The Volhynia Genocide is back in the global news after Zelensky’s latest glorification of one of the men and his group, Andrey Melnik from the “Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists” (OUN) and the “Ukrainian Insurgent Army” (UPA), that were responsible for brutally murdering over 100,000 Poles. His Polish counterpart Karol Nawrocki also made headlines after declaring that he’ll seek to revoke the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest honor, from Zelensky. This issue is extremely personal to me.
For starters, I’m a proud American-Pole with dual citizenship, and readers can learn more about my Polishness here in my response to a hit piece against me by a Polish journalist. None of my relatives on either side of my Polish father’s family suffered from the genocide since they were already living in Małopolska, the southern Polish region that’s known for its capital, Kraków. Nevertheless, my patrilineal line comes from what’s now Western Ukraine, the famous Polish fortress town of Kamieniec Podolski.
From our records, my great-grandfather Mikołaj had assimilated into East Slavic society to the point where he signed his surname on his Polish identity card in Cyrillic and listed his religion as Orthodox in January 1920 after Poland briefly regained control over the town during the Polish-Bolshevik War. He and his family still considered themselves to be Polish, not Ukrainian, and had a proud tradition of giving distinctly Polish first names to everyone. Mikołaj moved to Tarnopol after the war and later to Kraków.
He then passed away in the 1930s from a disease that was going around at the time, but it’s through him and our roots in Kamieniec Podolski that I feel a connection with those of my fellow Poles from what we call the “Kresy”, or Eastern Borderlands. In fact, Kamieniec Podolski can be considered to be the “deep or far Kresy” since it was slightly beyond the interwar Second Polish Republic’s border. Mikołaj’s mother came from Lwów (Lvov), however, which played a prominent role in Polish Civilization for centuries.
Had Mikołaj remained in Kamieniec Podolski or Tarnopol and lived longer, he would therefore have likely been genocided as would his family. That’s actually what my maternal grandparents who raised me experienced. They’re Gottscheers, a Germanic subgroup closely related to Austrians who lived in what’s nowadays southern Slovenia for centuries. Like my father’s patrilineal line, they also assimilated and integrated with the locals, my maternal grandfather embodying this as a Gottscheer-Slovenian.
They were first de facto ethnically cleansed by Hitler after he gave Gottschee to Mussolini and then the Nazis told them that they could either relocate to German-annexed northeastern Slovenia or defend themselves against the Partisans who were killing all Germanics as collective punishment. During and near the end of the war, the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia promulgated anti-Germanic decrees, but my mother’s maternal line had already fled to Austria by the end of the war.
My mom’s father and his family were still living in Ljubljana, however, but it became clear to them near the very end of the war that they’d be in danger if they stayed. Reports from trusted friends had already circulated about the killing of Germanics by the Partisans that were about to come to power. Through the chaos of their flight, my grandfather’s sister was separated from them and later found brutally murdered along with other Gottscheers by other fleeing refugees who informed them of her fate.
Although the Allies’ ethnic cleansing of us Gottscheers from today’s Slovenia (which uniquely followed the Axis’ de facto ethnic cleansing of us as a faux choice that we were given) was much smaller in scale than the OUN-UPA’s genocide of Poles from today’s Ukraine, both are very similar. Neighbors murdered other neighbors on a purely ethnic basis, few outside of our communities are aware of these war crimes, and justice was never served. My Oma and Opa moved on, however, and taught me to too.
Neither harbored any hatred of Slovenians or the Serbs that the Partisans are more widely associated with outside of the former Yugoslavia. Hating an entire group of people because of what their co-ethnics and/or compatriots did was anathema to them due to how much they suffered as a result of such bigotry. They also encouraged me to befriend folks from there, which I did at my alma mater here in Moscow, and were very proud whenever Serbian outlets translated and republished my analyses.
Likewise, I don’t hate Ukrainians as a whole despite the Volhynia Genocide that some of their committed against my fellow Poles. As with my Opa who was half-Slovenian, I’m partly descended from “Old Rus”, namely the current Ukrainian portion thereof. My surname is a dead giveaway, but contrary to assumptions, it’s a Slavicized Lithuanian one anthroponomically connected to the medieval Lithuanian Prince Kaributas, the brother of the more famous Jogaila who united Poland and Lithuania.
Throughout the centuries, it’s very possible that some of my relatives intermarried with the local East Slavic descendants of “Old Rus” that nowadays call themselves “Ukrainians”, and I personally take for granted that this happened and have no problem with it whatsoever. My maternal grandparents taught me that everyone should be proud of how God made them and that it’s therefore wrong to feel any guilt about one’s ethno-national identity. We are what we are, and we should all be proud of it, full stop.
Having said that, it’s also due to my presumed partial East Slavic (“Old Rus” but contemporary “Ukrainian”) ancestry that I feel an even greater obligation to raise maximum awareness of the Volhynia Genocide. I’m not culturally “Ukrainian”, none of Mikołaj’s descendants are, and I’ve never self-identified as “Ukrainian” even when I visited Kiev with a Polish friend in late November 2013 to observe “EuroMaidan” up close despite his Ukrainian friends who hosted us encouraging me to consider it.
We do have a branch of our family that remained in Kamieniec Podolski and now apparently considers themselves to be Ukrainian, at least according to a relative who contacted them while doing genealogical research, but we have no ties with them and I’ve never interacted with them either. Why this is relevant is because it goes to show that even partly “Ukrainian” folks like I likely am as explained can condemn the OUN-UPA’s genocide of Poles. It’s not about ethno-national identity or politics, but simple decency.
I was taught by my maternal grandparents to lead by example. They also taught me to have the mindset that, “if you don’t do it, nobody else will” instead of assuming that others will do whatever it may be that must be done. Guided by their teachings, I became a Volhynia Genocide activist, knowing that many will see my surname and assume that I’m “Ukrainian” even though I’m likely only partly descended from the local East Slavic descendants of “Old Rus” that nowadays call themselves “Ukrainians”.
The optics of someone with a distinctly “Ukrainian” surname loudly condemning Zelensky’s glorification of the Volhynia Genocide’s culprits might inspire more folks with -ko surname suffixes, whether self-identifying Ukrainians in Ukraine or however they identify and wherever they might be, to speak up too. We owe it to ourselves to remind everyone that no one’s ethno-national identity at birth predetermines their political views later in life. That was Hitler’s thesis and it’s been totally debunked.
Anyone can have whatever views about politics, including Russia and the Ukrainian Conflict, that they’d like but they shouldn’t ever lose their basic humanity by celebrating literal genocidaires. This particular issue is personal to me because I’m a Pole, my maternal grandparents directly suffered from such bigotry on the basis of their Germanic identity, and my “Ukrainian”-sounding surname obligates me to speak up. That’s why I’m a proud Volhynia Genocide activist and I hope to inspire others to become activists too.
