Samborski: Moral work to Remember UPA Victims

Madam Marshal! "Not for vengeance, but for remembrance call for sacrifice." This intellectual-moral disposition is the starting point of the initiators of the bill, which is the subject of the current debate.

I have the honour to present to the advanced home a study by the Committee on Culture, National Heritage and the Means of Transmission on the parliamentary bill on the establishment on 11 July of the Polish Memorial Day – victims of genocide made by OUN-UPA at the east Borders of the Second Republic of Poland.

The Committee on Culture, National Heritage and the Means of Transmission after first reading and considering this bill at its gathering on 3 June 2025 submits the attached bill, asking the advanced Sejm to enact it. Here's what it says.

"In 1939-1946 Ukrainian nationalists from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (CNS), Ukrainian Insurgency Army (UPA) and another Ukrainian nationalist formations operating on the lands of the East Borders of the Second Republic of Poland (vołyńskie, Tarnopolskie, Stanisławskie, Lvivskie, Polesie voivodships) and the present Lublin and Podkarpackie provinces made genocide on the Polish population. They murdered more than 1 100 1000 Poles, mainly residents of the village, destroyed their property and led to refugees from east Borders of the Second Republic of Poland hundreds of thousands of Poles. The apogee of this crime falls on July 1943, and the symbolic date of the hekatoma of Poles at the hands of Ukrainian nationalists is 11 July 1943, erstwhile Poles were murdered in about a 100 localities. Martyr death due to belonging to the Polish nation deserves to be remembered in the form of a day distinguished annually by the Polish state, in which the victims will be paid tribute.

Article 1. On 11 July, the National Day of Memory of Poles – Victims of Genocide made by the CNS and the UPA on east lands of the Second Republic of Poland is established.

Art. 2. National Day of Memory about Poles – Victims of Genocide made by the CNS and UPA on east lands of the Second Republic of Poland is simply a state holiday.

Article 3. The Act shall enter into force on the day following the date of publication.

During the committee debate, respective amendments were made to clarify the content of the bill. For example, alternatively of defining ‘East Countries’, the word ‘Eastern Land’ was introduced. respective stylistic amendments were besides introduced and a fewer sentences were changed without harming the substance of the issues raised.

The authors of the bill are constantly accompanied by the awareness that the genocide committed on innocent inhabitants of susceptible villages was a terrible cruelty, which was reflected in the definition of this crime introduced into the UN lexicon by Lviv Prof. Rafał Lemkin, defined by him as "genocidium", which was extended by Prof. Ryszard Slawłowski, who added the word "atrox" to this concept, thus giving a more adequate concept, adequate to the reality of the time. The word ‘genocidium atrox’ is simply a genocide with peculiar cruelty.

Thus, with this bill, which I ask the advanced home to adopt on behalf of the Committee on Culture and Applicants, we want to introduce a permanent public vacation without a day off from work and without organisational duties or financial expenditure from public or local institutions. This bill is symbolic and commemorative. The issues covered by the task are not governed by European Union law.

Taking this into account, the Committee on Culture, National Heritage and the Means of Transmission submits this bill, asking the advanced Sejm to enact it.

Madam Marshal! advanced House! The Parliamentary Club of the Polish People's Party, on whose behalf I have the honour to speak, supports in all lengths the bill on the establishment of 11 July the National Day of Memory on Poles – Victims of Genocide made by the OUN and UPA on the east lands of the Second Republic of Poland, brought to the advanced home after first reading by the Committee on Culture, National Heritage and Media.

We, the People's MPs, have for many years been a guardian of the memory of the cruelly murdered of our compatriots in the east Borders of the Republic, who have become victims of genocide committed by the hate-blind Ukrainians of the OUN-UPA and another nationalist militias, as well as the oppressed by the banerian ideology of Ukrainian neighbours.

Polish People's Party, its leaders, MPs, sympathizers of the folk movement, specialized agendas like the press, publishing houses always felt a moral work to remember the victims of Ukrainian nationalists, as the vast majority of murdered Poles were innocent residents of defenceless border villages.

People fighting with determination and sacrifice and inactive fighting for the fact about the bander genocide according to the reflective maxim of 1 of the most prominent Polish writers of the contemporary Włodzimierz Odojewski, who wrote: "The fact cannot be buried, for it will uncover itself at the first opportunity, it will emergence from the grave" – the end of the quote. After all, it is widely known that only on fact can decent relationships be built between people and between nations. After all, it is not possible to sweep under the carpet the fact that on 11 July 1943 it is the most bloody Sunday in the past of the Polish nation, due to the fact that it was then that almost 100 Polish villages in the Kresach area fell innocent blood murdered with bander axes of defenseless women, children, aged people and clergymen. The Polish border village died in silence and in terror.

Speaking on behalf of the Polish People's organization club, which considers the adoption of the passed act a moral and patriotic duty, I cannot neglect to mention at least a fewer names of murdered Polish heroes, specified as Jan Zygmunt Ruml, poet Volyn, a martyr who is surrounded by horses from UPA, or Weronika Wąsik, commandant of the Boys' Battalions of Buchatsk Oblast.

For the sake of justice, it is besides essential to pay tribute to those noble Ukrainians who died at the hands of their fellow believers for refusing to participate in murdering their neighbours or saving Poles from the inevitable death.

It seems that in the current situation in Ukraine and in Polish-Ukrainian relations we must satisfy ourselves with the record: erstwhile there is no grave, we must save memory. The current bill will be specified an act that saves memory, an act that gives the anniversary of bloody Sunday the position of a state holiday. Thank you very much.

Mr Tadeusz Samborski

Speech during the parliamentary debate on 3 June 2025 as rapporteur and then on behalf of the PSL Club

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.