WARSAW, October 23 /TASS/. Dozens of Poles rallied outside the Ukrainian embassy in Kiev in protest against the Kiev authorities’ policy of glorification of fascists and fascist ideology in Ukraine.
“We, representatives of the families of about 200,000 Poles killed by the OUN-UPA (the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-the Ukrainian Insurgent Army) and the Galicia SS division during WWII, as well as representatives of public and religious organizations are staging this all-Polish action to protest against the policy of the Ukraine authorities to glorify criminal gangs that committed genocide,” the protesters said in their address to Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko.
The OUN-UPA fighters massively killed Polish citizens, Jews, Armenians, Czechs, gypsies and Ukrainian anti-fascists as well as representatives of other peoples during WWII.
“The glorification of those criminals is humiliating the memory of the dead and is giving rise to protest moods among the living relatives of the victims and all people of conscience. It is impossible that in the 21st century state bodies and other organizations in Ukraine, a country that wants to establish closer ties with the European Union, are admiring these fascist groups and are spreading their criminal thoughts in schools and universities,” the Polish activists said. They added that it was impossible to build a Ukrainian state or good relations in Central and Eastern Europe on the cult of ideology based on fanaticism and terror that had led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people.
The Ukrainian Insurgent Army(UPA) was created in 1942 as a combat wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). In 1943, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army staged the massacre of Polish population in Volhynia. On July 11, 1943, the UPA detachments attacked about 100 Polish populated localities. Systematic murders and killings continued until 1944 when the Red Army liberated those territories. More than 100,000 people, predominantly women, children and old people, became the victims of ethnic cleansing.