of these rabid wolves, ”Jaroslav Galan called out. The OUN of Melnyk, the UPA of Bulba-Borovets, the government of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic in exile, and the Union of Hetmans-Derzhavniki, which settled in Canada, denounced the atrocities of Bandera with similar anger.

Lots of photos here: http://xoxlandia.net/banderovcy-na-volyni-i-ix-zverstva/

Evidence of the former Banderovka.

“We all went around in banderas, slept in the huts during the day, and at night we walked and drove around the villages. We were given tasks to strangle those who sheltered Russian prisoners and the prisoners themselves. Men were engaged in this, and we, women, sorted out clothes, took away cows and pigs from dead people, slaughtered cattle, processed everything, stewed it and put it in barrels. Once, in one night, 84 people were strangled in the village of Romanov. They strangled the older people and the old, and the little children by the legs - once, hit the head on the door - and it's ready, and on the cart. We felt sorry for our men that they suffered hard during the night, but they would sleep off during the day and the next night - to another village.

We were given an order: Jews, Poles, Russian prisoners and those who hide them, to strangle everyone without mercy. Young healthy guys were taken to the detachments to strangle people. So, from Verkhovka, two brothers Levchukiv, Nikolai and Stepan, did not want to strangle, and ran home. We sentenced them to death.

In Novoselki, Rivne region, there was one Komsomol member Motrya. We took her to Verkhovka to the old Zhabsky and let's get a living heart. Old Salivon held a watch in one hand and a heart in the other to check how long the heart would beat in his hand.”

Completely here: http://topwar.ru/2467-zverstva-banderovcev.html

However, arranging the massacre of the Polish minority in the West. In Ukraine, the Rezun leaders forgot about the Ukrainian minority in South-East Poland. Ukrainians lived there among the Poles for centuries, and at that time they were up to 30% of the total population. The "exploits" of the Bandera rebels in Ukraine came back to haunt Poland, local Ukrainians.

In the spring of 1944, Polish nationalists carried out a series of acts of retaliation against Ukrainians in southeastern Poland. As usual, innocent civilians suffered. According to various estimates, from 15 to 20 thousand Ukrainians were killed. The number of Poles, victims of the OUN-UPA is about 80 thousand people.

The new pro-communist power established in liberated Poland by the Red Army and the Polish Army did not allow the nationalists to arrange full-scale actions of revenge on the Ukrainians. However, the Bandera rebels achieved their goal: the relations between the two nations were poisoned by the horrors of the Volyn massacre. Their further living together became impossible. On July 6, 1945, an agreement "On the exchange of population" was concluded between the USSR and Poland. 1 million Poles went from the USSR to Poland, 600 thousand Ukrainians - in the opposite direction (Operation Vistula), plus 140 thousand Polish Jews went to British Palestine.

It's a paradox, but it was Stalin who turned out to be the man who civilizedly resolved the national question in Western Ukraine. Without cutting off heads and disemboweling children, by exchanging populations. Of course, not everyone wanted to leave their native places, often the resettlement was forced, but the ground for the massacre - the national striped strip - was eliminated.

The Poles published dozens of volumes of such facts of the genocide, none of which the Banderaites refuted.

Today's Bandera people love to talk about how the UPA allegedly fought against the German occupiers too...
March 12, 1944, a gang of UPA militants and the 4th police regiment of the SS division "Galicia" jointly attacked the Polish village of Palikrovy (former Lviv Voivodeship, now - the territory of Poland). It was a village with a mixed population, approximately 70% Poles, 30% Ukrainians. Having driven the residents out of their houses, the policemen and Bandera began to sort them according to their nationality. After the separation of the Poles, they were shot from machine guns. 365 people died, mostly women and children.

08.12.2014 0 16815

"Volyn massacre" - under this definition, the event that took place in March-July 1943 in Ukraine went down in history. This ominous episode is still a stumbling block for the development of Polish-Ukrainian relations and, at the same time, the most mysterious episode of World War II...

Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), established on October 14, 1942, proclaimed its goal the struggle for the independence of Ukraine. Basically, she fought against Berlin and Moscow. However, there was another country with which the UPA had long-standing scores - Poland.

The Ukrainian side could not forget all the injustice that the Poles committed in the past, and especially in those years when Western Ukraine was part of Poland from 1921 to 1939.

Unsettled scores

Figuratively speaking, there is not enough space to list the entire list of mutual claims that Ukraine has accumulated over several centuries against Poland, and vice versa. And in the 20th century, the contradictions only intensified.

So, in 1908, Ukrainian student Miroslav Sichinsky, protesting against the falsification of elections, killed the Lviv governor Andrzej Potocki. The policy of “colonization” initiated by the Poles since 1920 caused great indignation among the Ukrainians.

Volyn Upland

It consisted in the fact that the authorities populated Galicia and Volhynia with Poles - "siegemen", who received the best lands or positions, and the Ukrainians suffered from land shortages and unemployment. This problem became especially acute during the Great Depression of 1929-1933. Ukrainian peasants could not sell their products, their incomes fell by almost 80%, and the “siegemen” received high subsidies from the authorities.

In 1930, when mass arson of Polish estates took place in Galicia, the Poles began "pacification" - "appeasement" of Ukrainians. Following the principle of "collective responsibility", 800 Ukrainian villages were attacked by troops and police - they destroyed cells of Ukrainian organizations and reading rooms, confiscated property.

With the outbreak of World War II, relations became even worse. Hunger, cold, raids by partisans of various colors drove the local population to white heat. And the appearance of the UPA - the Ukrainian Insurgent Army - gave hope that now the Ukrainians had at least some kind of protection. And such protection was necessary, especially since at that moment local residents were subjected to violence by Soviet partisans and partisans of the "Polish spill" - supported by Moscow - penetrating from neighboring Belarus Army of the People and subordinate to the Polish government in exile in London Home Army.

In addition, according to some evidence (although the Polish side denies this), in 1942 in the Kholmshchyna (the left-bank part of the Bug), the Polish side perpetrated a massacre of Ukrainians, which prompted the UPA to think of a retaliatory action.

The tragedy was brewing, and none of the interested parties tried to prevent it.

Underground fight

The actions of the UPA detachments were led by local patriots, among whom were both experienced "warriors", such as Taras Borovets and Dmitry Klyachkivsky, and less experienced - Mukha, Basalik, Dubovoy and others.

As the first major attack on the Polish settlement, which caused significant casualties, historians indicate the attack of the 1st group of the UPA, led by Dubov, on Janova Dolina, as a result of which from 500 to 800 people of the Polish population were destroyed. In June 1943, a secret directive was issued by the commander of the UPA Klyachkivsky, which ordered the following: "... carry out a large-scale action to eliminate the Polish element ... Villages located in or near forests must disappear from the surface of the earth."

UPA timed actions to coincide with various significant dates. So, the mass attack took place on June 29 and 30, 1943 (the day of the proclaimed OUN (b) allied Great Germany of Ukraine), the general offensive began on July 12 (Peter and Paul Day).

The action was well planned, more than 150 settlements where the Polish population lived were attacked at the same time. More than a thousand people were killed in the Polish colonies of Novyny, Guriv Duzhiy, Guriv Maly, Vygnanka, Zygmuntivka and Vitoldivka.

Attacks on the places of residence of the Polish population were accompanied by great cruelty. People were killed indiscriminately - women, children, the elderly - while, in addition to firearms, household tools were used: axes, knives, pitchforks. No wonder the detachments that committed atrocities were called “rezuns”.

Here is how the UPA commanders themselves later described the atrocities:

“Having driven the entire Polish population into one place, we began the massacre. After there was not a single living person left, they dug out large pits, dumped corpses there, covered them with earth, and in order to hide the traces of this grave, they kindled a fire over it.

According to a number of modern Polish and Ukrainian scholars, the “commander-in-chief of the UPA” Dmitry Klyachkivsky and the political leader of the OUN (b) (at that time called the OUN-SD) Roman Shukhevych were responsible for the ethnic cleansing of the Polish population.

It is interesting that on one of these nights, the future first cosmonaut of Poland, Miroslav Germashevsky, almost died at the hands of the “rezunov”. Then he was 1.5 years old, the Germashevsky family, fleeing terror, came to another village to their relatives in early 1943. We can say that the child was saved by a miracle - the mother ran away into the forest, and on the way she lost Miroslav in an open field. They found him only in the morning.

There is still no consensus on the number of dead Poles. According to some data, the figure ranges from 36,543-36,750 people. In any case, their names and places of death have been established. In addition, from 13,500 to more than 23,000 Poles were counted, the circumstances of whose death were not revealed.

Various studies suggest that the victims of different parties were probably 50-60 thousand Poles. Sometimes another figure is given: from 30 to 80 thousand people.

In Ukraine, such calculations were not carried out, and the death toll on the Ukrainian side is estimated at several thousand people. Some historians believe that between 2,000 and 3,000 Ukrainians died in Volyn alone, while others believe that in 1943-1944, about 2,000 Ukrainians died from the actions of Polish units subordinate to the Regional Army.

Hatred by order?

About why the "Volyn massacre" happened at this particular time and why in Volyn, researchers still cannot come to a common opinion. But most agree that in April-May 1943 there was a turning point in the course of World War II, and all parties to the conflict had already begun to deal with the future structure of Europe. Therefore, in March 1943, the London government of Poland in exile suddenly turned its attention to Volhynia - it probably expected that this circumstance would be taken into account during the post-war division of territories.

As for the place of the tragedy, here we can say the following. In Volyn at that moment there was a very strong patriotic upsurge, so it was there, in the forest areas, remote from large settlements, that the UPA detachments appeared, supported by the local population. In addition, Volhynia was the subject of long-standing territorial claims by Poland, and therefore it was actively settled by its citizens.

The echo of this tragedy echoed immediately after the Second World War, when on July 1945 an agreement "On the exchange of population" was concluded between the USSR and Poland. As a result, 1 million Poles moved from the USSR to Poland, and 600 thousand Ukrainians moved in the opposite direction (Operation Vistula). Thus, the USSR government decided to play it safe by making the population of these territories relatively homogeneous.

I must say that not all the circumstances of the incident are well studied. The fact is that after the Second World War in the USSR, these events were not widely publicized. Only in 1992, a Polish delegation visited Ukraine, which was allowed to study the places of these events. As a result, about 600 local burials were discovered. Exhumations were carried out - and many other facts recorded in the archives were confirmed.

In Polish history, the Volyn tragedy of 1943 is very often recognized only as an anti-Polish action of the UPA. In Ukraine, they talk more about the motives that led the UPA to carry out such an action, and also pay attention to retaliatory actions, including against the civilian Ukrainian population of the Home Army (AK) units.

There is no doubt that only mutual reconciliation, a common apology can overcome the consequences of the tragedy, which for many years became the common pain of both peoples.

Viktor PRIKHODKO

Volyn massacre (Polish: Rzez wolynska) (Volyn tragedy, Ukrainian Volyn tragedy, Polish: Tragedia Wolynia) is an ethno-political conflict accompanied by mass destruction (Bandera) by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army-OUN (b) of the ethnic Polish civilian population and civilians of other nationalities, including Ukrainians, in the territories of the Volyn-Podolia district (German: Generalbezirk Wolhynien-Podolien), until September 1939 under the control of Poland, began in March 1943 and peaked in July of the same year.

In the spring of 1943, large-scale ethnic cleansing began in Volyn, occupied by German troops. This criminal action was carried out not by the Nazis, but by militants of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, who sought to “cleanse” the territory of Volhynia from the Polish population. Ukrainian nationalists surrounded Polish villages and colonies, and then proceeded to kill. They killed everyone - women, the elderly, children, infants. The victims were shot, beaten with clubs, chopped with axes. Then the corpses of the destroyed Poles were buried somewhere in the field, their property was robbed, and finally the houses were set on fire. In place of the Polish villages, only burnt ruins remained.
They also destroyed those Poles who lived in the same villages with the Ukrainians. It was even easier - there was no need to collect large detachments. Groups of OUN members of several people passed through the sleeping village, went into the houses of the Poles and killed everyone. And then the locals buried the killed fellow villagers of the “wrong” nationality.
In this way, several tens of thousands of people were killed, whose only fault was that they were not born Ukrainians and lived on Ukrainian soil.
Organization of Ukrainian nationalists (Bandera movement) /OUN(b), OUN-B/, or revolutionary /OUN(r), OUN-R/, as well as (for a short time in 1943) independent-powerful /OUN(sd), OUN-SD / (Ukrainian Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Banderi Rukh)) is one of the factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Currently (since 1992), the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists calls itself the successor to the OUN (b).
In the course of the “Map” study conducted in Poland, it was found that as a result of the actions of the UPA-OUN (B) and the Security Council of the OUN (b), in which part of the local Ukrainian population and sometimes detachments of Ukrainian nationalists of other movements took part, the number of Poles who died in Volhynia amounted to at least 36,543 - 36,750 people whose names and places of death were established. In addition, the same study counted from 13,500 to more than 23,000 Poles, the circumstances of whose death were not clarified.
A number of researchers say that the victims of the massacre were probably about 50-60 thousand Poles, during the discussion about the number of victims on the Polish side, estimates were made from 30 to 80 thousand.
These massacres were a real massacre. An idea of its nightmarish cruelty of the Volyn genocide is given by a fragment from the book of the famous historian Timothy Snyder:
“The first edition of the UPA newspaper, published in July, promised a “shameful death” to all Poles who remained in Ukraine. The UPA was able to carry out its threats. Within about twelve hours, from the evening of July 11, 1943 to the morning of July 12, the UPA attacked 176 settlements .... During 1943, UPA units and special detachments of the OUN Security Service killed Poles both individually and collectively in Polish settlements and villages, as well as those Poles who lived in Ukrainian villages. According to numerous, corroborating reports, Ukrainian nationalists and their allies burned houses, shot or drove inside those who tried to flee, and those who could be caught in the street were killed with sickles and pitchforks. Churches full of parishioners were burned to the ground. In order to intimidate the surviving Poles and force them to flee, the bandits exhibited beheaded, crucified, dismembered or disemboweled bodies.

Even the Germans were amazed at their sadism - gouging out eyes, ripping open stomachs and brutal torture before death were commonplace. They killed everyone - women, children ...
The genocide began in the cities. Men of the "wrong" nationality were immediately taken to prisons, where they were later shot.

and violence against women took place right in broad daylight for the amusement of the public. Among Bandera there were many who wanted to stand "in line" / take an active part ...

She was lucky. Bandera forced to go on their knees with their hands up.

Later, the Bandera people got a taste of it.
On February 9, 1943, Bandera from the gang of Pyotr Netovich, under the guise of Soviet partisans, entered the Polish village of Parosle near Vladimirets, Rivne region. The peasants, who had previously provided assistance to the partisans, warmly welcomed the guests. After eating plenty, the bandits began to rape women and girls.

Before they were killed, their chests, noses and ears were cut off.
Men were stripped of their genitals before they died. Finished off with blows of an ax on the head.
Two teenagers, the Gorshkevich brothers, who tried to call real partisans for help, had their bellies cut open, their legs and arms cut off, their wounds were poured with salt, leaving the half-dead to die in the field. In total, 173 people, including 43 children, were brutally tortured in this village.
When the partisans entered the village on the second day, they saw in the houses of the villagers piles of mutilated bodies lying in pools of blood. In one of the houses on the table among the leftovers and unfinished bottles of moonshine lay a dead one-year-old child, whose naked body was nailed to the boards of the table with a bayonet. The monsters put a half-eaten pickled cucumber into his mouth.

LIPNIKI (LIPNIKI), Kostopil County, Lutsk Voivodeship. March 26, 1943. A resident of the Lipniki colony - Yakub Varumzer without a head, the result of a massacre committed under cover of night by terrorists

OUN-UPA (OUN-UPA). As a result of this massacre in Lipniki, 179 Polish residents were killed, as well as Poles from the surrounding area seeking shelter there. They were predominantly women, old people and children (51 - aged 1 to 14), 4 hiding Jews and 1 Russian. 22 people were injured. Identified by name and surname 121 Polish victims - residents of Lipnik, who were known to the author. Three aggressors also lost their lives.

PODYARKOV, Bobrka County, Lviv Voivodeship. August 16, 1943. The results of torture inflicted on the mother of Kleshchinskaya, from a Polish family of four.

From the village of Volkovya one night, Bandera brought a whole family into the forest. For a long time they mocked the unfortunate people. Then, seeing that the wife of the head of the family was pregnant, they cut open her stomach, tore out the fetus from it, and instead they pushed in a live rabbit. One night, the bandits broke into the Ukrainian village of Lozovaya. Over 100 peaceful peasants were killed within 1.5 hours. A bandit with an ax in his hands broke into the hut of Nastya Dyagun and hacked to death her three sons. The smallest, four-year-old Vladik, cut off his arms and legs.

The girl in the center, Stasya Stefanyak, was killed because of her Polish father. Her mother Maria Boyarchuk, a Ukrainian, was also killed that night. Because of the husband .. Mixed families aroused special hatred of the Rezuns. In the village of Zalesye Koropetskoye (Ternopil region) on February 7, 1944, there was an even more terrible incident. The UPA gang attacked the village with the aim of massacring the Polish population. About 60 people, mostly women and children, were herded into a barn, where they were burned alive. One of those who died that day was from a mixed family - half Pole, half Ukrainian. Bandera set him a condition - he must kill his Polish mother, then he will be left alive. He refused and was killed along with his mother.

TARNOPOL, Tarnopol Voivodeship, 1943. One (!) of the trees of the country road, in front of which the terrorists of the OUN-UPA (OUN-UPA) hung a banner with the inscription translated into Polish: "The road to independent Ukraine." And on each tree on both sides of the road, the executioners created the so-called "wreaths" from Polish children.

“They strangled the old, and small children up to one year old by the legs - once, hit their heads against the door - and it’s ready, and on the cart. We felt sorry for our men that they were hard torturing during the night, but they would sleep off during the day and the next night - in another village. There were people who were hiding. If a man was hiding, they were mistaken for women..."

(from the interrogation of Banderovka)

Prepared "wreaths"

But the Polish Shayer family, a mother and two children, was massacred in their house in Vladinopol in 1943.

LIPNIKI (LIPNIKI), Kostopil County, Lutsk Voivodeship. March 26, 1943. In the foreground are children - Janusz Beławski, 3 years old, Adele's son; Roman Belavsky, 5 years old, son of Czeslava and Jadwiga

Belavska, 18 years old and others. These listed Polish victims are the result of a massacre committed by the OUN-UPA.

LIPNIKI (LIPNIKI), Kostopil County, Lutsk Voivodeship. March 26, 1943. The corpses of the Poles, victims of the massacre committed by the OUN-UPA, brought for identification and burial. Standing behind the fence is Jerzy Skulski, who saved a life thanks to the firearms he had.

POLOVETS, region, Chortkiv county, Tarnopol voivodeship, forest called Rosokhach. January 16 - 17, 1944. The place from which 26 victims were pulled out - Polish residents of the village of Polovtse - taken away by the UPA on the night of January 16-17, 1944 and tortured to death in the forest.

".. In Novoselki, Rivne region, there was one Komsomol member Motrya. We took her to Verkhovka to the old Zhabsky and let's get a living heart. Old Salivon held a watch in one hand and a heart in the other to check how much more the heart would beat in his hand And when the Russians came, the sons wanted to erect a monument to him, they say, he fought for Ukraine"

(from the interrogation of Banderovka)

Belzec, region, Rava Ruska county, Lviv voivodeship June 16, 1944. You can see the open stomach and entrails, as well as a brush hanging on the skin - the result of an attempt to chop it off. OUN-UPA case.

Belzec, region, Rava Ruska county, Lviv voivodeship June 16, 1944. Place of execution in the forest.

Lipniki, Kostopil district, Lutsk voivodeship. March 26, 1943. View before the funeral. Polish victims of the night massacre committed by the OUN-UPA brought to the People's House.

In Poland, the Volyn massacre is very well remembered.
This is a scan of the pages of a book. The list of ways in which the Ukrainian Nazis dealt with the civilian population:

Driving a large and thick nail into the skull of the head.
. Ripping off the hair from the head with the skin (scalping).
. Carving on the forehead "eagle" (the eagle is the coat of arms of Poland).
. Eye gouging.
. Circumcision of the nose, ears, lips, tongue.
. Piercing children and adults with stakes through and through.
. Punching with a pointed thick wire through and through from ear to ear.
. Cutting the throat and pulling the tongue out through the opening.
. Knocking out teeth and breaking jaws.
. Tearing of the mouth from ear to ear.
. Plugging mouths with tow when transporting still living victims.
. Rolling the head back.
. Crushing of the head by placing in a vise and tightening the screw.
. Cutting and pulling narrow strips of skin from the back or face.
. Breaking bones (ribs, arms, legs).
. Cutting off women's breasts and sprinkling salt on wounds.
. Cutting off the genitals of male victims with a sickle.
. Punching the belly of a pregnant woman with a bayonet.
. Cutting the abdomen and pulling out the intestines in adults and children.
. Cutting the abdomen of a woman with a long-term pregnancy and inserting instead of the removed fetus, for example, a live cat, and stitching the abdomen.
. Cutting the abdomen and pouring boiling water inside.
. Cutting the stomach and putting stones inside it, as well as throwing it into the river.
. Cutting the belly of pregnant women and spilling broken glass inside.
. Pulling out the veins from the groin to the feet.
. Inserting a hot iron into the vagina.
. Insertion of pine cones into the vagina with the top side forward.
. Inserting a pointed stake into the vagina and pushing it up to the throat, right through.
. Cutting the women's front part of the body with a garden knife from the vagina to the neck and leaving the insides outside.
. Hanging victims by the insides.
. Inserting a glass bottle into the vagina or anus and breaking it.
. Cutting the belly and spilling feed flour inside for hungry pigs, which pulled out this feed along with the intestines and other entrails.
. Chopping off / cutting off with a knife / sawing off of hands or feet (or fingers and toes).
. Cauterization of the inside of the palm on the hot stove of a charcoal kitchen.
. Sawing the body with a saw.
. Sprinkling of bound feet with red-hot coal.
. Nailing hands to the table, and feet to the floor.
. Chopping a whole body into pieces with an ax.
. Nailing the tongue of a small child to the table with a knife, which later hung on it.
. Cutting a child into pieces with a knife.
. Nailing a small child to a table with a bayonet.
. Hanging a male child by the genitals on a doorknob.
. Knocking out the joints of the legs and arms of the child.
. Throwing a child into the flames of a burning building.
. Breaking the baby's head, taking it by the legs and hitting it against a wall or stove.
. Planting a child on a stake.
. Hanging a woman upside down on a tree and mocking her - cutting off her chest and tongue, dissecting her stomach, gouging out her eyes, and cutting off pieces of her body with knives.
. Nailing a small child to a door.
. Hanging on a tree with feet up and singeing the head from below with the fire of a fire lit under the head.
. Drowning children and adults in a well and throwing stones at the victim.
. Driving a stake into the stomach.
. Tying a man to a tree and shooting him like a target.
. Dragging the body along the street with a rope tied around the neck.
. Binding the legs and arms of a woman to two trees, and cutting her stomach from the crotch to the chest.
. Dragging on the ground mother with three children connected with each other.
. Pulling one or more victims with barbed wire, pouring cold water on the victim every few hours in order to come to his senses and feel pain.
. Buried in the ground alive up to the neck and later cut off the head with a scythe.
. Tearing the body in half with the help of horses.
. Tearing the body in half by tying the victim to two bent trees and then releasing them.
. Setting fire to a victim doused in kerosene.
. Laying around the victim with sheaves of straw and setting them on fire (Nero's torch).
. Putting a baby on a pitchfork and throwing him into the flames of a fire.
. Hanging on barbed wire.
. Ripping off the skin from the body and filling the wound with ink or boiling water.
. Nailing hands to the threshold of the dwelling.

It is probably difficult to find a person who would not know about this tragic page in our history. The Volyn massacre is the ethnic cleansing of Western Ukraine from non-Ukrainians in 1943-44. Mostly Poles were slaughtered (there were most of them), well, and the rest of the non-Ukrainians to the heap. The purge was carried out by militants from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). That's what they called them - rezuny.

Even the Germans were amazed at their sadism - gouging out eyes, ripping open stomachs and brutal torture before death were commonplace. They killed everyone - women, children ... Here are photos that it is better not to look at the impressionable.

The pogroms of 1941 in Lvov were an act of the highest degree of cruelty and inhumanity. German propaganda filed a pogrom as an act of revenge of the Ukrainians against the “Judeo-Bolsheviks”.

Women were publicly stripped, beaten with stones and sticks, and raped.

The Volyn massacre began on February 9, 1943 with an attack by the UPA gang on the village of Paroslya, where about 200 Poles were killed.

Rezun UPA used simple improvised tools. For example, a two-handed saw.

They burned the body of this Polish woman with a red-hot iron and tried to cut off her right ear.

A murdered adult woman named Shayer and two children are Polish victims of the Bandera terror in Vladinopol.

Podiarkov, August 16, 1943 Kleshchinska from a Polish family of four, tortured to death by the OUN-UPA. A gouged eye, head wounds, an attempt to cut off a hand, as well as traces of other tortures are visible.

Evidence of the former Banderovka.
“We all went around in banderas, slept in the huts during the day, and at night we walked and drove around the villages. We were given tasks to strangle those who sheltered Russian prisoners and the prisoners themselves. Men were engaged in this, and we, women, sorted out clothes, took away cows and pigs from dead people, slaughtered cattle, processed everything, stewed it and put it in barrels. Once, in one night, 84 people were strangled in the village of Romanov. They strangled the older people and the old, and the little children by the legs - once, hit the head on the door - and it's ready, and on the cart. We felt sorry for our men that they suffered hard during the night, but they would sleep off during the day and the next night - to another village.

The Poles published dozens of volumes of such facts of the genocide, none of which the Banderaites refuted.

In June 2016, there was an exchange of very interesting letters between representatives of Poland and Ukraine.

Former presidents of Ukraine, heads of a number of Ukrainian churches, statesmen and public figures of the country on the eve of the 73rd anniversary of the events known as the "Volyn Massacre" addressed a letter to the Polish people

“We ask for forgiveness and equally forgive crimes and injustice - this is the only spiritual formula that should be the motive of every Polish and Ukrainian heart striving for peace and harmony ... As long as our peoples are alive, the wounds of history continue to hurt. But our peoples will live only when, despite the past, we learn to treat each other as brothers,” the appeal reads.

“The current war of Russia against Ukraine has brought our peoples even closer. Fighting against Ukraine, Moscow is conducting an offensive against Poland and the whole world,” the authors of the document say. They also ask Polish politicians to “refrain from making reckless political statements about the past” that could be used by third parties.

The MPs from the ruling Law and Justice party decided to answer for the Polish people.

“The difference between us is not about the future, but about the general policy of historical memory. The problem is in today's Ukrainian attitude towards the perpetrators of the genocide of the Poles during the Second World War, the answer says. “In Poland, at the state and local levels, we do not honor people who have blood on the hands of innocent civilians. We are concerned about the selectivity of historical memory, in which an open declaration of sympathy for Poland is paired with the glorification of those who have the blood of our countrymen on their hands - defenseless women and children.

"Muscovites, Poles, Jews to destroy in the struggle"

The essence of this exchange of letters is as follows. The Ukrainian authorities, who are getting along well with Warsaw on the basis of a hostile attitude towards Russia, would like to get rid of the historical contradictions associated with the Volyn massacre.

In Poland, too, they are not in the mood to aggravate the contradictions, but there is a serious problem - the ideologists and perpetrators of those events today in Ukraine have been elevated to the rank of especially revered national heroes. Warsaw is not ready to ignore this, which follows from the response to the letter of conciliation.

The confrontation between Ukrainians and Poles lasted for several centuries, but in the 20th century it was clothed in a new form.

Representatives of associations of Ukrainian nationalists began to practice terror against the Poles even before the start of the Second World War, at a time when the lands of Western Ukraine were part of independent Poland.

At the beginning of the Second World War and before the German attack on the USSR, Ukrainian nationalists collaborated very actively with the Nazis. The ideologists of the nationalists hoped with their help to achieve the creation of an independent Ukrainian state.

This state was supposed to become ethnically pure, free from those who Stepan Bandera and other leaders of the nationalists were recorded as "enemies."

In April 1941, the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) issued an instruction “The struggle and activities of the OUN during the war”, where a separate section stipulated the tasks and organization of the so-called “security service” (that is, security) after the start of aggression against the USSR.

It was emphasized that the “security service” “has the executive power to destroy elements hostile to Ukraine that will become pests on the territory, and also has the ability to control socio-political life as a whole.”

Hostile elements - "Muscovites, Poles, Jews" - were supposed to "destroy in the struggle, in particular those who would defend the regime ... destroy, mainly, the intelligentsia, which should not be allowed into any governing bodies, generally make it impossible to "production" of the intelligentsia, access to schools, etc.”

"Rezun" at work

The mass extermination of Poles in Western Ukraine began in 1943. Head of the security service of the OUN Nikolai Lebed in April 1943, he proposed "clearing the entire revolutionary territory of the Polish population." This proposal was approved by other leaders of the nationalists, since it was quite in the spirit of the general line defined by Stepan Bandera.

In fact, by April 1943, the killings of Poles in Volhynia and throughout Western Ukraine had already assumed a mass character.

On February 9, 1943, a detachment of Ukrainian nationalists under the command of Petr Netovich, under the guise of Soviet partisans, entered the Polish village of Parosle near Vladimirets, Rivne region. The peasants, who had previously provided assistance to the partisans, warmly welcomed the guests. After a plentiful feast, the false partisans began to rape the girls. Before they were killed, their chests, noses and ears were cut off. Then it was the turn of the men - they cut off their genitals, finished off with blows of axes. Two teenagers, brothers Gorshkeviches Those who tried to call for help from real partisans were cut open in their stomachs, cut off their legs and arms, and poured plenty of salt on their wounds, leaving the half-dead to die in the field. In total, 173 people, including 43 children, were brutally tortured in this village.

When the real partisans returned to the village, they also found a one-year-old child among the dead. Fighters for the freedom of Ukraine pinned him to the boards of the table with a bayonet, putting a half-eaten cucumber in his mouth.

What the Bandera people did during the “Volyn Massacre” is so monstrous and disgusting that it is difficult to understand how representatives of the human race could even think of such a thing.

In the UPA detachments there were so-called "rezuns" - militants who specialized in brutal executions. For reprisals, they used axes, knives and saws.

On March 26, 1943, a gang broke into the Polish village of Lipniki. Ivan Litvinchuk nicknamed "Oak", now one of the revered heroes of the UPA in Ukraine. On that day, the people of "Dubovoye" killed 179 people, including 51 children.

The future first cosmonaut of Poland miraculously escaped in Lipniki Miroslav Germashevsky who was only two years old at the time. His mother, running away from the killers, lost her child on the field. The boy was found alive, surrounded by corpses.

Killed as a result of the actions of the UPA-OUN (b) residents of the village of Lipniki (now defunct), near the city of Berezno, now the Rivne region, 1943. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

"Cleansing the Ukrainian land": 125 ways of killing

Bandera did not spare anyone. In April 1944, during an attack on the village of Kuta, a 2-year-old Cheslav Khzhanovskaya bayoneted in a crib. 18 year old Galina Khzhanovskaya Bandera took away with them, raped and hung on the edge of the forest.

They killed not only Poles, but also other non-Ukrainians. With special hatred, the UPA militants treated mixed families. In the same village of Kuty, a Pole Francis Berezovsky was married to a Ukrainian. His head was cut off and presented on a plate to his wife. The unfortunate woman went mad.

In May 1943, Bandera entered the village of Katarynovka, located in Volyn. Resident of this village Maria Boyarchuk was a Ukrainian who married a Pole. The “apostate” was killed along with her daughter, 5-year-old Stasya. The girl's stomach was ripped open with a hoe.

Same place 3 year old Janusz Mekal before his death, they broke their arms and legs, and his 2-year-old brother Marek Mekal stabbed with bayonets.

On July 11, 1943, UPA detachments simultaneously attacked, according to various estimates, from 99 to 150 villages and villages with a Polish population. They killed everyone in order to completely "cleanse the Ukrainian land."

The rhetoric of the fanatics of the times of the “Volyn massacre”, in fact, is exactly the same as that of those who are going to “cleanse the Ukrainian Donbass” today.

Polish historians, studying the "Volyn massacre", counted about 125 methods of killing, which were used in their reprisals by "rezuny".

In the fall of 1943, in the village of Klevetsk, the militants decided to deal with the Ukrainian Ivan Aksyuchits. The middle-aged man had the courage to disagree with Bandera and not support them. For this, the "cutters" sawed him in half. This method of execution was chosen for Aksyuchits by his own nephew, who was a member of the UPA detachment.

On March 12, 1944, the UPA detachment and the 4th police regiment of the SS division "Galicia" jointly attacked the Polish village of Palikrovy. Both Poles and Ukrainians lived in the village. The killers staged a sorting of people. Having selected the Poles, they shot them with machine guns. A total of 365 people died, mostly women and children.

An eye for an eye

You can continue the description of atrocities ad infinitum. The "Volyn massacre" is confirmed by thousands of testimonies, countless photographs, from which the blood runs cold, protocols of inspections of the graves of the victims of massacres.

A large-scale Polish study made it possible to identify the names of 36,750 Poles who became victims of the Volyn Massacre. We are talking only about those who have reliably established the names and circumstances of death. The total number of victims is currently unknown. Only in Volyn it can reach 60,000 people, and in all of Western Ukraine we are talking about 100,000 killed.

Such actions could not go unanswered. Formations of the Polish Home Army in 1944 carried out a series of retaliatory actions against Ukrainians living on the territory of modern Poland.

The largest action of this kind is considered to be the attack on the village of Sahryn on March 10, 1944. The Poles killed several hundred Ukrainians and burned the village.

The scale of the Poles' response, however, was not so significant. The number of victims of the retaliatory Polish terror is estimated at 2-3 thousand people, although modern Ukrainian historians insist that this number must be multiplied by 10.

Exemplar

After the end of the war, the Soviet Union and Poland, in which a regime friendly to the USSR was established at that moment, decided to close this issue forever. By combined efforts, the detachments of both Ukrainian and Polish executioners were defeated.

On July 6, 1945, an agreement "On the exchange of population" was concluded between the USSR and Poland. The Poles who lived in the territories that became part of the USSR moved to Poland, the Ukrainians who had previously lived on Polish lands went to Soviet Ukraine. This "migration of peoples" affected a total of over 1.5 million people.

Gdansk. Monument to the Poles destroyed by the OUN-UPA in Volhynia and eastern Poland in 1943-1945. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

Until the collapse of the socialist camp, both in the USSR and in Poland, little was said and written about the Volyn Massacre, so as not to spoil friendly relations.

But no friendship can make today's Poland and Ukraine forget about these events. Moreover, the official Kyiv sees in the flayers-"cutters" the true heroes of the nation, on the examples of which the younger generation should be educated.