Ukrainians call on Poland to rebuild controversial monument

The appeal, by the Lviv Oblast Council, a regional government assembly, is addressed to Poland’s central government as well as the authorities of the country’s southeastern Podkarpackie province.

It concerns a monument in the Polish village of Hruszowice which honours members of the UPA who fought Poles during and in the aftermath of World War II and who were killed during clashes with Polish soldiers in 1946.

The monument, illegally erected in 1994 without the consent of Polish authorities at the time, was dismantled at the end of April this year by members of Polish right-wing organizations with the consent of the local authorities.

Councillors in the Lviv region have termed the dismantling of the monument an anti-Ukrainian provocation.

They have adopted a resolution in which they suggest that Poland should rebuild the Hruszowice monument just as the Ukrainians have rebuilt a monument honoring Polish victims of Ukrainian soldiers that was destroyed by unknown perpetrators earlier this year in the no-longer-existing village of Huta Pieniacka in what was once eastern Poland and is now western Ukraine.

The resolution says that more than 10 Ukrainian memorial sites have been destroyed in Poland in recent years.

According to the Ukrainian councillors, “the impunity of the perpetrators” encourages further acts of vandalism.

They also appeal to the Ukrainian foreign ministry to address the Polish authorities with a demand to conduct an investigation into the case.

In the document, the councillors express their support for the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, which, after the dismantling of the Hruszowice monument, declared that it would halt the legalization of Polish memorial sites in Ukraine.

According to the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, there are more than 100 such sites in Ukraine. (str/pk)

Source: IAR