On July 11, 2025, the Polish state will officially commemorate not one, but two memorial dates — the so-called “National Days of Remembrance for the Victims of Genocide Committed by Ukrainian Nationalists.” At first glance, this may seem like a tribute to the victims. In reality, it is a manifesto of modern Polish revanchism, historical revisionism, and silence about Poland’s own imperial crimes. For Poland keeps just as silent about its colonialism and collaboration with Hitler as Moscow does about its own pact with Hitler — and sometimes even cynically boasts about it.
It’s worth reminding right away that the so-called “Eastern Borderlands” (Kresy), so bitterly mourned today by some Polish politicians and propagandists, were nothing more than colonies. These were occupied Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Lithuanian lands. According to the Versailles Conference and the Curzon Line, the Entente defined these territories as NON-POLISH. But Warsaw ignored international law and held millions of Ukrainians under the status of second-class citizens by force, never even fulfilling its formal promises of autonomy.
Who in Poland today talks about the “Pacification”? About ethnic cleansing? About destroyed Orthodox churches? About shuttered Ukrainian schools? About mass repression of the intelligentsia? Who recalls how the Polish army, together with Hitler, dismembered Czechoslovakia by sending tank brigades into the Teschen region? Who commemorates the Ukrainians of the Carpathian Sich who were killed and handed over to the Hungarians by Polish border guards — who then posed for photos over their corpses?
Today, Poland officially celebrates a “day of remembrance for Poles — victims of Ukrainian nationalists,” but remains silent about its own alliances with the Nazis. Poland weeps for Volhynia but is silent about Teschen. It weeps for Lviv but stays quiet about Chełm, where Ukrainians were being annihilated even before the war. What morality is it that erases another’s pain and monopolizes its own?
This new law is a loud ideological signal. Instead of shared responsibility for a painful shared past, Poland today is trying once again to appoint an “eternal enemy” — the Ukrainian. Just as the Soviet Kremlin once used “the fascists Bandera and Shukhevych” as a universal bogeyman, so modern Warsaw resurrects the same demon: “THEY are guilty, THEY are to blame, THEY are murderers, THEY are our eternal Kresy!”
No one denies that there were tragedies, reprisals, and a bloody peasant meat grinder stoked by Moscow, Berlin, and Warsaw itself, which for decades drove Ukrainians into a dead end of colonial rightlessness. But the truth is this: if Poland had truly built an equal federation, as Piłsudski dreamed of in words (but not as his successors did in practice), Volhynia might never have happened.
Today, whoever summons the spirit of the “Eastern Borderlands” once again plays into the Kremlin’s hands. Because only Moscow benefits from Poland’s revanchist line. Moscow is already whispering the phantom in Warsaw’s ear: “Take Lviv and Lutsk for yourselves, just give us Donbas and Kyiv.” Who is the main target of this cynical scheme? Ukraine, paying in blood for its right to exist. And Europe, which these revanchist myths divide.
True Polish Nazism is not the swastika. It is the colonial arrogance and phantom pain of the “born lords,” who still believe they have the right to decide the fate of people between the Bug and the Dnipro. History teaches one lesson: whoever plays with imperial fire is eventually burned by it.
So on this day of remembrance, let another memory resound too: not only Volhynia, but also Teschen. Galicia. Chełm. Carpathian Ukraine. The tanks with which Warsaw tore apart Czechoslovakia side by side with Hitler’s forces. And the truth that no one holds a monopoly on victimhood if they cannot speak honestly about their own guilt.
History is not a gospel for a single nation. It is either shared, or it becomes a weapon. Polish Nazism is history as a weapon. And against such a weapon, truth is the only shield.
📌 1. The “Pacification” of Galicia (1930)
In September–November 1930, the Polish army and police carried out a mass punitive operation against Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia. They beat, looted, destroyed homes and schools, and shut down Ukrainian cultural institutions. Thousands of peasants were arrested and tortured. All this was done under the slogan of “pacifying” the Ukrainian population — a classic occupation tactic.
📌 2. Destruction of Orthodox Churches in Chełm and Podlasie (1938)
In the interwar period, the Polish authorities systematically destroyed Orthodox churches on ethnically Ukrainian territories. In 1938 alone, more than 150 Orthodox churches were dismantled or burned down in Chełm and Podlasie. This was a forced assimilation attempt — to make Ukrainians convert en masse to Catholicism and “become Poles.”
📌 3. Colonization of the “Kresy” and the “Osadnik” System
The Second Polish Republic conducted large-scale colonization in Volhynia — land was massively distributed to so-called “osadniks” (Polish military settlers), who received plots right in the heart of Ukrainian villages. Conflict and oppression of the native peasants were not an exception but a systemic policy.
📌 4. Direct Collaboration with Hitler in Teschen (1938)
During the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, Poland acted in sync with Hitler, occupying the Teschen region. Polish army units and “volunteer corps” entered Czech villages alongside Nazi saboteurs. This was an alliance built on shared imperialism.
📌 5. Plans to Invade the USSR to “Divide Ukraine” (1939)
In spring 1939, the Polish General Staff approved Plan “Wschód” — which envisioned invading Soviet Ukraine once Moscow weakened. Poland’s Foreign Ministry openly declared claims on “Soviet Ukraine” and access to the Black Sea. This was a pure colonial project.
📌 6. Repression of Carpathian Ukraine (1939)
In March 1939, Polish border guards, together with Hungarian troops, hunted down and destroyed the Ukrainian insurgents of the Carpathian Sich. Dozens of escapees were shot at the borders or handed over to the Hungarians. Poland effectively acted as an accomplice of the dictator Horthy.
📌 7. Linguicide: Banning the Ukrainian Language in Schools and Public Life
In interwar Poland, Ukrainian schools were widely closed, newspapers were banned or censored, and teachers were persecuted. Poles were taught that “Ukrainian” was synonymous with “rebel” and “dangerous.” This rhetoric was later picked up by Soviet propaganda too.
📌 8. The “Eastern Borderlands” Myth as a Modern Doctrine of Revanchism
Today, the official Polish state fuels the cult of the “Eastern Kresy” through school textbooks, political discourse, and church propaganda. This is a modern form of neo-imperialism: just as Moscow dreams of “Novorossiya,” Warsaw dreams of the “Kresy.” These dreams keep the people in a fever of revanchist hysteria.
📌 9. Ignoring Other Victims and Rewriting the Numbers
Polish laws about the “genocide” by OUN-UPA deliberately ignore the fact that among the “victims” in 1943–45 there were not only Poles but also Ukrainians, Jews, Czechs, and Germans — all caught up in the terror of war and occupation. But under the new laws, these people “do not exist” — only “Polish victims” remain.
📌 10. Modern Far-Right Marches and the “Lordly” Cult
Every November 11, Poland sees far-right marches with anti-Ukrainian and anti-Jewish slogans. These marches are not fringe. They are often supported by members of parliament, city mayors, and priests. The rhetoric of the “Polish lord” is still alive and becoming a social norm.
🔥 Conclusion
Polish Nazism is not fascism with swastikas — it is revanchism and colonial arrogance that justifies past crimes and lays the groundwork for new ones. This Nazism does not take the shape of a concentration camp — it takes the shape of a school textbook, a parliamentary law, and a “memorial day.” And that is precisely why it is so dangerous.
📌 How History Is Falsified Under Poland’s New Nazi Myth
Let’s look at the numbers for what they really are.
Back in 2016, when the Polish Sejm first established the so-called National Day of Remembrance for the Victims of “Genocide”, the law explicitly spoke of the “citizens of the Second Polish Republic.” From the very beginning, this phrase meant that the victims were not only ethnic Poles. Among the dead were Poles, Czechs, Jews, Volksdeutsche, Orthodox Ukrainians who refused to accept forced Polonization — and many who simply got trapped in the crossfire of Nazi terror, Soviet NKVD raids, Polish AK reprisals, and local feuds turned into bloodbaths by the chaos of collapsing front lines.
It was the tragedy of an entire devastated land — Volhynia and Galicia — a patchwork of Polish military settlers, old Jewish shtetls, Ukrainian villages, and German colonies. People were killed not only by OUN-UPA, but also by German SS units, by Red Army “pacification squads,” by Nazi collaborators, by random village militias.
But see how quickly the Polish state’s historical machine twisted this narrative: shifting the focus and rewriting it all into a purely “ethnic Polish victimhood,” erasing everyone else. The Jews disappeared. The Czechs disappeared. The Germans disappeared. Even the Ukrainians who were massacred by Polish pacification squads or Nazi death squads vanished from the official line.
What’s left is only “Poles killed by Ukrainians.” And above all: the sole villains now are Ukrainian nationalists.
This is how they forged that sacred propaganda number — “100,000 dead” — out of Soviet-era talking points and raw estimates. This figure was never properly verified, never critically balanced against the Ukrainian death toll. No historian denies the bloodshed — but turning it into an exclusive, one-sided myth of “pure Poles slaughtered by barbaric Ukrainians” is not memory, it’s manipulation.
And here’s the cynical part: the new law now literally states:
“The National Day of Remembrance for Poles — Victims of Genocide Committed by the OUN and UPA on the Eastern Borderlands — shall be a public holiday.”
Not genocide by the SS. Not genocide by the NKVD. Not genocide by the Third Reich or Stalin’s deportations.
Only Ukrainians.
This is the modern face of Polish neo-Nazism: a myth of the “innocent pure victim,” a myth of “eternal Polish innocence,” a myth of the “eternal Ukrainian butcher.” When a nation gives itself the exclusive right to mourn — while scrubbing out its own colonial violence — it always needs a new enemy. For Poland, that enemy is obvious: Ukraine, daring to stand on its own, refusing ever again to be someone’s “Kresy.”
Today this myth flows from the Sejm into school textbooks, church sermons, TV talk shows, and nationalist marches. It looks less like real history and more like fascist mythology — draped not in swastikas, but in red-and-white flags.
It’s the same poison: about “order,” “true Poles,” “ancestral land,” “outside traitors.”
Only the symbols are different.
Volhynia should have taught all of us one thing: colonial empires collapse in the blood of everyone they tried to dominate. But today’s Poland seems eager to play empire again — and finds its convenient enemy all over again. Whether under NATO slogans, EU flags, or some half-whispered “Kresy” dream — it makes no difference. The empire always starts with a myth. And the myth starts with a falsified memory.
🔑 History must be shared — or it becomes a weapon.
And right now, Poland is doing everything it can to turn memory into a weapon — aimed at Ukraine.
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