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The Polish Army, (Armija Krajowa): Their crimes against Ukrainians

Polish propaganda attempts to paint Ukrainians as animals who killed Poles in 1943-1944. Why is this being
done?

The issue is that the Polish government, along with the Polish Military, wants to cover up their own crimes,
committed against Ukrainians. Poles committed these crimes during the 20 year interwar period (1919-1939),
while Ukraine was part of Poland, a result of the League of Nations' decision. They continued to commit these
crimes during WW II, and even after the war, up until 1949 in the Zakerzon region.

The Polish government did not allow Ukrainians in western Ukraine to freely farm their own land. It strangled
the population with burdensome taxes, high rents, unfavorable loan terms, and prevented them from acquiring
their own land.

Ukrainians were not allowed to study in their own language in schools on their ancestral lands, even though they
were the majority. Ukrainians were not allowed to freely practice their own religion. In 1938 in Kholmschyna
alone, Poles destroyed almost 180 Ukrainian churches.

Under Polish control, Ukrainians were not allowed to hold any government positions. Government positions were
filled by Poles from central Poland, who neither spoke Ukrainian, nor understood Ukrainian traditions.

In March of 1939, the time had come for the League of Nations to review the question of a free and independent
western Ukraine, releasing it from Polish oppression. However the war had begun, and Hitler and Stalin
prevented the formation of an independent Ukraine.

The Polish government in exile, gave orders to the Armija Krajowa (AK), which operated in German occupied
western Ukraine, to constantly demonstrate their presence: to oppose the right of Ukrainians to build their own
independent nation, to destroy any independent Ukrainian military formations in the region, and if necessary to
destroy any peaceful Ukrainian villages, bases of support for the UPA. The victims of these barbarous attacks in
1943-1944 became thousands of defenseless Ukrainian men, women and children.

In 1944, Polish peasant battalions distinguished themselves as being extremely barbaric against Ukrainians in
Zakerzon. They conducted ethnic cleansing operations, by completely destroying and burning entire Ukrainian
villages, together with their inhabitants.

In 1945, at the Potsdam conference of the Allied heads of state, Stalin traded Ukrainian ethnic lands in Zakerzon
to Poland in exchange for its open port on the Baltic Sea (now Kalingrad). As a result, Poland had complete
freedom to do as it wished with Ukrainians in Kholmschyna and Nadsyannya. Poland viewed these Ukrainians as
potential rebels, and their crowning action was Operation “Wisla” in 1947, when over 150,000 Ukrainians were
forcibly removed from their villages by the Polish Army as ethnic cleansing continued.

In 1947-1949, Poland operated the concentration camp known as “Jaworzno” through which were filtered those
individuals captured during Operation Wisla, whom they suspected of supporting the UPA. Through this
infamous concentration camp passed over 4000 individuals, including nearly 1000 women and children, 25
priests, and at least 168 who died there. Operation Wisla was a horrific crime, one in which the Polish
government sadistically abused thousands of their own citizens of Ukrainian decent.

The historical lesson from all of this, is that the Polish soldiers were great warriors against an unarmed, peaceful
Ukrainian population, but against a real army, they were cowards, as shown by their actions in September of
1939 when Germany invaded Poland, and they surrendered en mass.

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