The Polish Golgotha in Wołyń
Over 1,500 Polish settlements in Volhynia were completely destroyed. Between 1943 and 1946, Ukrainian nationalists murdered up to approximately 100,000 Poles in Volhynia, Eastern Lesser Poland, and the Lublin region. They perished in nearly 4,000 localities. To this day, the majority of the victims have not received exhumation, individual commemoration, or a Christian burial. Their remains still lie in unmarked graves, killing pits, forests, fields, and the sites of villages that no longer exist.
Historian Dr. Leon Popek described the tragedy of the Polish inhabitants of Volhynia and Eastern Lesser Poland—as well as the dramatic struggle to preserve the memory of the victims—in an article titled "Memory of Volhynia and Eastern Lesser Poland," published in *Biuletyn IPN* (IPN Bulletin) No. 4/2017. The researcher not only highlighted the scale of the genocide perpetrated by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army but also outlined the fate of the locations …More
It is all terrifying—unimaginable that it could truly happen—yet at the same time too contemporary, too fresh. One cannot show children impaled on fence pickets, people sawed in half, limbs hacked off, bodies crushed in the gears of horse mills, the bellies of pregnant women ripped open, or people burned alive. It is impossible, for no viewer—no normal human being—could bear the sight.