Operation Vistula: Kremlin puppets’ BIG CRIME against Ukrainians in Poland

0:00 ethnicity, nationality, faith, and race. All these criteria by which some people judge others often become the causes of wars and conflicts. The hatred of some people for others often results in human rights violations, including genocide. Deportation is just one of the tools used by colonists. Germany and the Soviet Union were especially actively engaged in forced resettlements in the middle of the 20th century. The Nazis originally planned to deport Jews to Madagascar. The Russians forcibly persecuted the Crimean Tartas. The USSR expelled Ukrainians and Poles from its territory and the Poles in turn expelled Ukrainians.

0:46 This is a story about how a special operation by the Polish army and special services in April 1947 led to more than 140,000 Ukrainians losing everything in one day. Ethnic lands, property, culture, life, and hope for a bright future. Operation Vistula is a crime of communism against Ukraine and Ukrainians. It all started in 1944 when the government of the USSR and the puppet authorities of Poland signed an agreement on the mutual exchange of population in the border areas. In fact, this meant force deportation because before that Ukrainian schools were closed in the territories and the Ukrainians themselves were persecuted. Everything was done to ensure that

1:32 Ukrainians left on their own. Poland and the USSR redivided the territory between themselves. After the 45th year, it was decided that 22,000 square kilometers of land, Lemchina, Nadsania, Podlasi and Kschkina, ethnic lands of Ukrainians, went to Warsaw. All Ukrainians living in those territories were planned to be resettled to the lands once occupied by Germany where no one lived anymore, for example, in Prussia. Who was the signary of this agreement? not recognized subjects of international law. The immigration government of Poland was in London. It was not recognized at that time as actually the Soviet Union. And behind the front followed the Polish Committee

2:19 of National Liberation established in Moscow as a provisional government. So even from a legal point of view, nobody cared about it at that time. We talked about what kind of committee it was and what methods it used in the program about the Polish secret service. Already in 1944 began the first, as they were then called, voluntary transfers of Ukrainians. But everything was radically different. People were forced to move, beaten, and tortured. This is at best. At worst, they were killed instantly. This was mainly done to the elderly and those who refused to leave their homes. The polls did not skimp on methods. They shot women and children. There were also

3:05 cases when the child was first killed in front of the mother and only then the parents were massacred. The USSR's propaganda instilled such hatred for Ukrainians that Polish soldiers showed no sympathy for their atrocities. The task was the same, to clear the territories of Ukrainians and turn Poland into a monocultural state. They ran into several houses where there were elderly people and they were all shot inside. This will remain in my memory. In one moment I lost my family. The village stopped existing

3:53 as it once was. Since the Polish army burned nearly half of it that same day, the puppet authorities of Poland managed to take out hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians. Burned villages are a guarantee that the deportes will have nowhere to return. This would erase Ukrainian culture and traditions from former Ukrainian territories. Polish authorities deported nearly 500,000 people. Some evaded deportation by fleeing to forests or being defended by Ukrainian insurgent army fighters. They were active in Zacazonia, the historical Ukrainian territories. Fighters of the Ukrainian insurgent army actively defended the local population

4:38 from attacks by the Polish army of Kraoa and from discrimination against Ukrainians in the Zaconia region. In order to destroy the Ukrainian liberation movement in Zakazonia in one fell swoop, the Polish leadership decided to carry out a repressive operation to completely evict all Ukrainians. It's a myth that Vistula was a response to the Ukrainian insurgent army. The fact is that in March of 1947, Carol Suvski, the Polish deputy minister of national defense of the country, was killed in a battle with the UIA. The polls used this event to hide the true motives of repression against Ukrainians. Historians are still trying to figure out whether the Poles sometimes sent their own general to his death because he was not the best person, including a drunkard.

5:26 Accordingly, his murder could become a logical pretext for the start of repressions against Ukrainians. Moreover, declassified archives indicate that planning for Vistula began long before the Ukrainian insurgent army killed Surgevki. It was liquidated in March and the first mention of the Vistula dates back at least a month earlier. Many people and even families of Ukrainians hid in the forests or border areas in Czechoslovakia and then returned to their homesteads, creating a base for UIA gangs and a danger for any irudentists in the future. Since the USSR no longer accepts these people, it seems necessary to carry out a vigorous action of their resettlement by individual families in the spring. As of the spring of 1947, about 2 and a

6:12 half thousand UIA fighters were operating in the Zakazona. The Poles could not eliminate them in one fell swoop because they were formed into small detachments which in case of emergency could easily shelter a Ukrainian. Yes, exactly. Those that could not be caught during the deportations of the 44th or 46th years. Warsaw decided on collective responsibility. That's when everyone will have to answer for it. A common method for authoritarian regimes, especially for such as Poland, which at that time was learning communism from Moscow. In order to eradicate the UIA, they decided to take everyone out of the territories. And at one time in February of the 47th, the Poles, Czechoslovakia,

6:57 and the USSR began working on the development of Operation Vistula. An operational group was created that was supposed to deal with the liquidation and eradication of Ukrainians. The issue was approached responsibly because this time the issue had to be closed completely. Seven Polish divisions, three regiments and thousands of police will surround and transport the villages. The troops of Czechoslovakia and the USSR will ensure the closure of the borders so that this time no one will be able to slip away. Moscow has deployed tanks at the borders. Prague has provided reconnaissance aircraft to facilitate the identification of potential refugees. No one had a chance to escape.

7:43 As part of the repression against Ukrainians, it was decided to quickly resettle them and mixed families to return territories, primarily North Prussia, avoiding compact groups and maintaining a distance of at least 100 km from the border. PRP Central Committee Polit Bureau Resolution. >> On the morning of April 28th, the polls surrounded Ukrainian villages. Thus began Operation Vistula. People were given up to 2 hours to gather and ordered to leave. There was neither time nor opportunity to take all his possessions. The military robbed and took away what they had gained. The cattle owner loaded a cart and went to the collection point. Those without such luxury carried property by hand. The old, the young, children, and babies

8:28 were all sent to the railway station where people had to be transported by freight cars to their destination. Those who refused to go were shot or tortured. They treated with particular hatred those who supported or had family ties to the UIA. >> People were permitted to take the essentials they could take. It was on foot or people with their own transport and their own transport was mainly a cart in which horses were harnessed. They gathered both the livestock and the equipment. People went on foot and then everything was loaded into freight trains and Studebaker vehicles into which people were loaded.

9:15 >> The road to the new place of residence was long and tiring. Often the journey lasted up to two months. And all this time they traveled in freight cars together with children and livestock. It seemed to the Poles that by relocating Ukrainians from their legitimate ethnic territories, they would forever eradicate the UIA from the territory of the new Poland. Over time, the former Ukrainian lands will be populated by the Poles and thus the country will remain monocultural. Even though Ukrainians were taken hundreds of kilometers away and promised to compensate for lost property, many of them returned. They were caught again and taken even further to completely eliminate the chances of recovery. Polish records indicate that over 3

10:00 months 140,575 Ukrainians were deported, 142 imprisoned, 173 shot, and 13 villages raised. The UIA archives indicate otherwise. The number of those killed must be counted in thousands, not in tens. But the propaganda of communism did its job. The seeds of hatred between Ukrainians and Poles have sprouted well. We lived well with everyone, both Poles and our own people. We all lived well. My parents and my grandfather was very good with everyone. If someone doesn't like something, they complain to each other. >> Ukrainian resettlement was well planned.

10:47 They were taken to places where they would assimilate and become part of Polish society without any mention of self-identification. For example, no more than six families could be settled in one village and all in different corners so that they would not unite and create communes in the future. Wherever there is a concentration of a particular ethnic group, an underground movement begins to emerge. The Poles did not need this. It was forbidden to call oneself a Ukrainian. And the special certificate issued by the Polish military contained a special mark. Roughly speaking, not Ukrainian, but not Pole either. They settled in territories from which they had driven the Germans. The best homes were already inhabited by Poles, and Ukrainians got dilapidated sheds. And

11:35 this is at best because most of them were homeless at all. They had to dig dugouts and the local population was already radically inclined. The Poles tried hard and warned the villages that they would be joined by settlers, bandits, and bandera members. People were deprived of their homeland and the right to remain themselves. Resettled into a hostile environment, Ukrainians faced locals who had been primed to see them as bandits. You arrived with your family to an empty place and no one would lend you even a match. The local population slept with

12:21 axis under their pillows because they were afraid that bandits would come at night to rob. In general, deported Ukrainians were divided into three categories. One, if there is a connection with underground organizations, two suspicious citizens, and three not involved in the activities of the underground insurgent movement. Anyone accused of aiding or cooperating with the UIA was subjected to a special punishment, a concentration camp. Although not only suspicious citizens got there, but also those who had the opportunity to teach others. By eliminating the intelligencia, the polls gradually erased Ukrainian identity. They seized the most aware segment of society clergy educators local

13:09 entrepreneurs, particularly rural cooperatives, and dispatched them to the Jno branch of Ashwitz Burkanau. After the war, it was called the central labor camp. The beautiful name hid the essence of the concentration camp. 3,873 Ukrainians passed through Jorsni. 162 died. Barracks with four-story beds, hardboards, without mattresses, and with several hundred people. And that's not to mention solitary confinement. Four concrete walls, cold and hunger. Prisoners had to endure a whole day on just one slice of bread. Detaine

13:56 treatment was appropriate. Concentration camp workers there are designed to re-educate and extract information about the Ukrainian underground. The rest is not interesting. There's a very small room, a table, and an investigator in that room. They tied one prisoner to the ceiling and beat him as if he were playing with a ball. I've had heart problems ever since I saw it. Still problems. I watched that scene as they beat him. His last words were, "The Ukraine will be up to the very throat." They then seemed to become brutal and beat him to death. Such cases in the concentration camp were handled by agents of the UB, the Secret Service of Communist Poland. Bullying people is exactly what agents knew how to do best.

14:42 No pardons were given as polls were also held in Jawsia. Claiming Ukrainian nationality during interrogation guarantees torture. If you say you are Polish, it's the same thing. The executioners reasoned, "A normal Pole will not be sent to such a place, which means that he must be punished." They tortured everyone. A particularly brutal method of abuse involved prisoners walking through a corridor of guards beaten with sticks as they passed. It was possible to survive this only with fractures and hemorrhages. The first three months of interrogations were the worst. It was scary. The UB secret service behaved like an inhuman creature because a human being cannot do such a thing. It is the devil in the

15:27 human body. Operation Vistula lasted from April to the end of July. During that time, everyone was evicted from the former Ukrainian territories. In order to forever erase the memory of Ukraine in Zacazonia, the Poles burned and destroyed churches, burned villages, and even tore up Ukrainian graves, burning bodies. Until now, on the sites of former settlements, only single rusty crosses resemble Ukrainians in those territories. And those who were resettled and sent to Prussia had to learn to live a new. They remained in constant fear, for there was no assurance that the Poles wouldn't return to expel them again. They take you somewhere, take you 500 km away to an unknown environment, give you some kind of whole or half destroyed

16:13 house. You don't know what to do or where to start a new life. This is a terrible psychological shock and it was not easy for those people to survive in this shock. It was not easy. People grew afraid to identify as Ukrainians, fearing persecution, ridicule, and public scorn. In essence, the conditions mirrored those imposed on Jews in Nazi Germany. Officially the Vistula lasted until the 47th year, but resettlement and forced assimilation lasted until the 50th. The Poles made one of the most important decisions in the 49th. A law was passed that deprived Ukrainians of the right to

16:58 those lands and accordingly to the property they left there. And this meant that the evicted Ukrainians had to buy back their own houses. Of course, no one had the money for this. It was forbidden to hold Orthodox services and create schools in the new lands. The polls carefully approached the second question. School creation requires permission. There were a certain number of Ukrainians. Therefore, a school must be built and instruction introduced in Ukrainian. With only six families settled in different locations, a Ukrainian school was not considered. Operation Vistula was hushed up for a long time. The communists did their best

17:44 to hide the true reasons for the deportation of Ukrainians, but after the fall of the Soviet Union, archival documents began to appear from which the secret stamp was removed. The forced deportation of Ukrainians is still a black page in Polish Ukrainian relations. Even though historians of both countries publish common facts, books describing the causes, consequences, and background of this event. On the political front, there are still statements with accusations and indignation in both directions. One of the arguments is mutual eviction because the USSR deported almost 800,000 Poles from the territory of Ukraine. Only in 1990 did the Polish Senate condemn Operation Vistula.

18:31 In 2002, Polish President Alexander Kuznvki expressed condolences to the Ukrainian people. And in 2007, Operation Vistella was condemned in a joint statement by Polish President Lech Kachinsky and President of Ukraine, Victor Yusenko. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, most Ukrainians decided not to return to their former lands because they already had jobs, friends, and family in the new territories. And to return back would mean starting life over.