Poland on Tuesday marked its first National Day of Remembrance of Victims of Genocide by Ukrainian nationalists against Poles during World War II.

Between March 1943 and the end of 1944, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) carried out genocidal killings in Nazi German-occupied Poland, according to Poland’s National Institute of Remembrance (IPN).

The massacres were part of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army’s plan to have a sovereign and nationally homogenous Ukraine after the war.

The IPN, which is charged with prosecuting crimes against the Polish nation, said some 100,000 Poles died in the massacres, mainly women and children as men had already been subjected to mass deportations and repressions both by Soviet and Nazi authorities by the time the massacres started.

Meanwhile, some 10-12,000 Ukrainians were killed in revenge attacks by Poles, IPN said. Poland's IAR news agency added that some Ukrainians were killed by Poles acting in self-defence, and by other Ukrainians, in retribution for their attempts to help Poles.

Commemorations of the massacres were held throughout Poland on Tuesday.

The day coincides with the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, 11 July 1943, possibly the bloodiest day of the Volhynia Massacres, when the UPA attacked 100 villages largely inhabited by Poles in what was then Nazi-occupied eastern Poland and is now western Ukraine.

The national day of remembrance was adopted by the Polish parliament last year.

(vb/pk)

Source: IAR