Memorial Remembers Pawlokoma Massacre

Canadians travel to Poland in memory of murdered relatives and friends

By Olena Wawryshyn

The stories of countless individuals who died in the Second World War have been lost in the great tide of history.  But, the tragic fate of 366 Ukrainians who perished in a massacre in 1945 in the Polish village of Pawlokoma will not be forgotten now that a large monument has been erected in their memory.

“The memorial is something that we have been encouraging for about 15 years,” said Zenon Potichnyj,” chair of the Pawlokoma Foundation, which was established by a group of individuals in Toronto whose family histories can be traced to the Polish village.

The ceremony marking the unveiling of the memorial was a solemn and stately event.  Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko and his Polish counterpart Lech Kaczynski attended and, in turn, gave speeches. “I can only imagine what a difficult road has been travelled by tens of thousands of people to this act of reconciliation which we are witnessing today,” said Yushchenko.

“But I am convinced of one thing: that only the strong are capable of forgiving. I am convinced that the memory of one’s history, historical memory, is an imperative for contemporary times,” he said.

“The time has now come to not hide the truth and to speak of the wrongs that have not been righted,” said Kaczynski.

A Divine Liturgy, led by Patriarch Lubomyr Husar of the Ukrainian Catholic Church and Roman Catholic Archbishop Josef Michalik, of Peremyshl, was celebrated.

A large crowd gathered for the event, including Polish citizens living in Poland, Ukrainians living in Poland and about 40 busloads of Ukrainians from Lviv oblast in Ukraine. Among those present were Zenon and about nine other Ukrainian Canadians from Toronto who flew in to take part. They had with them a large Canadian flag that underlined the fact that the tragic events in Pawlokoma are remembered by Canadians.

Zenon’s grandmother and his father, Andrij Potichnyj, were born in Pawlokoma. Like many other Ukrainians living in that area at that time, they were deported to Northern Poland in 1947 through the massive resettlement action plan of the Polish authorities called Akcja Wisla. Others were put on trains by Polish authorities and shipped to Ukraine.

A significant number of those who found themselves in Northern Poland eventually immigrated to Canada, as did the Potichnyjs.

In Canada, they were far away geographically, but the massacre in Pawlokoma did not fade from their minds. “A group of us started the Foundation for the purpose  of trying to do something to remember the people that were killed,” says Zenon.

Their original goal was to improve the neglected condition of the Pawlokoma cemetery where the victims, including some relatives of the Potichnyjs, were buried.  All that remained of the cemetery were a few aging and weather-beaten monuments “that in a few years would have totally disappeared,” says Zenon.

“We asked the authorities in the region to at least put up a fence around it so that people would know that it is a cemetery,” he says. A fence enclosing the location  was erected and the Foundation’s members put up three large metal crosses in the cemetery

The group then began thinking about erecting a sign saying that “‘there were Ukrainians buried here by Armija Krajowa’ (Polish anti-communist fighters) but the  Polish authorities would never allow us to put up that kind of sign,” says Zenon.

The historical event has been a long-standing sore point in Ukrainian-Polish relations and conflicting versions of what  exactly happened in Pawlokoma in 1945 continue to exist.

Some Polish historians, such as Zdzislaw Konieczny, argue that only 100 Ukrainian men were killed, while women and  children were spared and ordered to march to Ukraine.

Ukrainian eye-witnesses, some who are still alive, have described a different version. They remember seeing relatives of all ages, including women, murdered. Their accounts are documented in a book in Ukrainian that was published in Warsaw and edited by a Ukrainian professor Yevhen Misylo.  Another book, published in Lviv in 2005, also offers similar first-hand accounts.

There are also conflicting views on what sparked the massacre. Konieczny states that it occurred in retaliation for the killing of Poles by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Others say that 11 Poles were murdered around that time in Pawlokoma, but it is not proven who was responsible says Zenon.

Ukrainian historians, including Peter J. Potichnyj, who wrote a book outlining the history of the village from 1441–1945 maintain that the massacre in Pawlokoma was not an isolated incident, but part of a larger policy to remove Ukrainians from the area.

While there is no dispute that many Ukrainians were killed, the Pawlokoma Foundation, nevertheless, could get no further in their endeavour to erect a monument until they wrote a letter to the Ukrainian President, Leonid Kuchma, at the time, requesting his support. Kuchma asked that a committee look into the matter and the Ukrainian side began working with a Polish committee to come up with a solution that would reconcile historical grievances of both sides. The ceremony that took place in May was the end result of these discussions.

“The fact that the whole thing happened was very positive because it shows that the Ukrainian and Polish people are coming to some kind of understanding, trying to forget what happened and to recognize that in war time there were Ukrainians killed by Polish people and Polish people killed by Ukrainians in Volyn and other places,” says Zenon.

A marker to Polish victims has already been erected in Volyn in Ukraine and in the Orleta cemetery, (which is part of the Lychakiv cemetery) to honour Polish soldiers and volunteers who died in 1918-1919 fighting to bring Galicia into the reconstituted Polish state.

The Pawlokoma memorial is the first in Poland that is dedicated to Ukrainians who died in that country. But, many similar unmarked sites still remain in Poland, says Zenon.

There are also still some grievances relating to Pawlokoma itself says Zenon because the monument refers to “366 Ukrainians who died tragically in Pawlokoma in 1945” with no mention of how they died or who killed them, even though it is well-documented that the Armija Krajowa was responsible. A memorial in Pawlokoma erected by a Polish church, on the other hand, makes references to 11 Poles who were “killed by Ukrainian nationalists,” Zenon points out. “That’s a huge difference,” he says.

Nevertheless, Zenon says he and the Foundation are pleased with the way in which the unveiling ceremony took place.

On the large monument, constructed by a Ukrainian company, the names of all the Pawlokoma victims are engraved.  The Foundation’s Canadian members now have the assurance that their family, friends and neighbours who died in Poland will be remembered.