Poland marks the “National Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Citizens of the Polish Republic Committed by Ukrainian Nationalists” every 11 July and this year was no different. Polish chargé d’affaires in Ukraine Piotr Łukasiewicz’s scandalous remarks marred the event that took place this year in Ukraine, however, in which Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz also participated. The crux of the issue is that Łukasiewicz referenced injustices committed by Poles against Ukrainians.
In his words as reported by the Kresy.pl portal specializing in contemporary news and analysis regarding events in interwar Poland’s former eastern regions (so in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine), “Bowing my head to the Polish victims of Ukrainian violence in Volhynia, I cannot help but remember the Ukrainian victims of violence perpetrated by the Polish state in the territories of the former Second Polish Republic before and during the war. Everything that happened during World War II was terrible and unnecessary.”
Łukasiewicz clarified that “I am not creating symmetry or equating the numbers and quality of suffering. I am simply saying that we remember and must remember the past and what was shameful and dishonorable in that past.” Kresy.pl also mentioned in their report that Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski responded to President of the Ordo Iuris Institute Jerzy Kwaśniewski’s tweet questioning whether Łukasiewicz betrayed the government’s policy and should be removed or if he accurately reflected it.
Kwaśniewski criticized Sikorski’s decontextualized reference to Pope John Paul II’s famous advice to Poles and Ukrainians during his trip to Lvov in 2001. The late pontiff said, “May the purification of historical memories lead everyone to work for the triumph of what unites over what divides, in order to build together a future of mutual respect, fraternal cooperation and true solidarity.” Kwaśniewski questioned whether he had in mind “downplaying the Volhynian crime and exaggerating Polish transgressions”.
For unaware readers, Łukasiewicz was likely referring to the “Pacification of Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia” in 1930 in response to terrorist-separatist attacks by the OUN-UPA that went on to commit the Volhynia Genocide, retaliatory attacks against Ukrainians, and the post-war resettlement of ethnic Ukrainians. For whatever one might think about those events, they’re not comparable to the OUN-UPA’s preplanned genocide of Poles, the false equivalence of which is a modern Ukrainian tactic to mitigate that war crime.
President Karol Nawrocki said it best in his speech in Radruż on the Ukrainian border. As he phrased it, “There were many tensions, normal for national minorities, but no one put an axe to the head of any child. No one stabbed anyone in the back. There were problems inherent to all minorities; they existed then, exist today, and will exist in the future, but [Poles and Ukrainians in interwar Poland] lived side by side and lived with each other.” That’s true and is why many Poles are disgusted with Łukasiewicz.
Nawrocki, Kwaśniewski, and like-minded Poles aren’t suggesting that the Volhynia Genocide’s victims sit atop a hierarchy of victimhood above all others, just that 362 ways in which they were tortured by the UPA as part of its preplanned genocide of Poles deserves special recognition and isn’t comparable to what the Ukrainian victims of Poles experienced before, during, or after World War II. By falsely equating them despite also claiming that this wasn’t his intent, Łukasiewicz functioned as Zelensky’s useful idiot.
