Szczecin, February 9, 2019 - uncover of the Memorial of the Victims of Ukrainian Nationalists - from the archive

With the financial support of the Branch of the Institute of National Memory in Szczecin, the Memorial of Victims of Ukrainian Nationalists was created in 1939–1947. The monument commemorates thousands of Poles, residents of Volyn and east Małopolska, victims of genocide made in 1939–1947 by members of the Ukrainian nationalist organizations OUN-UPA. The author of the monument is Prof. Katarzyna Radecka. The implementation of the formal and legal construction of the monument and the supervision of the works were carried out by the Branch Office of Commemoration of Walk and Martyrdom in Szczecin.

On 9 February 2019 at the Central Cemetery in Szczecin, at the invitation of the president of the Institute of National Memory Dr. Jarosław Szarek, manager of the IPN Branch in Szczecin Dr. Paweł Skubisz and president of the Association of east Heritage and Memory of Jerzy Hundreds of people arrived, including families murdered in Volyn and east Małopolska.

The date of the unveiling of the monument was not accidental. On 9 February 1943, in the Polish colony of Pawła 1st (gm. Antonówka, Sarne district), the UPA branch executed the first collective and organized execution on the Polish population. 173 Poles were murdered with peculiar cruelty. The crime in Pawłosy is considered to be the beginning of the Volyn genocide, although the individual murders in Poles occurred earlier.

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The monument has a very rich symbolism. It refers to the inherent elements of the scenery of the Polish village, which are the roadside chapel and the fallen roof of the house.

The roof in commemoration is devoid of hull and has symbolic scars – depths with names of the locality from which the earth comes with the ashes of the murdered ancestors, brought and laid under the monument. Thrown down from a house, after which there is no longer a trace, it rests in the ground next to a chapel, resembling in its humble form the chimney of the lost household. The roof does not remainder statically on the ground, but is as if immersed in it. This state, between immersion and departure, is an essential component of the composition, leaving the explanation free.

The chimney, where the stove, symbolizing the heat of the home fire, is usually standing alone, fried, symbolizing besides the lonely, fewer victims who survived cultural cleansing in Kresy II of Poland, without household heat. The joints between the bricks, mostly concave, on the monument are convex. Just as human relations and neighbourly good relations were distorted, turned “to the left”, so the bonds between the bricks warped outwards. Crosses on the advanced part of the chapel symbolize the scattering of surviving descendants of victims around the world.

The black, grey and uneven surface of the monument's linings mention to the erstwhile fire, and besides fit in the aura of necropolis. The inscription at the top of the roof contains information on commemoration. The monument is dedicated to the murdered in the framework of the crime of genocide, the victims of which were Poles, on a much smaller scale Ukrainians, Jews, Armenians, Russians, Czechs and representatives of another ethnicities of the Kresów, made by Ukrainian nationalists in the areas of the Volynsk, Tarnopolski, Stanisławowski and Lviv II provinces during the business of these lands by the 3rd Reich and the USSR from 1939 to 1945, as well as in the first years after the war.

The night illumination, obtained thanks to photovoltaic cells and wind turbines, visualizes the symbolic night fire and is intended to illuminate the commemoration.

Kalina hordowina, surrounding the monument, matures in July. The fruits are then red, symbolizing the shed blood of the victims. They have a sour and bitter taste that refers to the sensations of surviving descendants of victims who for years were incapable to commemorate their murdered relatives, and are poisonous, which refers to the death of victims of the Volyn massacre.

Source: ipn.gov.pl