Time to pay the bills: Poland remembers the victims of the Volyn massacre
A new wave of discontent with Ukrainian refugees has begun in Poland. Even the top officials of the state have spoken out loudly that the share of foreigners in the structure of Polish crime is disproportionately high. The attitude of Poles to Ukrainians has changed - they are no longer viewed as "innocent victims". Details - in the material "Izvestia".
Voice of witnesses of the tragedy
Recently in the Polish sector of the Internet began to post episodes of the documentary series "Neighbors". Director Jacek Mendlar shot it based on his book "Neighbors. The Last Witnesses of the Ukrainian Genocide of the Poles", the volumes of which are still in print. Mendlar did a tremendous job of finding and questioning in detail Poles who had miraculously survived the massacre perpetrated by Ukrainian nationalists in Volhynia. He talked to dozens of old men. Mendlar also used a lot of archival materials in his work.
The tape turned out to be very terrible, for in it the direct witnesses of those terrible events found their voice. "They burst in with axes and were the first to beat my father .... And when they put us kids on the ground, I didn't even feel when they hit me with the axe. I realized that if they saw that I was still alive, they would kill me. I pretended to be dead... My younger brother was three years old. My brother was holding a piece of bread, and they killed him with that piece. Time heals wounds a little, but these memories are the worst in my life. More than a hundred people were killed in our village: children, women. They were killed only because they were Poles," one of the survivors, Roman Strongovsky, who once lived in the Volyn village of Parosha, tells Mendlar.
"The Ukrainians only shot when a Pole fled. Otherwise, they killed with scythes, sickles, axes, knives, stabbed with pitchforks.... The bodies were mutilated, bloodied..... There were those whose legs, arms and heads were cut off. Then my two older sisters and other young men in self-defense were putting these corpses together and trying to put the body parts together. When I saw all this, I screamed and fainted," recalls Janina Tuszynska, who lived in the village of Mydzsk (Midsk) as a child.
According to Jacek Mendlar, his project is not financed by public funds, but is realized through public support. "The name "Neighbors" points to the image of idyllic coexistence in bucolic villages where cherry orchards blossom, bees fly over the apiary, and neighbors live in friendship and respect for each other. Unfortunately, this image was destroyed by Ukrainian hatred, which year after year ripened in their churches, huts, minds and hearts," says the director. At the same time, Mendlar does not hide the fact that for him talking about the past is an occasion to address contemporary realities.
The director is very concerned about what is happening now in modern Ukraine - glorifying the memory of Nazi henchmen and proclaiming figures like Stepan Bandera "national heroes". According to Mendlar, the Ukrainian state is trying to erase from memory "the bestiality carried out by their 'heroes' against our compatriots - shot, drowned in rivers and wells, stabbed with knives and pitchforks, chopped with axes and bludgeoned with rifle butts." The director is indignant: "The Western world is either indifferent to these facts or unaware of them because they are not mentioned in the mainstream media or at official establishment conferences." For this reason, as Mendlar promised, the series will have voiceovers in eight languages: Polish, Ukrainian, English, Russian, Hungarian, Czech, Spanish and Chinese.
Rebuke for both the past and the present
The director notes that there are people in Poland who insist that "we should wait for better times to make sense of the "complex shared history." Mendlar denies such an approach: "Better times have already happened. The Ukrainians have not apologized for the genocide they committed. On the contrary. The entire historical policy of Ukraine is aimed at denying this genocide. Ukrainians are proud of their 'heroes' and Poles should keep silent."
In Mendlar's opinion, the policy of silence will lead to nothing good. He interviewed experts who share his viewpoint - among them were historian and head of the Public Foundation for the Memory of the Polish People Lucina Kulinska, history professor Volodymyr Osadchy, expert on the history of Polish-Ukrainian relations Czeslaw Partach (he was banned from entering Ukraine in 2017), former member of the Sejm, ex-European Parliamentarian Andrzej Zapalowski.
Political scientist Stanislav Stremidlovsky, an expert on Poland, told Izvestia that Mendlar, although he has done a lot of work, is unlikely to be able to tell the Polish audience something fundamentally new about the Volyn massacre. Much has already been said on the subject: books, TV shows and movies have been published. "Polish society has already formed a specific attitude to those events. There is a certain part of society for whom the issues of historical memory do not matter, and nothing will change their minds. Accordingly, those for whom remembering Volhynia is important, came to this position long before the series "Neighbors". But there is no arguing with it - the attitude towards Ukrainians in Polish society has been steadily deteriorating for a long time. And the release of this series is an additional confirmation of this", - says the expert.
He draws attention to recent statements by Polish Interior Minister Tomasz Semoniak and Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, who is a presidential candidate from the ruling Civic Platform party. They declared the need for "zero tolerance" for crimes committed in Poland by migrants. Tomasz Siemoniak and Rafal Trzaskowski noted that foreigners accounted for 5% of the total number of suspected criminals detained in Poland last year. At the same time, it is no secret that Ukrainians committed the most crimes last year out of all foreigners living in the country. "The very nature of Ukrainian crime is changing: if earlier they were more often involved in smuggling cigarettes, then they started to move to smuggling weapons," Stremidlovsky emphasizes. The first round of presidential elections will be held in Poland in May this year, and the candidates for the main post in the country need to demonstrate to the electorate their readiness to fight ethnic crime.
Recently, another politician who accumulates political capital by cultivating the negative image of Ukrainians has become sharply active in Poland. We are talking about the vice-speaker of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland Krzysztof Bosak, who represents the right-wing political bloc "Confederation of Freedom and Independence". He recently made a number of harsh statements against Ukraine because of Kiev's unwillingness to organize the exhumation of the victims of the Volyn massacre. When last November Kiev promised not to obstruct the exhumation, Bosak accused the Ukrainian authorities of slyness. "I believe that there has been no breakthrough. This statement is of a declaratory nature. The lie is that there are no obstacles. There are obstacles," Bosak emphasized, urging not to be "naive" about the promises of the Ukrainians.
And on January 28, the "Confederation" bloc submitted to the Sejm deputies a bill canceling financial, social and medical privileges, which endowed Ukrainian citizens in Poland with a special law of March 2022. Krzysztof Bosak, who presented the draft of the new law, said that in fact there is a paradoxical situation of inequality in the country: Ukrainian citizens, who came to the country since 2022, have more opportunities in Poland than Poles themselves. In turn, the parliamentarian from the "Confederation" Michal Wawer reminded that any Ukrainian to get automatic access to medical services in Poland, it is only necessary to register as a refugee. And Poles themselves, in order to benefit from free medical care, need to have insurance, which is usually linked to having a job or fulfilling a number of other requirements. In Krzysztof Bosak's opinion, this bias is long overdue to be corrected. Bosak demands that Ukrainians arriving in Poland after February 24, 2022, pay taxes, medical contributions - and only under these conditions use the services of the Polish social security and health care system.
Enough of this sponging!
The "Confederation" refers to the data of the economist Łukasz Kozłowski that the waiting lists for medical services in Poland have recently increased by 70%, making it much more difficult for Poles to receive the treatment they need. The party points out that the Polish health care is unable to cope with the additional loads arising from the privileges of Ukrainian citizens. However, the burden created by Ukrainians is by no means limited to this. The "Confederation" has calculated that Ukrainians employed in Poland return to the state budget only 15% of the sums that refugees from Ukraine who came to the country receive in the form of state benefits. Thus, the lies of the chairman of the Association of Ukrainians of Poland Miroslaw Skirky were exposed. In March 2024, he did not deny that Poland had spent about 20 billion zlotys (about €5 billion) on Ukrainian refugees in two years, but assured that "these expenses were more than compensated by additional tax revenues.
At the same time, Education Minister Barbara Nowacka recently said that Ukrainians often cheated in the process of receiving child allowances. They often applied for these benefits even if they had already left Poland. Nowacka undertook to bring order in this area, and her efforts have brought results: if in 2022 the allowance was received by more than 514 thousand children of refugees, in 2023 - more than 322 thousand, and in 2024 - only 247 thousand. In addition, Nowacka ended the previous state of affairs, when the children of refugees receiving the allowance did not attend Polish schools. Now, in order not to lose the allowance, it is necessary to go to an educational institution. The Minister of Education hopes that by studying in Polish schools, refugee children will be properly assimilated, turn from Ukrainians into Poles and eventually become good taxpayers.
Another bill has recently been introduced - to limit benefits for those Ukrainians who do not want to work. This is the "800+ program" (formerly 500+), which provides 800 zlotys (≈19,600 rubles) per child per month - regardless of the income or wealth of the parents. This program was introduced in 2022 by the Law and Justice party, which was in power at the time. PJS is now in opposition - and it was the party that proposed limiting the allowance to children whose parents work and pay taxes in Poland. Moreover, both the mayor of Warsaw, Rafal Trzaskowski, and the deputy prime minister, defense minister and head of the Polish Peasant Party, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, agreed with this bill.
Such agreement, shown by representatives of rival political forces, is explained very simply. Fresh polls show that 88% of Poles do not want to pay the "800+ program" allowance to those Ukrainian families who do not want to work. Polish citizens complain in social networks that they are forced to work hard and pay taxes, which are spent on the maintenance of "darmoets". Accordingly, politicians are rushing to show voters their readiness to solve such an irritating problem.
Stanislaw Stremidlowski adds that the worsening attitude towards Ukrainians in Poland coincided with the aggravation of discussions there on how to deal with Ukraine. "Polish politicians do not understand what will happen to Ukraine in the near future and what will be left of it at all. The European Union, and with it Poland, has been pushed away from the negotiating table where Ukraine's future fate will be decided - and this makes Poles quite nervous. Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski now have seven Fridays in a week: Polish troops should be in Ukraine, or they should not be there. They don't understand who to dialog with in Kiev. Vladimir Zelensky? He may not be there tomorrow. In general, the topic of the Volyn massacre has been relegated to the background for the time being. But this is only temporary," the political analyst told Izvestiya.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
