The Synod of Bishops of the UGCC in an address to the faithful and all people of good will on the 70th anniversary of the Volyn tragedy called for an end to the political manipulation of the dramatic pages of history and to mutual forgiveness by the Ukrainian and Polish nations.
The Synod of Bishops of the Kyiv and Halych Major Archbishopric of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) in an address to the faithful and all people of good will on the 70th anniversary of the Volyn tragedy called for an end to the political manipulation of the dramatic pages of history and to mutual forgiveness by the Ukrainian and Polish nations.
The bishops worry that "politically driven manipulation of the circumstances of this tragedy and the fanatical intransigence of hearts of isolated individuals or groups can only ignite the dwindling fire of ethnic hatred."
The appeal states that historians still have much work to find out all the circumstances and details of the terrible course of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict and bloodshed, their bitter consequences, and to establish the names of those who suffered.
"The fratricide of 1942-1943 in Volyn requires first and foremost a Christian evaluation ... From a Christian point of view, the policies aimed at depriving Ukrainians the right to self-determination on their land and armed violence against the Polish population in Volyn are condemnable," read the message.
The bishops stressed that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church wants to "continue to work on the reconciliation of the two fraternal peoples – Polish and Ukrainian – for mutual forgiveness in the name of justice." The document's authors support the call of the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, mentioned in its Declaration "Knowledge of the Past - the Way to the Future" from October 3, 2012, which states that religious and ethnic conflict should be resisted.
"And we must do this as a testament of good examples of cooperation, mutual understanding and support between people of different nations and religions, and for the study, reflection, and spread of the truth about the past," reads the address, which was disseminated by the Information Department of the UGCC .
The Volyn tragedy was the mutual ethnic cleansing of Ukrainian and Polish populations carried out by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Polish Home Army with the participation of Polish battalions of the Schutzmannschaft and Soviet partisans in 1943 during World War II in Volyn.
It is part of the large-scale Polish-Ukrainian interethnic conflict of the 1940s. There are different versions of events in Volyn, which resulted in the death of tens of thousands of Poles and thousands of Ukrainians. In Poland, the quite powerful right-winged Kresowy movement uses the events of the 1940s to depict Ukrainians as cutthroats and instigators.
Recently in Lublin, Polish historians discussed the Volyn tragedy without the participation of Ukrainians. The director of the Institute of National Remembrance in Poland unilaterally places the blame for the Ukrainian-Polish ethnic conflict of the 1940s on the Ukrainians, calling the tragedy a "massacre" and "genocide."