December 3, 2023
The prosecutor of Rzeszow department of the Institute of National Remembrance of Poland (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, IPN) made a decision to terminate the investigation into the case of the “Vistula” campaign, in which the Ukrainian population from the southeastern regions of Poland was forcibly resettled to its western regions. The official announcement states that the decision to conduct the “Vistula” operation was related to “the military operation aimed at defeating the OUN–UPA groups” and “was aimed at ensuring the safety of the citizens” as well as “at the same time depriving the UPA of the security and intelligence support from those residents who cooperated with it”. During the resettlement, “the criterion of the origin was not applied”, the deportation itself took place “in a humane manner”, the resettlers in the new place instead of the “wooden houses, most often with straw roofs, received brick houses, which were partially provided with running water supply and electricity.These houses were selected for them in advance or they chose them themselves and then replaced them with better ones”. The investigation also did not reveal “that in the process of making a decision on the resettlement action, the powers were exceeded or the abuse took place”. And thus it was concluded that the forced resettlement (called “evacuation” in the report) apparently had “not a repressive, but a prejudicial and protective nature”, and therefore “no grounds were found to claim that the resettlement was a crime against humanity, nor was it a communist crime”.
Such a position of the Rzeszow prosecutor of the IPN calls on, to say the least, surprise and indignation. After all, it contradicts not only the facts and documentary sources that have been made public for many years both from the Polish and Ukrainian sides, it was the repeatedly expressed position of scientists, presidents and parliaments of Poland and Ukraine, moreover, that was the position of the INR itself as well. However, in 2021, in the message on the official Facebook page for the anniversary of the Vistula action, the IPN claimed that “the population affected by the Vistula action” should have been evicted regardless of political views, potential connections with the underground, or their national consciousness”. The nature of the action against the Ukrainian population is clearly evidenced by the documents. In the decision of the Politburo of the Polish Workers’ Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza, PPR) dated March 29, 1947, the purpose of the action was defined as follows: “As part of the repressive action against the Ukrainian population (…) to rapidly relocate the Ukrainians and mixed families to the returned territories (primarily North Prussia), without forming solid groups and no closer than 100 km from the border”[I]. In the action project developed by the Polish special services and approved with minor changes, its task was also defined unambiguously, i.e., “the final solution of the Ukrainian problem in Poland”. In order to achieve this goal, it was envisaged to forcibly evict “all persons of Ukrainian nationality” from the Polish–Ukrainian border, namely, “all groups of Ukrainian nationality, including the Lemkos, as well as the mixed Polish–Ukrainian families”[II]. Even those from the “rear” districts of the Lublin region, “in principle, all Ukrainian families from the territory of these districts, regardless of their loyalty and party affiliation” were subject to eviction [III].
Causing confusion is the prosecutor’s conclusion about the supposedly “humane nature” of the action, which was made on the basis of “the documents accumulated during the investigation, i.e., the orders, regulations and instructions for the military as well as employees of the State Repatriation Commission”, which were supposed to give the deportees “the opportunity to take with them as much as possible” of personal property (…), pasture, root crops, as well as livestock”, the “help” from the military in terms of transportation and packing of property, food on the way and the supply of medicines and bandage materials. After all, it is the same as asserting the “humane” nature of the Soviet deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 on the basis of the fact that, according to the decree of the State Defense Committee of the USSR on the deportation, the persons who were forcibly evicted were “allowed”, they say, “to take with them personal belongings, clothes, household items, dishes and food”, and for each echelon with the deportees, it was planned to provide “a doctor and two nurses with an appropriate supply of medicines” and supply “daily hot food and boiling water”, and upon arrival, the deportees were to be provided with “homesteads and assistance in the construction of houses using local building materials” and provided a loan for the construction of houses and economic support [IV].
However, the documents unequivocally refute such conclusions, since the reports of the Polish public security authorities claim that the action found “the population to be resettled unprepared. (…)Due to well-kept military secrecy, the population in general was disoriented and worked in the fields until the last possible moment” [V]. Polish military units surrounded villages, the residents were informed of the immediate relocation and given only a few hours to collect their belongings, after that they were sent to the so-called assembly points, where special services compiled the lists of the “unreliable” (they were either arrested immediately or evicted in numbers no larger than a family in each settlement), and the rest were taken away from the state border and resettled in groups that did not exceed 10% of the local Polish population. As stated in the reports of the Polish special services, for example, in the territory of the Lublin Voivodeship, “the army, evicting the population, is concerned only with how to properly evict as many people as possible, determined by the plan”, and in many cases the deportees go “to the Western lands without food , with dead and half live inventory, thus having great difficulties settling on the devastated farms of the Olsztyn Region” [VI].
The “humane” treatment of the deportees by the military, special services and the institutions responsible for the action led to the fact that several hundred people simply did not reach their destination because they died on the way. It was forbidden for the evictees to return home, and those who tried to do so, or for some reason did not reach the destination, were to be detected and “immediately evicted and escorted to the nearest loading points”[VII]; later, an even stricter order was issued – “all Ukrainians who were evicted and return illegally, were to be arrested and handed over to the division and the Department of Public Security”, which “will send these persons to the labor camp in Yavozhno”[VIII]. At least 162 people died from torture and disease in this camp[IX].
The material situation of the deportees in the places where they were evicted was characterized by Stefan Mossor, the commander of the “Vistula” operational group, as complicated [X]. Even almost a decade after the action, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the communist Poland emphasized in one of its reports that “the settlement of the Ukrainian population in the Reunified Lands took place at the time when the best farms had already been divided. It was a common case when several families were often settled in one farm (…) and in the worst farms, where there were no farm buildings or they were damaged. As the result of such resettlement, the situation of the Ukrainian population is quite difficult, e.g. in the Olsztyn Voivodeship, out of 10,462 Ukrainian farms, more than 3,000 require major repairs, and 850 are completely unsuitable for use and require immediate replacement. (…) For example, in many settlements (…) several Ukrainian families often live in one small house. Quite often it happens that apeasant family consisting of 6–10 people lives in one room, and sometimes on the floor. “In the end, it was recognized that the “Vistula” action had the character of “collective responsibility of the entire population (…), which was manifested in mass repressions (forced resettlement)” [XI].
It is surprising not only that the prosecutor of the Rzeszow department of the IPN probably did not pay due attention or completely ignored the above-mentioned facts and evidence, but also that the key tenets of the notice on the closure of the case coincide almost verbatim with the statements of the odious Polish researcher Eva Siemaszko that, “the resettlement was inevitable, took place in humane conditions, and Ukrainians were resettled on lands with a higher level of civilizational development” [XII]. And the attempt to “justify” in this way the actions of the authorities of thecommunist Poland in relation to the citizens of the latter is not much different from the attempts of Russian propagandists from history to “justify” the repressions of the Soviet totalitarian regime, first of all, mass deportations of the entire population groups, including the Crimean Tatars and the Poles. Therefore, it can be assumed that such conclusions of the prosecutor have little to do with the conduct of a comprehensive, objective and independent investigation, and are caused rather by the reasons of a political nature.
At the same time, it should be emphasized that the evidence unequivocally indicates that the “Vistula” action was coercive in nature (it took place against the will of the population itself and with the use of military units) and, with rare exceptions, involved the displacement of population groups on the basis of nationality (ethnic Ukrainians or members of mixed Polish-Ukrainian families) from the areas in which such a population lived at that time on legal grounds, and was also carried out in the absence of grounds permitted by international law. That is, it was deportation or forced displacement of the population. Tortures were applied tot he persons placed in the Yavozhno concentration camp, and the prohibition of the deportees to return to their native places under the threat of repeated deportation or placement in the same concentration camp was the persecution of an identifiable group for national reasons in connection with the deportation and forced displacement of this group. All this, according to the international law, is a sign of a crime against humanity.
Provided we take into account the other conclusion of the Rzeszów Prosecutor of the IPN that the purpose of the “Vistula” action was probably to “carry out a military operation with the aim of defeating the OUN–UPA groups”, then the prosecutor de facto recognized the existence of an internal armed conflict on the territory of Poland between the government and the organized structures of the Ukrainian underground, which had all the signs of combatants. And, therefore, the adoption of decisions by the political and military leadership of the communist Poland on the relocation of the civilian population for the reasons related to such a conflict, in the absence of urgent wartime needs (as of the spring of 1947, the active armed actions of the OUN and the UPA underground on the territory of Poland had generally ceased), as well as considerations of the security of the relevant civilian population (and even the documents of the Polish special services show that at that time the presence of the remnants of the OUN and the UPA structures in these territories generally did not pose a threat not only to the entire Ukrainian population that was deported, but also to the Polish population of the respective territories), according to the norms of international law, had the characteristics of a war crime.
Historical and legal position of the Center for Research on the Liberation Movement
[I] Protokol Nr posiedzenia Biura PolityczniegoKomitetu Centralnego Polskiej Partii Robotniczej od29.03.1947 // Akcija „Wisla” 1947. Dokumenty i materialy / Wstep, wybor i opracowanie dokumentow E. Misylo. – Warszawa: Archiwum Ukrainskie & Management Academy Group, 2013. – S. 260.
[II] Projekt organizacji akcji specjalnej „Wschód” // Polska i Ukraina w latach trzydziestych – czterdziestychXX wieku. Nieznane dokumenty z archiwów służbspecjalnych. Tom 5.: Akcja „WISŁA”. 1947 – Warszawa– Kijow, 2006. – S. 66–71; G. Motyka. Akcja „WISŁA” 47. Komunistyczna czystka etniczna. – WydawnictwoLiterackie Sp. z.o.o., 2023. – S. 42–43. Слід, однак, зауважити, що у районі Сянока план передбачав повне виселення усього населення, включаючи «польське цивільне населення».
[III] 1 sierpnia 1947, Warszawa. Instrukcja PaństwowejKomisji Bezpieczeństwa dla dowódców OW 5 i 7 // Polska i Ukraina w latach trzydziestych – czterdziestychXX wieku. Nieznane dokumenty z archiwów służbspecjalnych. Tom 5.: Akcja „WISŁA”. 1947 – Warszawa– Kijow, 2006. – S. 686–687.
[IV] Постанова Державного комітету оборони СРСР від 11.05.1944 № ГКО-5859сс «Про кримських татар».
[V] Po 29 kwietnia 1947, b.m.w. Informacja organówbezpieczeństwa publicznego o sytuacji w terenie // Akcija „Wisla” 1947. Dokumenty i materialy / Wstep, wybor i opracowanie dokumentow E. Misylo. – Warszawa: Archiwum Ukrainskie & ManagementAcademy Group, 2013. – S. 144–147.
[VI] Po lipcu 1947, b.m.w. Informacja dotycząca akcjiosiedleńczo-przesiedleńczej prowadzonej w województwie lubelskim // Polska i Ukraina w latachtrzydziestych – czterdziestych XX wieku. Nieznanedokumenty z archiwów służb specjalnych. Tom 5.: Akcja „WISŁA”. 1947 – Warszawa – Kijow, 2006. – S. 668–671.
[VII] 6 lipca 1947, b.m.w. Rozkaz Nr 6 dowódcy GO „Wisła” gen. Stefana Mossora dotyczący utworzeniagrup kontrolnych // Polska i Ukraina w latachtrzydziestych – czterdziestych XX wieku. Nieznanedokumenty z archiwów służb specjalnych. Tom 5.: Akcja „WISŁA”. 1947 – Warszawa – Kijow, 2006. – S. 536–537;
[VIII] 16 lipca 1947, b.m.w. Rozkaz Nr 010 gen. StefanaMossora dotyczący przeciwdziałania wypadkompowrotu Ukraińców po przesiedleniu // Polska i Ukrainaw latach trzydziestych – czterdziestych XX wieku. Nieznane dokumenty z archiwów służb specjalnych. Tom 5.: Akcja „WISŁA”. 1947 – Warszawa – Kijow, 2006. – S. 586–587.
[IX] Ґ. Мотика. Від Волинської різанини до Операції „Вісла». Польсько-український конфлікт 1943-1947 рр. Авторизований пер. з пол. А. Павлишина, післямова д.і.н. І. Ільюшина. – Київ: Дух і Літера, 2013. – С. 266–267;
[X] 25 lipca 1947, Rzeszów. Sprawozdanie DowództwaGO „Wisła” z działań Grupy// Polska i Ukraina w latachtrzydziestych – czterdziestych XX wieku. Nieznanedokumenty z archiwów służb specjalnych. Tom 5.: Akcja „WISŁA”. 1947 – Warszawa – Kijow, 2006. – S. 630–631.
[XI] Maj 1956, Warszawa. Notatka informacyjna MSW w sprawie ludności ukraińskiej w Polsce // Polska i Ukraina w latach trzydziestych – czterdziestych XX wieku. Nieznane dokumenty z archiwów służbspecjalnych. Tom 5.: Akcja „WISŁA”. 1947 – Warszawa– Kijow, 2006. – S. 754–757, 762–763.
[XII] E. Siemaszko, Upowska rewolta, „Nasz Dziennik”, 27/28 kwietnia 2002 // Цит. за: Polska i Ukraina w latach trzydziestych – czterdziestych XX wieku. Nieznane dokumenty z archiwów służb specjalnych. Tom 5.: Akcja „WISŁA”. 1947 – Warszawa – Kijow, 2006. – S. 25–27.
