Memorial to victims of WWII massacres by Ukrainian nationalists vandalised in Poland

A monument to victims of the Volhynia massacres, in which around 100,000 ethnic Poles were killed by Ukrainian nationalists during World War Two, has been vandalised in Poland. Unknown perpetrators painted the flag of the organisation that led the massacres and a slogan glorifying it.

The “shameful act” has been condemned by a spokesman for Poland’s new president, Karol Nawrocki. Police have launched a search for those responsible for carrying it out.

The monument in question, which was funded by the Polish Army Veterans’ Association in America, was unveiled last year. It had actually been created much earlier, but a number of cities refused requests to host it because of the brutal nature of the sculpture, which was made by the late artist Andrzej Pityński.

At the centre of the installation is a depiction of a baby being impaled on a Ukrainian trident. The base of the monument also features children’s dismembered heads impaled on fence pickets.

However, the mayor of the village of Domostawa in southeast Poland, where the memorial was eventually installed, defended the sculpture, saying that it accurately depicted the brutality of the massacres that had taken place. “We have to say that this is how it was,” said Tomasz Podpora.

On Thursday, reports and images emerged showing that the monument had been vandalised. Someone had painted the red-and-black flag of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) onto its base and written “Glory to the UPA” in Cyrillic text (though some commentators have noted there appear to be errors in the spelling).

The UPA was a wartime nationalist partisan organisation that fought for the establishment of a Ukrainian state. It was responsible for the Volhynia massacres, which targeted mainly ethnic Poles but also other minorities such as Jews.

The local deputy commissioner of police, Katarzyna Pracało, told news website Wirtualna Polska on Thursday that “officers are at the scene, securing evidence” in order to “determine how this destruction occurred and who committed it”.

Meanwhile, Rafał Leśkiewicz, the press secretary for Poland’s new right-wing president, Karol Nawrocki, who was sworn in on Wednesday this week, also commented on the incident.

“The matter of the vandalism of the ‘Volhynia Massacre’ monument in Domostawa must be quickly resolved, and the perpetrators of this disgraceful act punished,” he wrote.

In May, during his presidential election campaign, Nawrocki visited the monument and laid flowers there. The Volhynia massacres were “a genocide committed against the Polish nation”, he declared, “and we have the right to talk about it”.

The massacres have been officially recognised as a genocide by Poland’s parliament. But Ukraine rejects the use of that term. While it acknowledges the killings of ethnic Poles, it argues that they did not amount to genocide and points to violence and other forms of repression carried out by Poles against Ukrainians.

Meanwhile, UPA figures are often celebrated as national heroes in Ukraine for their role in fighting for national independence, something strongly condemned by Poland.

However, recent years have also seen moves towards reconciliation, including the presidents of Poland and Ukraine, Andrzej Duda and Volodmyr Zelensky, jointly commemorating the massacres in 2023. Ukraine also recently approved the exhumation of victims of the massacres on its territory.

Both Poland and Ukraine have also previously accused Russia of undertaking “provocations” intended to exploit and further stoke tensions between the two countries over World War Two history and other issues.

Earlier this year, Poland and Ukraine jointly condemned the vandalism of a memorial in Poland commemorating the burial site of UPA members who died fighting the Soviets during World War Two.

Main image credit: Rafał Mekler/X