The Polish and Israeli Ambassadors to Ukraine issued a joint letter to the mayor of Ivano-Frankivsk and to the country’s Foreign Minister in which they protested against the city honouring a Ukrainian nationalist responsible for murdering Poles and Jews during WWII.

The letter was a reaction to a monument of Roman Shukhevych being unveiled in Ivano-Frankivsk, western Ukraine, last week. It was signed by Bartosz Cichocki and Joel Lion, Ambassadors of Poland and Israel respectively.



“In your speech at the ceremony, you apparently stated that Roman Shukhevych was a “great personage" and encouraged the schoolchildren present at the scene to enjoy the view of the golden statue,” the letter reads.



“With this letter we take the opportunity to protest against your decision and wish to remind the kids of Ivano-Frankivsk, their parents and grandparents that Roman Shukhevych was personally responsible for taking the lives of tens of thousands of their equals- by bullets, fire, rape, torture and other beastly methods - only because they prayed to God in Polish or Hebrew.”



“We are certain that the students of Ivano-Frankivsk’s schools should be encouraged to learn their stories,” the statement continues. “We stand ready to facilitate their travels or otherwise help them to discover the true story of Polish-Jewish-Ukrainian heritage.”



Roman Shukhevych was born in western Ukraine in 1907, on territory which a decade later went under Poland’s control. From the late 1920s, he fought against what he saw as the Polonisation of Ukrainians. He was responsible for several assassinations in the 1930s.



Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union during the Second World War, Shukhevych commanded battalions formed by the Germans and comprising mostly Ukrainian nationalists. According to many historians, Battalion 201 under his command participated in pogroms of Jews in Western Ukraine and Belarus.



In 1943, Shukhevych took command of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). He was one of the organisers of the Volhynia Massacre, during which up to 100,000 Poles were killed by Ukrainian nationalists and another 300,000 were made refugees as a result of the ethnic cleansing.



In today’s Ukraine he is still considered an iconic freedom fighter by some, particularly in the west of the country.



The perception of the role played by Ukrainian nationalist organisations, such as the UPA, and the issue of the ethnic cleansings of Poles during WWII are still a bone of contention in diplomatic relations between Poland and Ukraine.