2011: Exhumation of victims of the 1943 Ostrówki massacre, in which at least 474 Poles were murdered by Ukrainian nationalists. Photo CC BY-SA 3.0: Leon Popek / Wikimedia Commons.Today, the main difficulty of relations between Poland and Ukraine lies in the field of history. To be more precise, in the events of 1943 in north-west Ukraine, when Ukrainian nationalist formations massacred tens of thousands of Poles near the border with Poland in the Volhynia/Volyn massacre.
While Polish and Ukrainian historians are not able to agree on numbers and the basic facts of these events, the topic is increasingly manipulated by politicians and far-right groups on both sides. In this context, long-term grassroots initiatives aimed at mutual understanding are one way to keep reconciliation going.
Working for Ukrainian-Polish dialogue in Ukraine
When Walenty Wakoluk from Lutsk, the centre of Volyn region today, had enough of listening to statements like “there are no Poles in Volyn today”, he launched a Polish-Ukrainian newspaper. For almost a decade, Wakoluk, an architect by profession, has worked as editor-in-chief of Monitor Wolynski, a bilingual publication that serves as the main source of news about the region’s Polish community.
