just before the war the Polish/Ukrainian szlachta learned Ukrainian

They realised that people in their villages held it against them not to speak Ukrainian.

...but it was too late. The Volhyn Massacre came by, the molodci, and all the issues with throwing Polish neighbours in the well head down and adorning trees with children and barb wire.

And then they became the USSR and suffered so much more than anyone.

I'm filled with sorrow when i think about their being herded West as the first line of the Red Army, and starved to death, and forecefully taught Russian culture. But I have this sand in my eye because of the Volhyn Massacre, Stiepan Bandera still being worshipped and so forth.

I'd like to see something positive. Ideas, Nathan? (POSITIVE)

My Granddad side of family is from Stanisławów (now Ivano-Frankivsk), and his wife's from Lida, so it bothers me personally.

Well, Ukraine as a modern state is quite new (except for the years of CCCP) so hving troubles with finding CLEAn rolemodels is quite hard. BUT! For me it is quite important that they glorify UPA and Bandera for their struggle against Soviet Union (maybe even against Poland idk) and for the fight of a free Ukraine. I can't remember any UPA veteran to brag to young Ukrainians how he massacrated Poles and etc. (Correct me Nathan if im wrong)

As I see it Ukrainians try to build bridges EVEn it is QUITE HARD :)

It's amazing how being on this website forces me to revisit histoy!
I have always been told that in beginning of the year 1930, my father's family left Kowel and lost their extensive land holdings due to my great-grandfather's gambling problem. So now I check out the Ukraine's time table, and in 1929, the collectivisation of farmland has started! Is it possible that the 'blue bloods' preferred it to be known that they lost their land to horse racing rather than to communists?

or, I might have been wrong. Kovel (Kowel) might have been Polish till 1939.

not necessarily. everyone knows that the demoralisation was immense. in the 20s and 30s everybody had depression, and pneumonia. the 'spleen'.
that's why the Warsaw Uprising was so incredible - because young blasé students actually got up and became heroes.

Good Lord, I just read: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Poles_in_Volhynia

Now I know why my mother has such an aversion to Ukrainians.
"The atrocities were perpetrated with utmost cruelty. The victims, regardless of their age or gender, were routinely tortured to death. Norman Davies in No Simple Victory gives a short, but shocking description of the massacres. He writes: "Villages were torched. Roman Catholic priests were axed or crucified. Churches were burned with all their parishioners. Isolated farms were attacked by gangs carrying pitchforks and kitchen knives. Throats were cut. Pregnant women were bayoneted. Children were cut in two. Men were ambushed in the field and led away. The perpetrators could not determine the province's future. But at least they could determine that it would be a future without Poles."[56] Timothy Snyder describes the murders in the following way: "Ukrainian partisans burned homes, shot or forced back inside those who tried to flee, and used sickles and pitchforks to kill those they captured outside. In some cases, beheaded, crucified, dismembered, or disembowelled bodies were displayed, in order to encourage remaining Poles to flee".[57] Similar account has been presented by Niall Ferguson, who wrote: Whole villages were wiped out, men beaten to death, women raped and mutilated, babies bayoneted.[58] Ukrainian historian Yuryi Kirichuk from Lviv described the conflict as similar to the medieval rebellions.[59]"

That is around Kovel, 13 years after my father's family left. Smart people!

dead on!
but it could be number of reasons but gambling - for one lack of proper management in difficult situation after war and turbulent times.

There is confusion because there is Ukraine Proper and so called Ukraine were people claim to be Ukrainian but never been one country except from 1569 till 1772 being the part of Polish Kingdom and then again after 1945 being a part of Soviet Union - and nowadays!

Sure they can claim to be whomever but is beyond me how they dare to claim land as well.
Consider that there were no independent entity called Ukraine before 1991 !

Yes, indeed it was in Wołyń Voyevodship.

It wasn't true that Borderland noblemen learn Ukrainian just before the war. They spoke it. Of course there were a few incomers (wifes, husbands, buyers). My family is from the very pre-war border on Zbrucz from very mixed district, one of those 3 in Podolia where there was slightly more Poles than Ukrainians: Skałat, Tarnopol & Trembowla.

My grandfather spoke Polish, Ukrainian and some German & Yiddish. He wasn't however a noblemen but a burgher. Anyway he knew many landowners there, small and bigger ones. Everybody spoke Ukrainian at least to be understood in everyday business.

In fact there were some style or fashion to knew Ukrainian or Ruthenian (as it was called since the national Ukrainian identity wasn't wholly widespread) language, music and folk craftsmanship.

Rubbish! My Great grandfather was from ...... just north from Lwów and he commanded Ukrainian, not only spoke it but could write it on much higher level that so called Ukrainians! On top of German, Polish and French.

and just 13 years later, right in that area, Polish and Ukrainian villagers started murdering each other. I wonder how much of that hatred is still alive there. My mother, to this day, might explain that she does not like somebody because they look to her like a blood-thirsty Ukrainian. And her family is not even from eastern Poland!

and what country would that person belong too - this is the first time I hear it;)

no each others - someone started it Nazi Bandera and his followers !

I'm sorry, somebody asked for a positive spin, but I'm in shock! According to what I read, it could not have happend without the support of Ukrainian villagers (although some helped polish people and paid with their lives for it).

So, Polish people visiting Ukraine are well received now?

some are some aren't depend what area we are talking about!

Are you telling me that you didn't know about it before ?

I knew that Russians killed a bunch of Poles during and after the WWII, but now I wish I didn't read all that stuff. Villagers pitch-forking each other like medieval barbarians.. Ain't history great.

The area I thought I wanted to visit is Kowel.
My father gazes longingly at his paintings of idillic Ukrainian countryside but hates Jews, my mother judges people by their Ukrainian features.. what a messed up nation we are.

there some survivors alive and murderers as well !I suspected Nathan to be one or at last a son of someone from Bandera bunch!

The area I thought I wanted to visit is Kowel.
Well go for it ! You shouldn't have any problems, mind you I never was there ....ask wildrover he can give you a ride and expertise !

See, that's my problem with history. The quest to assign blame, and keep the hate alive.

rather human nature :)


Not quest, its the way he writes :)

Hate ? I don't hate him but If someone knows history is less prone to be manipulated :)

there is Polish proverb - If you want to hit someone, you will always find a stick:)

I just spoke to my mother (she thinks I should step away from the computer), and she believes that Piłsudski had a lot to do with all these Poles getting massacred in Ukraine because he gave his troops that land to settle in.

Well, yes and no !
Yes because He gave veterans land, and no becouse He didn't steal it from Ukrainians.
And Bandera with his followers developed Nazi theory about ethnic cleansing - its explains to kill the Poles!
If not for war and German occupation, nothing would happened!
Mother ? Aren't you an Adult?

I'm not that old. Plus, it pleases my mother that for the first time I am interested in her old family stories.

You are correct, Mr Grunwald. War is a war and different things happened on both sides. UPA fought mostly Soviet NKWD and Germans, not Poles. It is a known fact that NKWD committed many atrocities on Poles in Wolyn' dressing themselves as Ukrainian soldiers to weaken Ukrainian resistance movement. Of course, there were Ukrainians, mostly regular people from countryside who had Poles deep in their livers, taking Pacification, Polonization, Sanation, Bereza Kartuska concentration camp (4500 Ukrainians imprisoned in 1939, 387 died, women and children as well) and strzelcy groups ravaging the villages in 1930s. Poles burnt Ukrainian churches and libraries, forbid usage of native language,... Are you surprised that there were people ready to put someone on a pitchfork when Germans, Russians were ripping apart country and Poles were mentioning the "happy" pre-war paradise coming true as soon as the war is over? Photos some mention here with 3 kids tied with a barbed wire was long ago proved to be done by a gypsy mother on her own kids - nothing to do with Ukrainians. Some try to blow things out of proportion.


Krysia, nobody held Poles against their language. Look at the policy of your country in pre-war period and what it did with Ukrainian language. Also osadniki - Polish soldiers veterans were settled in Wolyn' in 1930s with their families on lands taken away from Ukrainian landowners. Guess what happened to Ukrainian churches in Wolyn:




It seems like in Poland you have a lot of deserts, many Poles have sand in their eyes. It is time to take it out like Ukrainians did long ago.


Krysia, as far as I see there are pretty healthy relations between our countries. There are also some historical feuds, though. Poles are not happy with Stepan Bandera and UPA. I am not happy with Pilsudski, Dmowski, Polish terror in 1920-30s. So? Wouldn't it be better to watch in our own backyards instead. It is difficult to say too much POSITIVE after you Krysia falsely accused Ukrainians in tying children with barbed wires. Reconciliation starts with understanding, if this is what you are looking for. Without frankly looking into the mirror and objectively analyzing oneself, there is nothing that can change this retarded hatred that still is alive. I am all for normal life like, no doubt, you are and many others.

Tell me, Krysia, what you see that has to be done to make it better.


I am one of them. When I see a Pole, I look on his (preferably her;) neck, pulsating artery full of sweet Polish blood and just wait the sunset. Hmm...Delicious..


Nope, they are eaten alive as soon as they cross the border.


I wish I was. It would be a great honor.


I knew you love me :)

That's ok Nathan. Your new Russian-loving president is going to undo the glorification of UPA and its 'heros.' It is at least comforting to know that the Germans are not glorifying the Einsatzgruppen or Waffen SS. Of course, the Russians are glorifying NKVD, but we don't expect any truth coming out of the east anytime soon.

Ukis, in their search for national heroes among the UPA and OUN butchers are pleased to accept the fact that their national army was called first the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Galizien (1st Ukrainian), to which they now put up monuments.

Could you point your source for this statement.


In fact there were no Ukrainian big landowners. The land parcelled for veterans was state owned. And some Ukrainians received parcels also. Ukrainian nationalists blamed the government that the proportions of land granted to Poles & Ukrainians were not adequate to the local ethnic composition.

Wołyń had the administration which was most friendly to Ukrainians. Voyevod Józewski had very good relations with local Ukrainians, supported schools and institutions. However his work wasn't well received by nationalist hard-liners from Eastern Galicia. They wanted tensions and unrest to build clear frontier between two societies. They provoked tensions there, there were terrorist attacks. And nationalists succeeded. Police started retaliation - so called pacifications. And many Poles and Ukrainians started to look angrily at each other.

Members of my grandfather's family were burnt alive in their home when motley hordes of blood-thristy Ukrainian peasants went on the rampage in Poland's eastern borderlands.

I wish you didn't have that glaze of deception over your eyes. That's true that the Ukrainians at different times had to deal with mistreatment from both Polish and Russians and your independence and healthy patriotism is out of question but the form of nationalism Bandera proclaimed was the worst on could think of. He was in fact even more hardcore nationalist than Hitler in his reasoning. He openly proclaimed "Ukraine is for Ukrainians only" which is precisely the slogan of today's brain-dead Russian Nazis (well of course one has to replace the word "Ukraine" with "Russia"). This is what the "fact" is. And now you express the admiration by his deeds... weird...

that is why I love him, he is a living prove that Polish government were too humane and too tolerant for likes of him.
Nevertheless Stalin was genius, evil to be true but genius, compared to him Hitler was a sissy attention seeker and looser.

the forceful collectivization and then the Holodomor (widespread starvation) happened in the part of the Ukraine that was in the Soviet hands - there were no blue-blooded people there until then - in the part of the Ukraine that was within Polish borders there was no collectivisation until the Soviets taken the land in 1944-45

I second that. Any source confirming that NKVD members dressed as UPA were responsible for (many) Polish deaths during Volhynian slaughter?


Would you answer these questions:
- Where have you read about children in Bereza?
- How many children and women died there (and according to whom)?
- '387 died' - isn't it taken from infamous Victor Idzio?

I hope you will answer, Nathan, though I suspect it will be hard for you.

f stop...you should learn about the Polish history before you post here!!...

My noble Polish ancestors (my fathers side) were killed by the UPA banda (Ukrainians). If you see a movie called 'Krzyżacy", that's how Ukrainian nationals treated Polish noble people/ szlachta people! My Polish grand..father was cut into half by them and it happened during a WWII.

well, hippie generation it was before me:D
Respect and All the Best for your Mother !