Description

This volume is dedicated to the Polish-Ukrainian conflict on the eve of World War II, during the Nazi occupation and its immediate aftermath. The focus is on events in the Kholm region (mainly from the campaign of demolishing Orthodox churches in 1938 to the mass deportations of Ukrainian inhabitants of the region in 1945–1947) and in Volhynia (mostly in 1943–1944, when the conflict was most acute). There is also some material on Galicia (including the Sian and Lemko regions), but a more detailed account of events in these territories will be given in a separate volume.

The first half of this volume consists of fourteen essays (eleven in Ukrainian, two in Polish, one in German). Authors include Iaroslav Isaievych, Mykola Kucherepa, Iuri Makar, Grzegorz Kurianowicz, Andrij Rukkas, Volodymyr Trofymovych, Leonid Zashkilniak, Oleksandr Vovk, Stepan Makarchuk, Andri Zaiarniuk, Zbigniew Maricin Kowalewski, Roman Drozd, Wlodzimierz Medrzecki, and Cornelia Schenke.

The second half contains a superb collection of thirty-five documents, and nearly 200 pages of memoirs, and materials of a public polemic preceding the opening of a memorial to Polish and Ukrainian victims of the conflict between these nations on 11 July 2003. Notable materials include a letter from Pope John Paul II, a joint statement by Presidents Kuchma and Kwasniewski, an open letter from Viktor Yushchenko to Adam Michnik, and another open letter signed by Yuri Andrukhovych, Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak, Yuri Makarov, Iaroslav Hrytsak, and other members of Ukraine’s intelligentsia.

Published in Lviv by the I. Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, with the support of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies and the Theodore and Magdalena Butrey Fund at the Petro Jacyk Educational Foundation, Toronto, Canada.

See World Wars, Galicia-Volhynia, Principality of., and Galician-Volhynian Chronicle in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine.