Massacres of Ukrainians by Polish forces in World War II

The massacres of Ukrainians by Polish forces in World War II were a series of mass [...] of Ukrainian civilians committed by units of the Home Army (AK), Peasant Battalions (BCh), National Armed Forces (NSZ), the People's Army of Poland (LWP), and associated self-DeFence groups during and immediately after World War II, primarily in the period 1943–1947. The violence was concentrated in the Chełm and Lublin regions (present-day eastern Poland), Subcarpathia, and to a lesser extent Volhynia.

Grzegorz Motyka, the leading Polish authority on the conflict, estimates total Ukrainian deaths from Polish operations in 1943–1947 at between 10,000 and 15,000, with 8,000–10,000 of those occurring within post-war Polish territory. G. Rossolinski-Liebe places the number of Ukrainians — both combatants and civilians — killed by Poles during and after World War II at 10,000–20,000, while Kataryna Wolczuk estimates 10,000–30,000 for all affected territories. New named-victim research by historian Igor Hałagida establishes that on 10 March 1944 alone, AK and BCh units killed at least 1,264 Ukrainians, of whom nearly two-thirds were women (499) and children (291).

Most victims were civilians with no affiliation to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). These events occurred within the broader context of the Polish–Ukrainian conflict (1939–1947), itself embedded in the German occupation of Poland. The violence followed — and in some cases preceded — large-scale UPA massacres of Poles, and is frequently characterised in Polish historiography as retaliatory. This framing is contested: most victims were uninvolved civilians, and several operations — including the Hrubieszów offensive of March 1944 — were premeditated coordinated offensives. As the scholarly portal volhyniamassacre.eu summarises, "most victims of the retaliatory operations conducted during 1943–1945 were Ukrainian civilians".

Polish–Ukrainian tensions in the interwar period

The roots of the violence lay in competing national claims over the territories of Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, incorporated into the Second Polish Republic following the Polish–Ukrainian War of 1918–1919. According to the Polish census of 1931, Ukrainians were a majority in both regions, comprising 68% of the population in Volhynia and 52% in Eastern Galicia.

Polish state policy toward the Ukrainian minority (1921–1939)

The policy of the Polish authorities towards the Ukrainian minority varied between attempts at assimilation, conciliation, and active repression. In 1930, a wave of Ukrainian sabotage in Eastern Galicia led the Polish government to launch a systematic pacification campaign, during which Polish police and cavalry units burned Ukrainian farms, destroyed community cooperatives, and arrested hundreds of Ukrainian activists. Ukrainian parliamentarians were placed under house arrest to prevent their participation in elections.

Between 1921 and 1938, Polish military colonists and war veterans were encouraged to settle in the Volhynian and Galician countryside. Their number reached 17,700 in Volhynia alone, in over 3,500 new settlements, by 1939. This programme was perceived by Ukrainian peasants as the systematic dispossession of Ukrainian land by the Polish state.

Beginning in 1937, the Polish government in Volhynia initiated an active campaign to convert the Orthodox population to Roman Catholicism using state power. Over 190 Orthodox churches were destroyed and 150 forcibly converted to Catholic use. In August 1939, the last remaining Orthodox church in the Volhynian capital of Lutsk was converted by government decree. The full scale of this destruction is documented at Destruction of Ukrainian Orthodox Churches in Eastern Poland and Revindication of Eastern Orthodox churches in the Second Polish Republic.

The most popular political party among Ukrainians in the interwar period was the moderate Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance (UNDO), which opposed Polish rule but advocated peaceful means. Polish repression throughout the 1930s dismantled UNDO's organisational base, and the Soviet invasion of September 1939 eliminated it entirely, leaving the underground Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) as the only surviving organised Ukrainian political force in the region.

Separately, in the Chełm region, 394 Ukrainian community leaders were killed by Poles on grounds of alleged collaboration with German authorities.

The UPA anti-Polish operation (1943–1945)

Beginning in early 1943, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the military wing of the OUN-B, launched a systematic campaign of [...] against the Polish population of Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. The UPA commander in Volhynia, Dmytro Klyachkivsky ("Klym Savur"), issued an order in June 1943 for the "general physical liquidation of the entire Polish population". The peak of the [...] took place on 11 July 1943, when UPA units attacked approximately 96–99 Polish villages simultaneously.

Polish underground forces — primarily the Home Army — organised civilian self-defence and, beginning in 1943, undertook offensive operations against Ukrainian villages, which they designated "revenge-preventive operations" (akcje odwetowo-prewencyjne).

Perpetrators

Anti-Ukrainian violence was carried out by several distinct organisations with differing chains of command:

• Home Army (AK) — the principal armed force of the Polish Underground State, subordinate to the Polish government-in-exile. AK units were responsible for the major massacres at Sahryń, Łasków and Szychowice, and the coordinated Hrubieszów offensive of March 1944. The AK command in Volhynia officially discouraged indiscriminate civilian violence — AK commander Kazimierz Bąbiński wrote in his order to partisan units: "I forbid the use of the methods utilized by the Ukrainian butchers. We will not burn Ukrainian homesteads nor kill Ukrainian women and children in retaliation." Despite this, local units acted independently, and the Hrubieszów district command explicitly planned and executed large-scale operations against Ukrainian civilians. In autumn 1944, Hrubieszów AK district commander Marian Gołębiewski was reportedly threatened with a court case for "[...]" committed by his order in March 1944.

• Bataliony Chłopskie (BCh, Peasant Battalions) — rural partisan formations affiliated with the Polish People's Party. BCh units under Stanisław Basaj ("Ryś") participated in the Hrubieszów offensive and smaller attacks on Ukrainian villages in 1943–1944. Basaj's command record has been examined critically by Zajączkowski, who concluded that the characterisation of Basaj as a folk hero is, "at best, a legend".

• National Armed Forces (NSZ) — far-right nationalist formations operating independently of the AK command. The NSZ was responsible for the Wierzchowiny massacre (1945) and a series of [...] in the eastern Lublin region in 1944–1945.

• Polish People's Army (LWP) — the Soviet-aligned communist Polish military. LWP units carried out the Zawadka Morochowska massacres (1946), targeting Lemko and Ukrainian civilians during forced deportation operations.

• Polish self-defence units — locally organised formations, at times under de facto AK or German command, responsible for numerous smaller [...] in Volhynia and the Chełm region in 1943–1944.

Volhynia (1943–1944)

Following the UPA's anti-Polish campaign, Polish self-defence organisations began attacks on Ukrainian civilians, at times targeting villages with no known UPA presence. Evidence includes a letter of 26 August 1943 from AK Volhynia commander Bąbiński criticising "the burning of neighboring Ukrainian villages, the [...] of any Ukrainian who crossed its path and the robbing of Ukrainians of their material possessions". Per Anders Rudling estimates that 2,000–3,000 Ukrainian civilians were killed in Volhynia through Polish retaliatory actions.

Early operations in the Chełm/Hrubieszów region (1943)

Anti-Ukrainian operations in the Chełm/Hrubieszów region began well before the large March 1944 offensive. From the end of 1942, the AK's Hrubieszów district command issued orders placing Ukrainian civilians under a form of collective responsibility for UPA actions. In May 1943, AK units killed 5 people in Uchanie (26 May), 4–5 in Żulice (29 May), and 15–16 Ukrainians including an Orthodox priest and 7 women in Nabroż (30 May). Throughout autumn and winter 1943, the scale of Polish reprisals against Ukrainian communities in the Hrubieszów district escalated steadily ahead of the major offensive.

Sahryń (10 March 1944)

The Sahryń massacre was carried out at dawn on 10 March 1944 by an AK unit from the Hrubieszów district. Both the Catholic and Orthodox churches were burned. Between 150 and 300 civilians were confirmed killed in earlier estimates; more recent named-victim research places the total substantially higher. 260 farmhouses were set on fire. The 2024 monograph by historian Mariusz Sawa, the most comprehensive study of the operation to date, establishes on the basis of survivor testimony and documentary evidence that the attack was a premeditated operation targeting civilian populations on the basis of ethnicity. Historian Mariusz Zajączkowski described the events in his preface to Sawa's volume as placing the article alongside fundamental facts of Polish historical responsibility that remain minimised in public memory. An Institute of National Remembrance investigation was discontinued in 2010 without finding that a crime had been committed; a Ukrainian request to reopen the investigation was refused.

Łasków and Szychowice (10 March 1944)

On the same day as Sahryń, AK and BCh units under Stanisław Basaj attacked Łasków and Szychowice. In Szychowice, 137 Ukrainians were killed (approximately 17% of the village's Ukrainian population); in Łasków, 186 were killed (approximately 57% of the village's Ukrainian population). Among the dead was Orthodox priest Lev Korobchuk. The [...] of over half the entire Ukrainian population of Łasków in a single operation has been cited by historians as evidence that the operations cannot be characterised simply as targeted reprisals against UPA personnel.

The Hrubieszów offensive (9–10 March 1944)

The Sahryń, Łasków and Szychowice attacks were components of a larger coordinated offensive ordered by Hrubieszów AK district commander Marian Gołębiewski. On 9–10 March 1944, approximately 2,000 Polish soldiers attacked 14 Ukrainian villages simultaneously across the Hrubieszów district. According to historian Mariusz Zajączkowski, approximately 700 Ukrainians were killed on those two days; the OUN-B's own estimates placed the total at approximately 1,400. Named-victim research by Igor Hałagida, based on documentary cross-referencing of Ukrainian Central Committee records, AK reports, and OUN-B documents, establishes that at least 1,264 named individuals were killed on 10 March alone, of whom 499 were women and 291 were children under the age of 14. Some Ukrainian historical estimates place total deaths in the two-day operation at up to 2,000. This was the largest coordinated anti-Ukrainian operation conducted by the Polish underground during World War II.

German administrative documents analysed by Zajączkowski in his 2021 article confirm the scale and premeditated character of the Hrubieszów operation, and record that German civilian administrators described it as resulting in the destruction of numerous Ukrainian villages. A Ukrainian-perspective documentary history of the Kholm region under German occupation, compiled by Myrosław Iwanyk for the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, confirms the German-source picture of events and provides additional data on Ukrainian casualties.

Pawłokoma (3 March 1945)

The Pawłokoma massacre was carried out by a post-Home Army unit under Lieutenant Józef Biss, aided by Polish civilians from surrounding villages. Ukrainian villagers were herded into the local church and shot. Estimates of the death toll range from approximately 150 to 366. A monument to the victims was dedicated in May 2006 during Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's visit to Poland.

Wierzchowiny (6 June 1945)

The Wierzchowiny massacre was committed by NSZ units on 6 June 1945. NSZ forces [...] approximately 194–196 local residents, the majority of whom were Orthodox Ukrainians with no UPA affiliation. The NSZ's own newspaper Szczerbiec acknowledged the massacre on 23 July 1945, stating that similar actions would be carried out if necessary. In 1953, the Supreme Court of the Polish People's Republic ruled that the NSZ unit had committed crimes against humanity — a judgment upheld by post-communist Polish courts in 1998 and 1999. As of 2024, there is no monument or memorial to the victims in Wierzchowiny.

Ruda Różaniecka (10 October 1944)

On 10 October 1944, soldiers of the Citizens' Militia and local Poles executed 32–33 Ukrainian civilians in Ruda Różaniecka, in present-day Subcarpathian Voivodeship. The victims were buried at an undisclosed location; their remains have not been recovered. An IPN investigation was terminated in 2002 without prosecution.

Zawadka Morochowska (January–April 1946)

The Zawadka Morochowska massacres were a series of three mass [...] of ethnic Ukrainians and Lemkos perpetrated by units of the communist Polish People's Army. On 25 January 1946, approximately 56–78 civilians — including women and children — were [...] and killed. There is no evidence that any of the villagers had connections to the UPA. Further [...] occurred on 28 March (at least 11 killed) and 13 April 1946 (at least 6 killed, including a 3-year-old child among named victims). The remaining 73 inhabitants were deported to the Soviet Union; the last 15 were expelled during Operation Vistula in 1947. The village ceased to exist.

Other documented incidents

• May 1943, Hrubieszów district — AK units killed 5 people in Uchanie (26 May), 4–5 in Żulice (29 May), and 15–16 Ukrainians including an Orthodox priest and 7 women in Nabroż (30 May).
• February 1945, Przemyśl–Dobromil region — a Polish partisan group killed at least 27 Ukrainians in the villages of Jawornik Ruski, Żohatyn, Piątkowa, and surrounding hamlets.
• 1945, Przemyśl and Dobromil regions — Jan Pisuliński records approximately 1,000 Ukrainians killed by AK and NSZ forces.
• The joint Polish-Ukrainian documentary collection Polska i Ukraina w latach trzydziestych–czterdziestych XX wieku (Warsaw–Kyiv, 2005), compiled from secret service archives of both countries, contains additional documentation of Polish anti-Ukrainian operations not available in standard secondary literature.

Scholarly estimates

Estimates of total Ukrainian deaths from Polish operations vary considerably, reflecting differences in methodology, the suppression of the topic under communist Poland, and an ongoing process of named-victim verification:

Historiographical framing

Polish historiography, including the foundational work of Grzegorz Motyka, generally characterises these [...] as retaliatory actions prompted by the UPA's massacres of Poles. Motyka acknowledges that "even the most critical assessment of the Polish operations against Ukrainian civilians should not equate them with the planned extermination of the Poles in Volhynia and East Galicia", noting that unlike the UPA, the AK's programme never called for the extermination of any ethnic group.

UCLA historian Jared McBride, writing in Slavic Review in 2016, notes that there is a scholarly consensus that the overall Polish–Ukrainian conflict constitutes [...] rather than [...], with both Polish and Ukrainian operations understood within that framework — though he and others emphasise that the quantitative asymmetry between the two sides is substantial and should not be obscured by symmetrical framing.

Alexander Prusin, in The Lands Between (Oxford University Press, 2010), contextualises Polish "reprisals" as operations that acquired a definitively ethnic character, being carried out on the basis of nationality rather than any demonstrated connection to the UPA.

Several specific considerations complicate a simple reprisal framing:

• Most victims were civilians with no UPA affiliation. In Łasków, approximately 57% of the entire Ukrainian population was killed; the Hałagida named-victim data confirms that at least two-thirds of those killed on 10 March 1944 were women and children.
• Multiple operations were premeditated and coordinated offensives. The Hrubieszów operation of March 1944 involved 2,000 soldiers attacking 14 villages simultaneously, planned over several weeks by the district AK command. The Hrubieszów commander was subsequently threatened with criminal proceedings for the scale of the operation.
• The AK command in Volhynia itself acknowledged — in Bąbiński's letter of August 1943 — that self-defence units were burning villages and [...] Ukrainians indiscriminately.
• Several [...], including Wierzchowiny (June 1945) and Zawadka Morochowska (1946), occurred after the end of the German occupation, when active UPA operations in those areas had effectively ceased.
• Attempts to attribute Wierzchowiny to Soviet or communist provocation have been rejected by Polish courts and mainstream Polish historiography.
• German administrative documents from the Lublin District independently corroborate the scale of Polish anti-Ukrainian operations and record their impact on the civilian population.

Ukrainian scholarly perspective

Ukrainian historiography of Polish anti-Ukrainian violence has been documented in the joint publication Wołyń i Chołmszczyna 1938–1947: Polsko-ukraińskie protystojannia ta joho widłunnia (Lviv, 2003), edited by Yaroslav Isayevych and others at the Ivan Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies. A comprehensive bilingual documentary collection of Ukrainian casualties in the Lublin District (October 1939–July 1944), with named-victim data, was compiled by Igor Hałagida and Myrosław Iwanyk: Ukraiński żertwy Chołmszczyny ta pivdennoho Pidlashshia u 1939–1944 rr. (Lviv: Ukrainian Studies Publishers, 2021). This is the most detailed named-victim database for Ukrainian casualties of Polish forces currently available.

Ihor Iliushyn (Kyiv, 2009), in his bilingual study UPA i AK: Konflikt w Zachodniej Ukrainie (1939–1945), offers the leading Ukrainian scholarly assessment of the mutual conflict, acknowledging both the UPA's primary responsibility for initiating mass violence and the substantial Ukrainian civilian death toll from Polish operations.

Asymmetric documentation and institutional treatment

Systematic documentation of Ukrainian victims of Polish forces was suppressed under communist Poland. The IPN's closure of investigations into Sahryń (2010) and Ruda Różaniecka (2002) without prosecutions reflects an ongoing institutional asymmetry. Only the 1953 Supreme Court ruling on Wierzchowiny resulted in a judicial finding of crimes against humanity — upheld by post-communist courts in 1998 and 1999 — and even that case was subject to subsequent revisionist challenges.

As the Posle Media investigation noted in 2024: "It would be hard to find any sign of interwar Ukrainian presence in Poland, particularly with regard to the victims of Polish counter-violence that followed the Volhynian massacre." Conservative and nationalist circles in Poland have consistently sought to frame Polish violence as "retaliatory necessity" or to attribute specific massacres (notably Wierzchowiny) to Soviet provocation, attempts rejected by the courts and by mainstream scholarship.

In Poland

Commemoration of Ukrainian victims of Polish forces remains sparse and politically contested. A monument to victims of the AK and BCh was erected in Sahryń in 2008; former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko attended anniversary ceremonies in 2018. The site is situated on a secondary road and in poor condition as of 2024. In Wierzchowiny, there is no monument or tribute of any kind to the Ukrainian victims. The 2024 publication of Mariusz Sawa's monograph on Sahryń, the first full-length book on the massacre, represents a significant advance in Polish public reckoning with the event, though it remains largely outside mainstream political memory.

In Ukraine

A memorial was erected at the Zawadka Morochowska site in 1998. Annual commemorative processions have historically been organised by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (UINM) has documented these events as part of broader research on the deportation of Ukrainians from Poland, including through the work of Myrosław Iwanyk.

Political context

The asymmetric treatment of Polish and Ukrainian wartime violence has been a persistent source of tension in Polish-Ukrainian bilateral relations, particularly since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Poland has formally recognised the UPA massacres of Poles as [...]; no equivalent state-level acknowledgement of Polish anti-Ukrainian violence exists.

See also

• Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia
• Polish–Ukrainian conflict (1939–1947)
• Sahryń massacre
• Łasków and Szychowice massacres
• Wierzchowiny massacre
• Pawłokoma massacre
• Ruda Różaniecka massacre
• Zawadka Morochowska massacres
• Hrubieszów Revolution
• Operation Vistula
• Home Army
• National Armed Forces
• Bataliony Chłopskie
• Destruction of Ukrainian Orthodox Churches in Eastern Poland
• Revindication of Eastern Orthodox churches in the Second Polish Republic
• Pacification of Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia

References

• (Named-victim database, Ukrainian casualties in the Lublin District.)

• (English translation: From the Volhynian Massacre to Operation Vistula, Brill/Schöningh, 2023.)

• Ivan Katchanovski, "[...], [...] or Ukrainian-Polish War in Volhynia?", APSA preprint, 2019. preprints.apsanet.org.
• Andrea Braschayko, Francesco Brusa, Szymon Martys, "Poland and Volhynia: Tribute to Victims or Self-Victimization?", Posle Media, 2024.

External links

• Sahryń massacre — Wikipedia
• Łasków and Szychowice massacres — Wikipedia
• Wierzchowiny massacre — Wikipedia
• Pawłokoma massacre — Wikipedia
• Zawadka Morochowska massacres — Wikipedia
• Ruda Różaniecka massacre — Wikipedia
• Hrubieszów Revolution — Wikipedia
• Polish–Ukrainian Historical Disputes over the Volhynian Massacres — volhyniamassacre.eu
• Poland and Volhynia: Tribute to Victims or Self-Victimization? — Posle Media, 2024
• Kholm Region in 1944: German Perspective — Myrosław Iwanyk, Ukrainian Institute of National Memory