Originally Posted by
Azor
David,
I must interject here.
In 1939, Lwow was inhabited primarily by ethnic Poles and Jews, with ethnic Ukrainians in the surrounding countryside. The Ukrainians resented Polish rule and mainly welcomed the Soviet invasion in 1939, even assisting the NKVD in deporting ethnic Poles considered threatening to Soviet rule. Yet by 1941 the Ukrainians had learned that Stalin was less than interested in Ukrainian self-determination, and had turned his attention to Ukrainian nationalists. Thus, the Germans found a warm welcome in the Summer of 1941. Ethnic Ukrainians in Lwow captured Jewish women, stripped them naked, raped them and paraded them through the streets before murdering them.
During World War II, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its militant arm the Ukrainian Insurgent Army went on a rampage after Operation Barbarossa began, murdering and torturing ethnic Poles and Jews. Even up to the end of 1953, the UIA had killed far more Jewish and Polish civilians than German and Soviet soldiers combined.
The uprising you speak of was by the Polish Home Army (AK) in 1944, which was involved in clashes with the UIA as part of the protection of Polish villages in Galicia and Volhynia.
The Ukrainians are as bad about re-writing history in their favor as Stalin was, who had no problem counting all deaths in eastern Poland or in Soviet GULags as victims of Germany.
Note that during the Cossack uprising in the late 17th Century - Ukraine's other "heroic" act - 80-90% of the Cossack's victims were Jewish civilians, not Polish soldiers.
I am proud of what the Ukrainians did in late 2013 and early 2014, but it remains to be seen what price they want to pay to wrest true independence from Russia, or whether they were enticed by subsidies and potential remittances.
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