2017-03-12 17:25 update: 2018-09-26, 23:46
The words 'OUN-UPA' are painted on a monument at the mass grave of Polish executed in 1937-1940 by the Red Army in Bykownia near of Kiev, Ukraine, 25 January 2017 Photo: PAP/EPA/SERGEY DOLZHENKO
Unknown perpetrators splashed paint on a monument in Lviv commemorating Polish professors murdered by the Nazis and also desecrated a cross and memorial plaques honouring Polish victims in the village of Pidkamin in the Lviv region.
The inscription "death to Lachy" ('Lachy' is the name of an ancient Polish tribe, used as a reference to Polish people - PAP) appeared at both sites, Polish Ambassador to Ukraine Jan Pieklo told PAP on Sunday.
"In Lviv, the local administration responded very quickly. The monument ... was cleaned immediately", Pieklo said, adding that diplomatic notes on the new incidents would be sent to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.
He also told PAP that the Polish Foreign Ministry would monitor investigations into both incidents.
"We are dealing with an intensification of such incidents, which shows a certain level of helplessness and determination on the part of those behind these provocations", Pieklo said.
Ukrainian authorities earlier suggested that incidents involving Polish memorial sites in Ukraine are a provocation that aims to pit the Poles against the Ukrainians.
The governor of the Lviv region, Oleh Synyutka, said two weeks ago in an interview with Polish journalists that Russia was behind such incidents.
The latest incidents mark further attacks on Polish memorial sites in Ukraine. In January someone blew up a monument to Poles murdered in 1944 in the village of Huta Pieniacka in the Lviv region. In February, the monument was rebuilt from funds collected by the Ukrainian community in the area.
In January, red paint was splashed to desecrate a cemetery of the victims of totalitarianism in Bykivnia near Kiev; a Polish war cemetery is part of the complex.
In February, red paint was splashed on the Polish consulate in Lviv and the inscription "Our Land" was left on the fence. Also in February, nationalists from a small organisation known as The Black Committee hung on the fence of the Polish embassy in Kiev a portrait of wartime Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera. They declared that they were protesting against anti-Ukrainian statements made by Polish politicians.
The crime in the village of Pidkamin in the Lviv district took place on March 12-16, 1944 when from 100 to 150 Poles taking refuge in a Dominican monastery were murdered by a unit of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), supported by police from the Ukrainian "Galizien" SS Division.
The monument to the Polish professors of pre-war Lvov commemorates the events of early July 1941 when the Nazis executed 25 professors from local universities as well as members of their families and people who were staying with them at the time of arrest. Among the 40 victims of the Nazi crime was writer and translator Tadeusz Boy-Zelenski. A few weeks later mathematician and former prime minister Kazimierz Bartel was murdered.
Huta Pieniacka is a no-longer-existing village in what is now Ukraine’s Lviv region. On Feb. 28, 1944, Ukrainian volunteers from a German SS division killed anywhere from 600 to 900 people there, according to various accounts.
The Huta Pieniacka massacre is considered to be the most serious crime committed by Ukrainian nationalists in that region of Eastern Europe. A monument commemorating the victims of the tragedy was unveiled in 2005. On Feb. 28, 2009, the then Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yushchenko paid tribute to the victims of the crime.
Ukraine has prevented its cinemas from screening of a Polish historical film "Volhynia" (Wojciech Smarzowski, 2016) recounting the story of the masscre on Polish citizens in Volhynia region.(PAP)
dj/gs/
