Scattered: The Forced Relocation of Poland’s Ukrainians after World War II

Introduction

ix Intro­ duc­ tion Al­ though I begin the story of Scat­ tered ’s main char­ ac­ ters, the Pyr­ tej fam­ ily, at the mo­ ment when the Nazis in­ vaded Po­ land in 1939, the ­ Pyrtejs’ ex­ pe­ ri­ ence with ­ forced re­ lo­ ca­ tion was pri­ mar­ ily the re­ sult of a dif­ fer­ ent con­ flict: the ­ long-standing dis­ cord ­ between Poles and Ukrai­ nians in the re­ gion. Fol­ low­ ing World War I and the dis­ so­ lu­ tion of the ­ AustroHungarian Em­ pire, Poles and Ukrai­ nians ­ fought each other in a war over East­ ern Gal­ i­ cia—a re­ gion on the ­ Polish-Ukrainian bor­ der that the Al­ lied vic­ tors even­ tu­ ally ­ granted to Po­ land in 1923—and hos­ tile feel­ ings re­ mained ­ between the two na­ tions. Ukrai­ nians in Po­ land who were not will­ ing to ac­ cept the ­ status of a na­ tional mi­ nor­ ity con­ tin­ ued to strug­ gle for the right of ­ self-rule. They felt that the ­ Polish govern­ ment was tak­ ing steps to as­ sim­ i­ late them by, for ex­ am­ ple, ban­ ning the use of the Ukrai­ nian lan­ guage in govern­ ment agen­ cies and intro­ duc­ ing re­ forms that ­ turned­ Ukrainian-language ­ schools into bi­ lin­ gual ­ schools. Ukrai­ nian na­ tion­ al­ ist­ groups began to ­ emerge, for ex­ am­ ple the Or­ gan­ iza­ tion of Ukrai­ nian Na­ tion­ al­ ists (OUN), which was ­ formed in early 1929 with the goal of over­ throw­ ing ­ foreign rule on Ukrai­ nian eth­ no­ graphic ter­ ri­ to­ ries and creat­ ing an in­ de­ pen­ dent Ukrai­ nian state. An­ tag­ o­ nism ­ between Ukrai­ nians and Poles only in­ creased through­ out the 1930s as the ­ Polish govern­ ment re­ sponded to Ukrai­ nian re­ sis­ tance with ag­ gres­ sive tac­ tics such as pac­ ifi­ ca­ tion cam­ paigns. ­ Younger mem­ bers ­ within the OUN, such as the con­ tro­ ver­ sial po­ lit­ i­ cal fig­ ure Ste­ pan Ban­ dera, be­ lieved in the need for rev­ o­ lu­ tion­ ary ac­ tion and car­ ried out as­ sas­ si­ na­ tions of ­ Polish of­ fi­ cials. The­ Polish govern­ ment, in turn, im­ pris­ oned hun­ dreds of Ukrai­ nian na­ tion­ al­ ists in the Be­ reza Kar­ tuska con­ cen­ tra­ tion camp from 1934 until the start of World War II. Introduction x Be­ cause of the grow­ ing feel­ ing that mi­ nor­ ity ­ groups ­ caused con­ flict, the no­ tion of creat­ ing homo­ ge­ ne­ ous ­ nation-states was also gain­ ing pop­ u­ lar­ ity at this time. The work of other au­ thors has shown that the­ forced mi­ gra­ tion of mi­ nor­ ity ­ groups be­ fore the 1940s—such as the dep­ or­ ta­ tion of Ar­ me­ ni­ ans by the Ot­ to­ man Turks in 1915–17 and the trans­ fer of the Greek pop­ u­ la­ tion from An­ a­ to­ lia and the Turk­ ish pop­ u­ la­ tion from­ Greece in 1923—set a prec­ e­ dent and led to this be­ com­ ing a com­ mon po­ lit­ i­ cal tac­ tic in Cen­ tral and East­ ern Eu­ rope dur­ ing World War II and the post­ war pe­ riod. Both Nazi Ger­ many and the So­ viet Union, carv­ ing up Po­ land after 1939, ­ wished to ­ create a new order: Adolf Hit­ ler de­ ported “in­ fe­ rior” races and na­ tions such as the Jews and then the Slavs from the an­ nexed ter­ ri­ to­ ries he ­ wished to “Ger­ man­ ize,” while Jo­ seph Sta­ lin de­ ported na­ tional ­ groups, in­ clud­ ing Poles as well as Ukrai­ nians, Bel­ o­ rus­ sians, and Lith­ u­ a­ nians, he ­ feared were col­ lab­ o­ rat­ ing with the Ger­ mans or betray­ ing So­ viet au­ thor­ ity. When Ger­ many then lost the war, im­ me­ di­ ately the ­ Polish au­ thor­ ities ex­ pelled the Ger­ man pop­ u­ la­ tion from West­ ern Pom­ e­ ra­ nia, and the Czech­ o­ slo­ vak au­ thor­ ities ex­ pelled the Su­ de­ ten Ger­ mans from Czech lands. Mean­ while, the inter­ na­ tional com­ mu­ nity, in­ clud­ ing Brit­ ain and...