#volhynia

[bobemajses]

Jewish shoemakers in Luboml, Volhynia region, ca. 1920

[warcrimesimulator]

I travel to places that do not exist. I meet people without a future, living in the past. I visited many places in western Ukraine, in Volhynia. Today, there are only empty space of the former Polish villages and towns. Almost all they disappeared in the year 1943. They can be found on old maps, trying to track them down with GPS. In early spring, when snow melts it can be seen, where there were houses. Material is only emptiness and the echo of the past. I'm looking for what does not exist, and I'm trying to tell the story about Volhynia, the land contaminated by death. Only an echo remains. Everything else has gone.

📸 Maksymilian Rigamonti - The Echo

[postcard-from-the-past]

Kids from Koczeniczy, modern-day Kozlynychi, Volhynia region of Ukraine

German vintage postcard

[littlearthquake]

Born on this day in Volhynia, present day Ukraine, polish actress and dancer Alma Kar (1908 - 1992)

[mioritic]

Girls and young women at an Easter celebration ("worobec") in front of the church in Łanowce (now Lanivtsi, Ukraine)

Photographed by Leopold Węgrzynowicz, 1912

Muzeum Etnograficzne w Krakowie

[nasermater]

"shut up about Wołyń!"

Never.

The massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia (Polish: rzeź wołyńska, lit. 'Volhynian slaughter'; Ukrainian: Волинська трагедія, romanized: Volynska trahediia, lit. 'Volyn tragedy') were carried out in German-occupied Poland by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) with the support of parts of the local Ukrainian population against the Polish minority in Volhynia, Eastern Galicia, parts of Polesia and Lublin region from 1943 to 1945.

The peak of the massacres took place in July and August 1943. The massacres were exceptionally brutal and affected primarily women and children. The UPA's actions resulted in about 50,000 to 100,000 deaths. Other victims of the massacres included several hundred Jews, Russians, Czechs, Georgians, and Ukrainians who were part of Polish families or opposed the UPA and sabotaged the massacres by hiding Polish escapees.

Ukrainians ruthlessly slaughtered Polish civilians and destroyed their homes. Villages were burned to the ground and property was looted. The perpetrators used bullets, axes, pitchforks, knives, and other weapons. Many Poles were killed in churches.

On 22 July 2016, the Sejm established 11 July as National Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Genocide committed by ukrainian nationalists against the citizens of the Second Polish Republic. This classification is disputed by Ukraine and some non-Polish historians.

[lady-nightmare]

Prezydenci Polski i Ukrainy oddali hołd ofiarom Rzezi Wołyńskiej

Prezydenci Polski i Ukrainy, Andrzej Duda i Wołodymyr Zełenski, w katedrze Apostołów Piotra i Pawła w Łucku w 80. rocznicę Rzezi Wołyńskiej

[mynawyspie]

'The victims do not call for revenge but for remembrance'

Between 1943 and 1945, members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army massacred thousands of Poles throughout Volhynia, a region that was in Nazi-occupied Poland and is part of present-day Ukraine. In 2016, Poland’s Parliament recognized the killings as genocide, a term that Ukraine rejects.

The peak of the massacres took place in July and August 1943. Most of the victims were women and children. UPA's methods were particularly brutal, with many of the victims being tortured and mutilated, and resulted in 40,000–60,000 Polish deaths in Volhynia and 30,000–40,000 in Eastern Galicia, with the other regions for the total about 100,000.

The killings were directly linked with the policies of the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its military arm, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, whose goal was to purge all non-Ukrainians from the future Ukrainian state. Not limiting their activities to the purging of Polish civilians, the UPA also wanted to erase all traces of the Polish presence in the area.

After World War II, the Soviet Union incorporated the region into its territory. Up until its collapse, Communist censorship had suppressed public discourse surrounding the Volhynia massacre. Ukraine was to be seen as a friendly Soviet nation, and any mention of Polish-Ukrainian conflicts or the lost Polish territories was deemed anti-Soviet.