Action Vistula
The so-called Vistula Action ( Akcja Wisła in Polish ) describes the forced resettlement of ethnic Ukrainians , Bojken and Lemken from the south-east of the People's Republic of Poland (e.g. from today's Subcarpathian Voivodeship and the eastern parts of today's Lesser Poland and Lublin Voivodeships ) to the north and west of the State territory (the so - called reclaimed areas ).
prehistory
As a result of the Second World War, one of Poland's eastern border was formed, largely the after the First World War in 1919 by the Western Allies as a line of demarcation between Poland and Soviet Russia announced and on the ethnographic principle Woodrow Wilson based Curzon Line corresponded. Due to the experience of two world wars and in order to eliminate ethnic conflicts as far as possible in the future, the desire prevailed in the Soviet sphere of influence to create states with an ethnically homogeneous population. This corresponded to the plan of the communist -influenced post-war government of Poland to create an ethnically homogeneous nation state in Poland as well. For the same reason, the Lublin Committee had agreed several repatriation agreements with the Soviet republics of Belarus and Ukraine , which border on Poland , during the war . The treaties provided for an exchange of people . This was supposed to be formally voluntary, but in fact these resettlements were largely carried out under duress. Ukrainians were supposed to relocate from southeastern Poland to the Soviet Union to compensate for the Poles who had to move west from the eastern Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union. After the expiry of the agreements, they were extended several times, but tens of thousands of Ukrainians remained in the south-east of the new Poland on the direct border with the Soviet Union. This region was also in a state of civil war . The UPA ( Ukrainian Insurgent Army), a nationalist, anti-Polish and anti-Russian organization, fought for the establishment of a non-communist Ukrainian nation-state since 1943, constantly changing allies. It carried out attacks on Soviet functionaries, facilities and traffic routes, was also responsible for the massacre of Polish civilians in Volhynia and was opposed by both the Polish communist and the Soviet side. Ukrainian villages were burned down. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians were arrested by NKVD troops and deported to labor camps in the east on suspicion of being members of the UPA or the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists .
planning
After the limited success of the displacement of the Ukrainians into the Soviet Union from the Polish point of view, the Polish government planned to solve the Ukrainian question within its own national territory . In November 1946 , Władysław Gomułka , the General Secretary of the Polska Partia Robotnicza (PPR) and Minister for the so-called Reclaimed Territories ( former East German Territories ) in the north and west of the Polish People's Republic , received a report from the Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Army , General Ostap Steca , presented. It proposed some kind of concept for the solution of the Ukrainian question through forced resettlement to the Reclaimed Territories , the former eastern provinces of Prussia, which fell to Poland after the Potsdam Conference . Steca assumed that in the future one could not count on the loyalty of this population to the state . The first concrete preparations for Operation Vistula began in January 1947. The units of the Polish Army in south-east Poland were given the task of drawing up lists of Ukrainian and mixed-Ukrainian families. General Mossor , Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Army, then presented a report to Defense Minister Żymierski proposing that the Ukrainian population be dispersed in individual families in the Reclaimed Territories, where they will quickly assimilate .
A law of 9 July 1937 on the protection of state borders served as the legal basis for the forced relocation . It stated that in order to secure and protect the border area, expulsion of non-Polish residents was legal. At the time it was passed, this law mainly affected the German minorities living in the parts of West Prussia and Upper Silesia that came to Poland in 1919 and 1920 .
At a meeting of the Polish National Security Commission on March 27, 1947, General Mossor presented the concept for the resettlement of Ukrainians. The UPA activists were officially charged with the death of Polish general Karol Świerczewski in a skirmish, presumably with Ukrainian militants, on the following day. However, whether these were actually responsible for his death is controversial, as there was no clear evidence for this. In the eyes of the Polish public, however, the intended forced relocation gained greater legitimacy . An attempt was made to increase this even further by increasing anti-Ukrainian propaganda .
On April 11, 1947, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers' Party approved the resettlement plan. General Mossor was appointed its head. Three days later, on April 14, 1947, at a meeting at the Ministry for the Reclaimed Territories, with the participation of representatives from the Ministry of Public Administration, the PUR (State Office for Repatriation) and the Polish Army, guidelines were drawn up for the implementation of the Vistula Operation .
On the basis of these provisions, the Ukrainians should be resettled in north-western Poland with a minimum distance of 50 km from the land border and 30 km from the sea border. In addition, they should not make up more than ten percent of the population in their new hometowns to ensure rapid assimilation of the deportees. Polish estimates put about 74,000 Ukrainians in south-eastern Poland. At that time, however, many Ukrainians were still hiding in forests or in Czechoslovakia in order to avoid so-called “repatriation” to the USSR; their actual number should not have fallen below 200,000.
On April 16, 1947, these plans were presented to the Politburo of the Polish Workers' Party. The action was renamed from “Aktion Ost” (Polish: Akcja Wschód ) to “Aktion Weichsel” ( Akcja Wisła ) and approved. The governments of the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia were informed of the planned deportation through diplomatic channels and asked to block the borders with Poland in order to facilitate resettlement.
execution
Operation Vistula began on April 28, 1947 at four in the morning. It always followed the same pattern. After a village was surrounded by the Polish army, the residents had a few hours to pack the essentials. They were then in guarded trains deported . People who were suspected of cooperating with the Ukrainian underground (in particular soldiers from the Polish Home Army , coal workers and Germans) were detained in the former Auschwitz-Birkenau satellite camp in Jaworzno . Almost 4,000 people, including women and children, were accommodated here as a result of the Vistula campaign. The UPA tried in part to prevent the transports .
The Vistula campaign lasted exactly three months and ended on July 28, 1947. It can be divided into two phases:
- Phase: Resettlement of Ukrainian residents from Sanok , Lesko , Przemyśl , Brzozów and Lubaczów districts .
- Phase: Resettlement of the Ukrainian residents from the districts of Jarosław , Lubaczów, Tomaszów and Lubelski .
Along with the forced resettlements, there was a fight against the Ukrainian UPA insurgents in these areas.
In the course of the Vistula campaign, around 150,000 Ukrainians were deported. The only criterion was their nationality . Ukrainians who were pro-communist or who had served as soldiers in the Polish People's Army were also affected.
After the end of the Vistula campaign, various administrative hurdles were created to prevent the Ukrainians from returning to their traditional settlement areas. In a decree of September 27, 1947, the Ukrainians were expropriated from their old possessions. By another decree of August 28, 1949, the Greek Catholic churches became state property.
aftermath
The resettlement of Polish Ukrainians did not result in the desired cultural extinction. During the time of the People's Republic of Poland , the 1st General Ukrainian Meeting took place in Warsaw on June 18, 1956 . According to their own statements, 239 delegates spoke on behalf of 250,000 Ukrainians in Poland. At this meeting, the Polish Minister of Education Witold Jarosiński condemned the implementation methods used during the resettlement operation. Shortly after the meeting, the Polish Interior Ministry , once the main perpetrator of the Vistula action, officially condemned the action on August 26, 1956, as part of the de-Stalinization after the death of Bolesław Bierut .
After the political change in Poland, the Polish Senate disapproved of the forced relocation of Ukrainians on August 3, 1990. There was no corresponding decision by the Sejm . Also, the confiscated property of the Ukrainians was not returned. According to a census from 2002/2003, 31,000 citizens in Poland identified themselves as Ukrainians (and 5,800 Lemken ). The far larger number of Poles of Ukrainian origin have meanwhile assimilated.
Reception of Aktion Weichsel in Germany
In the West, the deportation of Ukrainians within Poland in 1947 was only marginally noticed, although it was not carried out in secret. It is almost completely absent from German historiography, just as the previous reciprocal resettlements between Poland on the one hand and Belarus or the Ukraine on the other hand were hardly taken into account by German historiography.
See also
Web links
- deutschlandfunk.de , Information and Music , April 30, 2017, Martin Sander: Commemoration of the expulsion of the Ukrainians
literature
- Ralph Giordano : Farewell East Prussia. Journey through a melancholy land. 5th edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-423-30566-5 , pp. 151 ff . (Chapter: Vistula Action ).
- Marek Jasiak: Overcoming Ukrainian Resistance: The Deportation of Ukrainians within Poland in 1947 . In: Philipp Ther, Ana Siljak (Ed.): Redrawing Nations. Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944–1948 , Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham / Boulder / New York / Oxford 2001, pp. 173–194 ISBN 0-7425-1093-X . (English)
- Eugeniusz Misiło: Akcja "Wisła". Documenty. Warszawa 1993, ISBN 83-900854-2-9 . (Document volume on the Vistula campaign, Polish)
- Michael G. Esch: "Healthy conditions". German and Polish population policy in East Central Europe 1939–1950. Marburg 1998, ISBN 3-87969-269-6
Individual evidence
- ^ Gotthold Rhode : Brief history of Poland. 1st edition, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1965, p. 466 ff.
- ↑ Thomas Urban : The loss: the expulsion of the Germans and Poles in the 20th century , Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-54156-9 .