President Leonid Kuchma and his Polish counterpart Aleksander Kwasniewski joined thousands of mourners at religious ceremonies July 11 to commemorate mutual wartime atrocities in which tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Poles were massacred.
assacred.
As the sky filled with rain-laden clouds, some 3,000 people from both countries – including some who lived through the events – watched Kuchma and Kwasniewski lay wreaths at a pair of gray granite crosses marking graves of Polish families massacred by Ukrainians.
At a Catholic service for Polish mourners in Pavlivka, about 30 kilometers east of the Polish border, Kuchma condemned what he called a “conspiracy of silence” around the events.
He called on both nations to put the past behind them, seeking to reconcile a painful chapter in their joint history that has complicated otherwise warm relations.
“By bowing our heads to yesterday we look to tomorrow. Ukraine and Poland have a great potential of trust that will allow our nations to come to complete historical reconciliation … and remember those who were tragically killed,” Kuchma said.
Historians estimate that 80,000 to 100,000 Poles were killed by Ukrainian nationalists in 1943-44 in the massacre in Volyn, a region of eastern Poland before 1939 that now lies in Ukraine. Poles are believed to have killed some 20,000 Ukrainians.
“We cannot blame the Ukrainian nation for the massacre of Polish civilians,” Kwasniewski said. “It is particular people who always bear responsibility for crimes and bad acts, but we have to express a moral protest against the ideology that led to the anti-Polish action, initiated by some organizations of Ukrainian nationalists,” he added.
The July 11 commemorations, which also included an Orthodox service geared toward Ukrainians, came a day after the Polish and Ukrainian parliaments adopted a joint declaration condemning the killings.
The 450-seat Verkhovna Rada passed a reconciliatory statement 227-25 to commemorate jointly the 1943-44 massacres in Western Ukraine. Some nationalists and communists opposed the statement.
“We bow our heads to honor the memory of innocent victims,” the statement said. “There should not be any excuse for terror, violence and cruelty. The truth of those dramatic years is painful for everybody, but both Polish and Ukrainians should know about it.”
In a possible sign that some in Ukraine are unhappy with the way the massacres are being commemorated, local police uncovered a weapons cache in woodland near Pavlivka on June 10, according to news agencies.
Acting on an anonymous tip, police found a small-bore rifle, bullets and a hand grenade, all ready for use, concealed 800 meters from the site of the ceremony, Interior Ministry press center head Oleksandr Zarubnytsky told UNIAN on July 11.
While the two countries in general agree about the need to get over the past for the sake of good relations, they differ on how they view the events.
Some Poles demand Ukrainians apologize for what they consider an act of genocide, while Ukrainians, divided about the need to commemorate the massacre at all, point to their own suffering at the hands of the Poles.
Krystyna Olech, 64, was 8 years old when she watched Ukrainians kill her mother and shoot her two sisters as they ran from their house.
Fighting back tears as she laid flowers at her family’s grave, she said she believed the ceremony would bring reconciliation.“It’s really hard, but we need to do it,” she said. “We should do it together.”
