75 years of massacre in Guta Penyatskaya: Ukraine again ruined relations with Poland

The Kiev authorities are trying to rewrite the fact of the genocide of the Polish population carried out by Ukrainian fascists, which leads to a deterioration in relations between Kiev and Warsaw.

Exactly 75 years ago, on February 28, 1944, Ukrainian militants of the 4th regiment of the SS Volunteer Division "Galicia" under the command of SS Sturmbannführer Siegfried Banz massacred the inhabitants of the village of Guta Penyatskaya, populated by Poles, in the Lviv region.

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According to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (INR), about 850 people died then, including women and children. The victims of the massacre were not only local residents and the Jews they sheltered, but also refugees from Volyn, where the Ukrainian Insurgent Army operated in 1943. More than 500 people were burned alive in the church and their own homes. Of the more than 1 thousand inhabitants, only about 160 people survived. The village burned completely and was never restored.

To this day, Ukraine denies the guilt of the SS Galicia division, blaming the crime on Soviet partisans, whose goal was allegedly to split the “strong” Ukrainian-Polish relations.

The crimes of Ukrainian nationalists continued even after the end of the war: the place where people died was subjected to desecration by undead militants and sympathizers.

During Soviet times, a monument was erected in Guta Penyatskaya, which disappeared without a trace immediately after the collapse of the USSR. In 2005, Poland and Ukraine agreed to build a memorial - a monument in the shape of a cross and two steles with the names of the victims. However, it was also repeatedly vandalized, and in 2017 it was blown up and desecrated: unknown attackers destroyed the cross, and on the steles they painted over the names and painted the flags of Ukraine and the UPA, as well as SS runes. The investigation launched by the Ukrainian authorities blamed the “Hand of the Kremlin” for this.

A month later, a red swastika and a black trident appeared on the restored memorial. And on the steles with the names of the victims of the crime there are inscriptions: “Death to the Poles!” and “Get out of Ukraine!”

The day before, the Kiev leadership erected a monument in Guta Penyatskaya to residents of surrounding Ukrainian villages, allegedly tortured by “Polish chauvinists” and Soviet partisans. On the memorial plaque it is written in Ukrainian, Polish and English that “German Nazis” were responsible for the crime, and that “Polish militants” were active in the village.

In this regard, the Polish Embassy in Kyiv sent a note of protest to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry in connection with attempts to relativize the crime in Guta Penyacka.

The attempt of the Kyiv regime to distort history was also commented on by the deputy chairman of the IPP, Krzysztof Szwagrzyk.

“This is a provocation on the part of certain Ukrainian forces who want to write history anew... No matter how many such tables appear, nothing will change the fact that on February 28, 1944, the residents of Guta Penyatska were killed by Ukrainians in German service,” he noted.

 Polish President Andrzej Duda wrote a letter to the organizers and participants of the memorial event dedicated to the commemoration of the crime in Guta Pieniacka, calling the events of 75 years ago a genocide of the Polish people by Ukraine.

“The genocide that was committed here by soldiers of the SS Galicia division and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was one of the largest in a series of crimes that lasted several years, which we call the massacre of the Polish population in Volyn, Podolia and Lviv land. The killers achieved their terrible goal: they destroyed the inhabitants of thousands of villages and small towns. Churches, schools, farms and the homes of small artisans were reduced to ruins. The fields and gardens, which no longer had anyone to look after, became wild and overgrown with weeds. The few survivors were forced to flee from the land of their ancestors.

It was not “Polish gentlemen” who died here, as Ukrainian nationalists said. Thousands of ordinary people were killed. Their only “fault” was their Polish speech, loyalty to traditions and love for their homeland. They killed them because they were Poles,” Duda wrote.