Polish senators passed the resolution in a 91-2 vote, with no abstentions, on Thursday, state news agency PAP reported.
The resolution said: “80 years ago, on July 11, 1943, in a series of coordinated assaults by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), around 100 Polish settlements in the Volhynia region were destroyed. It was the most tragic moment and the climax of the UPA’s genocidal actions, which claimed the lives of at least 100,000 Poles, according to historical studies.”
It added that, around the same time, “massacres of Polish villages by German forces" in Nazi-occupied Poland "reached their height.”
The resolution noted that people "were shot dead, burned alive, driven out of their farms, had their property stolen and were sent to death camps.”
These atrocities were symbolised by the 1943 Michniów Massacre, when German forces burned down a village in southeastern Poland, killing almost all residents, including small children, the Polish Senate said.
'Tribute to people killed by Ukrainian nationalists, German occupiers'
Polish senators paid tribute to "everyone who was killed by Ukrainian nationalists and German occupiers, as well as to the families of the victims, who devotedly cultivate their memory to this day.”
The resolution said that the remains of many victims of the Volhynia Massacres by Ukrainian nationalists and of the mass killings by Nazi Germans were still buried in “nameless graves” and therefore must be “exhumed, buried in a dignified way and commemorated.”
Support for Ukraine's fight against Russian invasion
At the same time, Polish senators stated that “even the most painful issues from the past can’t erase the Polish-Ukrainian community of interests and values.”
They expressed respect “for all Ukrainians who are defending with dedication their independence and democratic, European values” against “criminal aggression by Putin’s Russia.”
The resolution concluded that the Polish upper house "supports Ukraine’s aspirations for full membership" of NATO and the European Union.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, launching the largest military campaign in Europe since World War II.
Thursday is day 505 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP, senat.gov.pl
