Polish-Ukrainian Relations during World War II

After the fall of communism in 1989–1991, Poland and Ukraine could have become partners in international, economic and cultural fields. Yet despite many positive achievements, the contemporary Polish-Ukrainian cooperation did not fully develop. Among many reasons that slow down the Polish-Ukrainian rapprochement, historical memories seem to be especially detrimental. The remembrances of World War II are the most destructive. Both Poles and Ukrainians understand that the only way to change this situation is to study and discuss the common history. A list of works on Polish-Ukrainian relations during World War II is long. Yet most of these publications offer broad pictures and present Polish-Ukrainian relations in general or in particular regions, such as Volhynia (Wołyń) or Eastern Galicia. This microstudy, devoted to the town of Boryslav (Borysław) in the years 1939 to 1945, tries to show how the conflicts were born, how they became embedded in human memory, and, finally, how they were transformed into historical stereotypes.

The town of Boryslav lies in the southwestern part of former Eastern Galicia in the Lvov oblast (before WWII, in the Lwów województwo) nine kilometers southwest from the town of Drohobych (Drohobycz) and ninety-nine kilometers southwest from Lvov, on the Tysmenytsia (Tyśmienica) River in the foothills of the High Beskyd Mountains. Boryslav became famous at the turn of the nineteenth century, when it developed into the main center of oil extraction in Austrian-controlled Galicia and the third largest oil producer in the world. Yet the names of Boryslav and the neighboring villages had been appearing in historical documents since the fourteenth century, when the state they belonged to, the Halych Principality, originally a part of Kievian Rus’, was incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland. After the First Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772, the Habsburg Empire took the region of Boryslav and Drohobych, together with the entire Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (a name derived from latinized Halych and Vlodimir). ¹

For centuries, a “stinking liquid” bubbled up and ran out on the fields in the Boryslav region. Local peasants used the liquid to grease axletrees, as a tool lubricant, and as medication. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, attempts were made to refine the local oil and to use it to light up governmental buildings. Yet the original refining process, technologically inefficient, was abandoned. In 1853, Ignacy Łukasiewicz (1822–1882) and Jan Zeh (1817–1897), Galician pharmacists, developed an effective oil refining technology and invented an oil lamp. Łukasiewicz also built the first oil mine and industrial refining plant. Soon, thousands of oil wells and shafts appeared in central Galicia. Boryslav became one of two or three most important centers of this industry and changed completely. The town swelled with newcomers, especially when natural gas, rock salt, potassium salt, and sulfate mineral waters were also exploited there. Until the late eighteenth century, salt mining was Boryslav’s most important industry. Later, it was replaced with mineral wax (ozocerite) mining, but from the mid-nineteenth century, oil mining was growing quickly, becoming Boryslav’s primary industry. In 1870, in Boryslav and the neighboring villages of Tustanowice, Wolanka, Mraźnica, Schodnica, Orów, and Nahujowice, there were 4,338 oil shafts and 10 refining plants. In 1873, there were 12,000 shafts owned by 75 major and 779 minor entrepreneurs. ²

Initially, most wax and oil wells were small, technologically underdeveloped, and owned by local Jews. The miners were usually Ukrainian-speaking Ruthenian peasants, Jews, or Boyko highlanders from the Beskyd Mountains. They worked and lived in an extremely primitive and dangerous environment, called by many the “Galician hell” and described in the novels of Ivan Franko. Oil shafts burned easily, and fires, some of them of apocalyptic dimensions, took human lives and property. In 1872, a newly built railway connected Boryslav with the outside world, and in the 1890s, the oil production assumed an industrial character. ³ Deep shafts applying modern technology, imported from North America and owned by big, often foreign entrepreneurs, replaced “homemade” wells. In 1909, the region of Boryslav produced 1.9 million tons of oil and was the third largest producer in the world. New opportunities attracted new people, both local and from outside the region. Among them, there were Polish engineers and technicians, who constituted an overwhelming majority in the industrial management, but also peasants from Western Galicia, who were called “Mazurs” by the local population. ⁴

From its peak in 1909, the Boryslav oil production declined year after year, especially during World War I. The wax production was decreasing even more rapidly. In 1914, after some fighting, the Russian army occupied the Drohobych-Boryslav Industrial Region. Many of its employees escaped. In 1915, in turn, the Russians had to withdraw, burning down many shafts on their way out. The Austrian authorities restored the oil production. It was so important for the war industry that the Habsburg authorities released oil miners from the army and sent them back to Boryslav. They worked under tough military discipline fourteen hours a day, but they restored the oil production only to a certain degree (0.832 million tons in 1918) and only for three years. The last months of the war were equally chaotic in Boryslav and in other parts of Galicia. In 1918, the troops of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic attempted to occupy the town on 1 November. A group of Polish employees of the oil industry organized a self-defense unit, about two hundred men strong, consisting mostly of the veterans of the Habsburg Army, and resisted the Ukrainians for nine days. Eventually, when the defense became hopeless, the so-called Kompania Borysławska, led by Stanisław Maczek (1892–1994), a famous general of the Polish Army during World War II, left the town, managed to make its way through the Ukrainian-controlled territories, and joined the Polish forces pushing from Western Galicia. When the town fell at the beginning of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict, Ukrainians arrested many Polish engineers, technicians, and workers, which added to the decline of the local industry. For the next several months, until the Poles recovered it, Boryslav remained a place of unrest. The Ukrainian authorities controlled the town until 21 May 1919, but they did not manage to restore normal operations of the oil industry, even though it contributed significantly to the Ukrainian war effort. After the Polish troops took Boryslav, life began to calm down. Contrary to the reports of the West European press, neither Polish anti-Ukrainian pogroms nor Ukrainian anti-Polish riots took place there. ⁵

The Polish-Ukrainian war of 1918 to 1919 shaped the minds of Poles and Ukrainians and determined their relations in Eastern Galicia until 1939. Vasyl Kuchabsky, an experienced veteran of various Ukrainian armies, aptly characterized the attitudes of both sides:

All their [Polish] feelings rebelled against subjection to a Ukrainian state and, without waiting for orders from their political leaders, they took up the fight [in 1918]. . . . Similarly, for the Ukrainians, the thought of becoming part of Poland was unbearable. They had a deep hatred for their opponents, a hatred that grew tremendously as events unfolded. . . . It was inconceivable to the Ukrainians that in some situations the flourishing of one nation could lead inevitably to the injury or destuction of another, and the inevitable struggle for existence between Poles and Ukrainians seem to them merely the result of Polish maliciousness. . . . It was different for the Poles. They felt themselves to be a historic and ruling nation. . . . [T]he Poles simply could not imagine a Polish state without Lviv and the rest of Eastern Galicia. From the Polish point of view, the Western Ukrainian national liberation movement was nothing but a rebellion that had to be broken with the use of all available force. They also had a visual image of this “rebellion” in the work of the Nobel Prize–winning novelist, Henryk Sienkiewicz, whose masterpiece of national incitement, the novel Ogniem i mieczem (With Fire and Sword), masterfully describes the 17th-century uprising of the Ukrainian Cossack hetman, Bohdan Khmelnytsky. ⁶

During the Polish-Soviet War of 1919 to 1921, the Red Army did not reach the Boryslav-Drohobych region, but the Polish authorities, preoccupied with other problems in the early 1920s, did not make the oil industry their priority. Boryslav was neglected and chaotically built over. Most of its inhabitants still lived and worked under difficult and primitive conditions. Over ten thousand workers of the oil industry lived in barracks, called kasarnie (from the German Kaserne), which had no running water and, initially, no electricity. The town streets were unpaved and covered with impenetrable mud or omnipresent dust. In the late 1920s, the town improved. A posh spa, Truskawiec, was only several kilometers away, and this elegant neighbor mobilized the Boryslav authorities to make their town “more cultural.” The principal streets were paved; wooden boardwalks, frequently shaky and rotten, were replaced with cement sidewalks. There were several primary schools, including those with the Ukrainian and Yiddish languages of instruction; a private middle and high school; and several vocational high schools in interwar Boryslav, including the renewed Mining and Drilling School and Trade School (Szkoła Kupiecka). A new six-floor-high Post Office was built. There was a sports club with its own stadium and swimming pool; three movie theaters; two public libraries; several hotels and restaurants; one elegant café; several bank branches; a railway station; an electric plant; three Roman Catholic and four Greek Catholic churches and several synagogues; and, among ecologically devastated rolling hills, innumerable oil shafts, oil tanks, workshops, and warehouses. ⁷

The population of Boryslav had always been ethnically, linguistically, and religiously mixed. People were so used to this that they did not hide their identities in any way, spoke their native languages openly, and proudly belonged to ethnic organizations of all kinds. In everyday life, ethnic conflicts happened rarely, even though the tension appeared during dramatic historical events, and class divisions were often set along the ethnic lines. Jews constituted about 90 percent of all bar and restaurant owners, shopkeepers, and large merchants. Few shops belonged to Poles or to Ukrainian cooperatives. Yet among the poor lebaks, who with their bare hands gathered oil from the spills on the Tyśmienica River, Jews were the most numerous. Undoubtedly, the most striking socioeconomic polarization existed among the Jews. Most workers were of Polish and Ukrainian background. During the interwar period, the elites of Boryslav, mine and factory directors, engineers, teachers, priests, and municipal clerks, were predominantly Polish. A small group of Germans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen worked in the management. ⁸

In 1787, there were 55 peasant farms, 4 mills, 2 inns, and a Greek Catholic church in Boryslav. Some of the neighboring villages, which later became parts of Boryslav, were slightly bigger. In Tustanovichi (Tustanowice), there were 131 peasant farms, 2 mills, 3 inns, and a church. ⁹ In 1870, 1,166 Roman Catholics, 660 Greek Catholics, 3,204 Jews, and 270 “servants and laborers” (altogether 5,300) lived in Boryslav proper. ¹⁰ In 1880, the town population grew to 15,500, including 28 percent Ukrainians, 10 percent Poles, and 62 percent Jews. ¹¹ In 1929, for economic and political reasons, Boryslav and its neighboring villages were amalgamated into one municipality, populated by 23,000 Poles, 12,000 Jews, and 9,000 Ukrainians. ¹² In 1931, the borders of the town were extended again and the so-called Greater Boryslav was established. With its area of circa 7,000 hectares, it was the third largest municipality in Poland (after Warsaw and Łódź). In 1931, out of 41,000 town inhabitants, 23 percent were Ukrainians, 48 percent Poles, and 28 percent Jews. ¹³ Eventually, in 1939, Boryslav reached 45,000 inhabitants, including 21,080 Roman Catholics, 12,500 Jews, 11,044 Greek Catholics, and 500 Protestants. ¹⁴

Not surprisingly, considering class and ethnic tensions, the population of Boryslav had always been politically active. The town experienced several worker riots and major miners’ strikes. The most famous of them happened in 1904, but there were also strikes in 1873, the 1920s, and the 1930s. The Polish Socialist Party (PPS) was the largest organization in Boryslav during the interwar period. Most likely, about 70 percent of the Polish workers were its members. Before 1914, the Polish Social-Democratic Party of Galicia and Cieszyn Silesia (PPSD), the PPS predecessor, played its role. The PPS led workers during strikes and negotiated with the state authorities and private employers. The party ran a library and supported the Society of Workers’ Universities (Towarzystwo Uniwersytetów Robotniczych, TUR) and its youth branch (OMTUR). In the late nineteenth century, the PPSD leader, Ignacy Daszyński (1866–1936), visited Boryslav several times. The PPS members were active in trade unions and various similar organizations, such as “resistance” or “strike funds.” Also the Christian Democratic Party existed in the town. The National Democratic Party (for those who did not like them—the endeks) was rather weak. Finally, a tiny group of communists secretly worked in Boryslav. ¹⁵

In 1912, supporters of Józef Piłsudski established a branch of the Sharpshooter Union (Związek Strzelecki) in Boryslav and organized military training and political instruction for its members. Initially, there were about 60 of them, but the branch grew to 350 people in August 1914, when they joined the First Brigade of the Piłsudski Legions. They were followed by next groups of volunteers from Boryslav in 1914 and 1915. In 1917, when Germans and Austrians dismantled the Legions, some former legionnaires hid in the town, where a special “Committee for the Help to the Polish Soldiers” was organized. Also, a secret unit of the Polish Military Organization (POW) was established in the town at that time. It gathered many Polish employees of the oil industry. In 1922, the Piłsudskiite veterans formed a branch of the Union of the Polish Legionnaires (ZLP), with more than 100 members, including a group of engineers and technicians. ¹⁶

There was also an active Jewish political life in Boryslav. Next to the Bund and Aguda, a relatively large group of the Poale Zion-Left existed there. Like Poles and Ukrainians, the Jews also established numerous social, cultural, youth, and sport organizations. ¹⁷ Prosvita (Education), Ivan Franko, and Taras Shevchenko Societies were the most important Ukrainian cultural organizations. There were Polish and Ukrainian scouting units, gymnastic societies, and even a YMCA. ¹⁸ Several professional associations were linked to the oil industry. In 1904, a Union of Drilling Technicians (Związek Techników Wiertniczych) was established in Boryslav. To emphasize its national character, it changed its name to the Union of Polish Drilling and Oil Technicians (Związek Polskich Techników Wiertniczych i Naftowych). In 1926, an Association of the Polish Engineers of the Oil Industry (Stowarzyszenie Polskich Inżynierów Przemysłu Naftowego) was established. A Circle of the Engineers and Technicians of the Oil Industry (Koło Inżynierów i Techników Przemysłu Naftowego), formed ten years later, accepted Jewish and Ukrainian members. ¹⁹ Political life was particularly intensive in the 1930s, when the town suffered the consequences of the Great Depression and a fall in oil production. A class of unemployed workers, which had always existed in Boryslav, became even larger and more desperate. The state authorities were helpless. ²⁰

In 1922, three years after the fall of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic, the Ukrainian population of Galicia boycotted the first parliamentary Polish elections in this region as a form of protest against, as they saw it, foreign occupation. In Boryslav, out of 9,523 enfranchised persons, only 6,190 persons participated in the elections. The PPS received 3,049 votes; Polish national-democratic (endek) Christian National Union, 400 votes; and the Committee of United Jewish Parties, dominated by the East Galician Zionists, got 2,496 votes. Significantly, communists did not receive a single vote. In the village of Tustanowice, which was still a separate municipality until 1929 and a separate electoral district, only 4,881 persons out of 7,596 enfranchised people participated in the elections. The PPS took 3,459 votes; the endeks, 477; and the Jewish Committee, 800. ²¹

In 1928, during the last free democratic parliamentary elections in interwar Poland, out of 11,543 enfranchised people in Boryslav, 8,392 persons took part in the elections. The PPS proved again to be the most powerful party and swept 3,220 votes. The Jewish Committee of United National Parties, dominated by the East Galician Zionists, received 3,076 votes. The Non-Party Block for the Cooperation with the Government (BBWR), sponsored by the authorities and expected to be the great winner, proved to be a failure and got only 985 votes. The Block of National Minorities, in Eastern Galicia dominated by the Ukrainian National Democratic Organization (UNDO), received only 620 votes. Other Ukrainian lists recorded a minuscule support of a maximum two or three dozen votes. In Tustanowice, the proportions were similar: out of 8,467 enfranchised people, 6,780 persons voted. The PPS received 3,667 votes; the BBWR, 821; the United Jewish Parties, 1,037; and the Ukrainians, 840. ²²

The results of the parliamentary elections were indicative of the political profile of the Boryslav population. The Ukrainians boycotted the 1922 elections, and their participation in 1928 was low. Most Ukrainians were ill-disposed towards the Polish state and demonstrated it during the elections, Polish national holidays, and similar events. ²³ The PPS received almost 50 percent of the votes in 1922 and close to 40 percent in 1928. The most striking, however, were the poor results of the Polish National Democrats (endeks) and the BBWR. Also, the communist movement was weak, even though the Soviets tried to develop it there. It appears that neither the Polish nor the Ukrainian population of Boryslav was particularly nationalistic. ²⁴

During the last months before September 1939, anxiety appeared among Boryslav’s population and intensified dramatically after the outbreak of World War II. ²⁵ On 1 September, a long and loud signal of mine sirens woke up the people of Boryslav early in the morning. They realized that the war had just started. Already in the first days of September, the Luftwaffe bombed the Drohobych oil region, but only one bomb fell on Boryslav. The oil production stopped. In schools, regular classes were replaced with anti-gas-attack instruction. ²⁶ Soon it became clear that the war would not be victorious for Poland. Most Jews were terrified. ²⁷ Many Ukrainians did not hide their excitement and joy, which caused frustration among Poles. Some knew that secret Ukrainian organizations started preparing themselves to take over the power. Their leaders believed that the new events, unfolding in front of their eyes, would be a continuation of the 1918 to 1919 Polish-Ukrainian war, that the Germans would help the Ukrainians to destroy the status quo imposed on Eastern Galicia by the Poles. Soon, news appeared about Ukrainian attacks against Polish Army units withdrawing to the east and against Polish refugees, escaping from the German-occupied territories. Some people tried to leave for Romania but returned attacked by Ukrainians. Others repeated rumors about Ukrainian peasants poisoning food and killing Polish families living in the countryside. There is no doubt that a number of Poles, both soldiers and civilians, were killed by Ukrainians, but frequently it was impossible to establish which stories were true and which were invented by panicking people. ²⁸

A similar situation was on the Ukrainian side. From mid-August 1939, the Polish authorities started arresting people suspected of anti-Polish activities, including members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). In September, Polish Army and the newly organized National Self-Defense units fought and killed Ukrainians accused of attacking the Poles. Self-defense units were sent to villages where Poles were murdered and arrested local Ukrainians. Rumors appeared among the Ukrainians that the Poles intended to “shoot out” the Ukrainians. In Boryslav, Ukrainians repeated the news that, on 2 September, near Tustanowice, Polish “sharpshooters” (strzelcy) arrested nine Ukrainian workers, returning from work, and murdered them in the forest near the Greek Catholic church of St. Nicholas in Tustanowice. ²⁹

On 18 September, in the morning, the 57th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht entered Boryslav. Initially, German soldiers were cautious, but soon they realized that there would be no resistance. They took pictures and gave sweets to children. ³⁰ The Jews felt that bad times were coming even though they had not been aware of the full implication of the German policies towards the Jewish population. ³¹ Ukrainians, at least a significant part of them, looked happy. Instantly, armed and partially uniformed Ukrainian militia men appeared on the streets of Boryslav, some of them individually, others in small groups on patrol. They distributed flyers, sometimes of strongly anti-Polish character, or glued them to the walls and doors of Polish houses. They also put Ukrainian flags on important buildings in the town. The Germans removed the flags on the same day. Some Ukrainians watched the enthusiasm of their brethren with disapproval and apprehension. ³²

During the next several days, the Germans forced local Jews to clean the town streets and executed a group of eight Polish refugees. The Poles, displaced and completely confused individuals, were accused of spying and shot by the Wehrmacht in front of the German headquarters downtown. Some members of the National Self-Defense managed to escape to Hungary, but the Germans imprisoned others. There were rumors among the Poles that this saved the lives of the Self-Defense members since otherwise Ukrainians would kill them. Yet the Germans murdered eighty prisoners of war in the village of Urycz, several kilometers southeast of Boryslav. A makeshift POW camp was guarded by Germans and armed Ukrainians. ³³

In this situation, the people of Boryslav were shocked when, three or four days after the beginning of the German occupation, they found posters all over the town, announcing that according to an agreement that had been made between the Germans and the Soviets, the provinces of Eastern Poland, including the Drohobych-Boryslav region, would be handed over to the Soviet Union. Most Jews of Boryslav got excited, even though previously some had been already apathetic and did not expect anything good. Even though the Germans spent only several days in Boryslav, they managed to take with them some precious mining instruments and machines. ³⁴

On 24 September 1939, the Red Army occupied Boryslav. Soviet soldiers were poorly uniformed and, especially in contrast with the Wehrmacht performance, the entire military operation looked very unimpressive, even though the Soviet units entering the town were quite large. The Red Army was welcomed by groups of local people who built a welcome gate, decorated with flowers, red flags, and pro-Soviet posters. Next to the gate there were tables covered with red cloth. The former PPS building downtown was also decorated with red flags; posters; and huge portraits of Lenin, Stalin, Marx, and Engels. The president of the welcoming committee, which was dominated by Jews but also included some Ukrainians and Poles, gave a speech in Russian about liberation of Western Ukraine and the end of “lordly” Poland. People (in predominating Polish opinion, mostly Jews) threw flowers at the Soviet columns, trucks, and tanks. ³⁵

Instantly, the Soviets started building a new administration apparatus. One of its first elements was a “citizen militia,” which appeared virtually on the day the Red Army arrived. Plain-clothed but with red armbands and old rifles, they participated later in arrests and deportations of Boryslav’s people. They spoke Polish, Yiddish, or the East Galician Ukrainian dialect and served as translators. They knew local relations and could easily identify the “exploiters.” Most militia members were young workers of Jewish background. Some were of Ukrainian extraction. The Poles and most Ukrainians watched them with growing hatred. ³⁶

Also the new administration employees were—at least during the first months of the Soviet occupation or, according to the official version, unification of Western Ukraine with the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic—predominantly Jewish or Ukrainian. Only in the oil industry did Polish engineers and technicians remain, and most of them were not deported. It was temporarily necessary to maintain the oil and wax production. Yet tension was growing between the locals and the vastochniki, the Soviet citizens coming from the vastok (East), and taking over the top management and administration positions. ³⁷

The Poles were branded “the oppressors,” and intensive propaganda that paralleled the growing terror was supposed to prove it. The NKVD encouraged the local non-Polish population to settle scores with “Polish lords” and to give them a “deserved lesson” after centuries of exploitation. ³⁸

All the prewar cultural institutions were destroyed or drastically reformed. Boryslav’s public space changed its character; some of the prewar monuments were destroyed, streets were renamed, and red flags and propaganda posters appeared everywhere. Most of these posters were offensive and humiliating to the Poles and strengthened the “oppressor” stereotypes that had existed among the Ukrainians before the war. Schools slowly changed their curricula and textbooks. Ukrainians or Jews took over the directing positions and gradually became more numerous than the prewar Polish teachers. Intensive courses of the Russian language were introduced. Local people, particularly schoolchildren, were forced to participate in political “meetings” and listen to indoctrinating speeches of politruks, Soviet political instructors, frequently members of the Red Army. The most spectacular propaganda event organized in Boryslav in the first months of the Soviet occupation was the “burial of Poland.” A specially arranged funeral conduct, consisting mostly of terrorized school children, went through the town, carrying a coffin with a big board, bearing the inscription “Poland.” During the celebrations of the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1940, the demonstrators carried effigies of Polish prewar top politicians. The people of Boryslav were told hundreds of times that the “lordly” Poland would never return, and Eastern Galicia, liberated from the Polish yoke, would stay forever within the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic. ³⁹

The Soviet authorities nationalized the entire economy and liquidated any private business. They introduced planned economy, “stakhanovite” competition, and other forms of Soviet production and management. Also some pathologies that had existed in the Soviet factories, such as stealing and corruption, appeared. Many people were fired or changed their occupations themselves. Before the war, many oil companies were active in Boryslav, including such well-known firms, usually owned by foreign capital, as “Premier,” “Nafta,” “Fanto,” “Limanowa,” “Standard Nobel,” “Galicyjskie Karpackie Naftowe Towarzystwo Akcyjne,” and “Galicja.” In 1928, many of Boryslav’s oil mines were united into the Little Poland Group of Oil, Industry and Trade Associations in Poland (Małopolska Grupa Towarzystw Naftowych, Przemysłowych i Handlowych w Polsce), known as Koncern Małopolski. The Soviets reorganized Boryslav’s oil industry into five large state-owned companies. They brought about 270 oil specialists from the Soviet Union and started rebuilding and developing the industrial infrastructure of the oil fields. The prewar Drilling School was extended and renamed Shkola Burilshchikov. In early 1940, there were already 790 fully operational oil shafts. Also, the wax mines were restored. The Boryslav industry employed about 10,000 people, compared to 5,000 in 1939. Yet it was still less efficient than in the difficult 1930s. ⁴⁰

The introduction of the Soviet system pushed down the level of life of the local population. Food rationing was introduced. It was difficult to get basic products. Most commodities necessary in everyday life were sold out, and stores were nationalized. In the last moment before the nationalization of trade in December 1939, the storekeepers hid a part of their supply. Particularly, the Soviet soldiers and officials used to buy enormous amounts of all kinds of commodities, frequently unknown to them in their prewar Soviet life. Important apparatchiks sent furniture and luxury items to the East. Many people, especially Poles, were thrown out from their apartments, taken by the occupiers. The evicted usually landed in the overcrowded kasarnie buildings and were deported in 1940. Poor people, who had always existed in the town, became very numerous now, even though the Soviets deported most unemployed and homeless. People starved to death, and committees for the help to the hungry were organized underground. ⁴¹ Even those Jews who initially had had great expectations lost their hopes and did not feel safe. ⁴²

The brutal occupation and the increasingly worsening living conditions provoked anger and resistance. It is not certain when a Polish underground was established in Boryslav and Drohobych. Most likely, as in other parts of the former Lvov province, it happened soon after the beginning of the Soviet occupation. It appears that initially secret groups virtually mashroomed in the oil region. They established contacts with the provincial leadership the Union of Armed Struggle (Związek Walki Zbrojnej, ZWZ), a predecessor of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK); gathered information about the occupying forces; helped the refugees from German-occupied Poland; planned to blow up railroads and oil installations; and transmitted news from the West to the local population. Yet in the winter of 1939–1940, the NKVD destroyed the Lvov district of the ZWZ almost completely. In March and April 1940, the units of the oblast‘ NKVD headquarters in Drohobych arrested 287 alleged members of the underground. Many of them were very active in Boryslav. Periodically, groups of high school students were arrested by the NKVD, and the people assumed that another underground organization had been discovered. ⁴³

It was also difficult to organize resistance because the Boryslav society was terrorized and decimated by random arrests and mass deportations. Instantly after the occupation of the town, the Soviets arranged an NKVD headquarters in a pretentious palatial house on the main street downtown. Next to it, the former Drilling School was transformed into the barracks of an NKVD unit, with about twenty cells for temporary arrest in the basement. Usually, prisoners were kept there only briefly and then sent to an oblast’ NKVD prison in Drohobych, but still the Boryslav prison was constantly overcrowded. In addition to the compound downtown, there were several NKVD stations spread all over the town. Most arrests within the Polish sector of the town population were made between October 1939 and June 1940. To everybody’s amazement, local communists were among the first arrested people, together with Polish officials, policemen, politicians, some engineers, and prominent members of intelligentsia. Also, former PPS activists were imprisoned more frequently than the endeks. In the summer of 1940, the NKVD arrested mostly Ukrainians and, from the fall of 1940, it appeared that the NKVD operations had no ethnic priorities. Altogether, about 750 persons were imprisoned in the Drohobych oblast’, including about 230 from Boryslav. ⁴⁴

In addition to the individual arrests, there were mass deportations. There were three waves of deportations from the Soviet-occupied territories of prewar Poland. In Boryslav, most people were deported during the two NKVD operations in February and April 1940. ⁴⁵ Finally, from the spring of 1941, many young men were conscripted to the Red Army. ⁴⁶

The last wave of deportations from the former Polish eastern provinces was stopped by the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. On that day, at noon, the people of Boryslav learned from the Soviet radio that the German-Soviet war had started. The street loudspeakers broadcast several times the famous dramatic speech of Viacheslav Molotov. The closing days of the Soviet power in Boryslav became truly dramatic. Several dozen people were arrested by the NKVD. It was impossible to learn anything about their fate. In fact, even shortly before the German aggression, the Soviet authorities behaved as if they had been preparing something. The waves of arrests and evacuations of the prisoners from the Drohobych oblast’ to the prewar Soviet territories grew before 22 June, but they culminated dramatically after this date. The town was terrorized. Many people, mostly Ukrainians, escaped to the woods and surrounding villages. The Poles and Ukrainians believed that not one Jew was arrested. In front of the NKVD headquarters, a group of young militia men, allegedly mostly of Jewish background, with red armbands, did not let anybody to approach the building and asked the people, passing by, to cross to the other side of the street. A rumor had it that a tractor was idling behind the NKVD headquarters to drown out the screams of tortured people inside the building. ⁴⁷

Before their evacuation, the Soviets applied a scorched earth policy to the town. They blew up many oil shafts, the local electric plant, gas and oil pipelines, and some other industrial and municipal objects. Chaos was growing in Boryslav. People were buying out everything they could. Robberies multiplied. It was possible to join the Soviet evacuation of the town in the last moment, but most people, including many Jews, disappointed with the Soviet government, decided to stay and expected that the German occupation would resemble the World War I situation. ⁴⁸

On 27–28 June (Friday and Saturday), the NKVD left the town but returned on the 29th and, finally, escaped on the 30th. On 1 July 1941, the Germans cautiously entered the town. They behaved as if they anticipated strong resistance on the Soviet side. Yet there was no fighting. Most Ukrainians were extremely happy, which was especially visible in the Ukrainian dominated suburbs. Again, as in September 1939, groups of Ukrainian militiamen appeared instantly on the streets. They took over the most important governmental buildings but also private property that had been sequestrated by the Soviets during 1939 to 1941. There was a short moment of calm. ⁴⁹

Yet on the same day, a rumor spread around that human bodies were found in the NKVD prison. Indeed, these were the prisoners executed by the NKVD shortly before its final evacuation and buried in the prison basement under a thin layer of mud and trash. These were mostly local people arrested in June and easy to identify. Some bodies were mutilated. Most likely, forty-two people were found, including fifteen Poles and twenty-seven Ukrainians. ⁵⁰ On 2 July, crowds gathered in front of the NKVD prison. ⁵¹ Families of the murdered people wanted to take their dead, but the Germans forbade it and ordered the Jews to unearth and clean the bodies. News about it spread across the town. At the same time, its inhabitants were told that an anti-Jewish pogrom had erupted in Drohobych. ⁵²

On 3 July, the Jews washed the bodies. Around noon, the Germans announced that the local population was allowed to “settle the scores” with collaborators and the people coresponsible for the death of the NKVD victims. Again, as in 1939, a foreign invader encouraged a part of the local population to attack another part of Boryslav’s inhabitants. As a consequence, a vicious anti-Jewish pogrom started on the square in front of the former NKVD building and on the streets of Boryslav. The pogrom continued through the night, when German patrols were killing Jewish survivors and wounded on the streets. Next day, on 4 July, the civilian population returned. Jews were thrown out from their houses, dragged to the square in front of the NKVD building, beaten, and murdered. About 220 people, almost exclusively Jews, were killed (some sources give much larger numbers, up to 1,000) and hundreds were wounded; a large number of Jewish houses were robbed and destroyed. On 4 July, around noon, the Germans ordered the pogrom stopped and threatened the robbers that they would be punished if they continue the carnage. Laconic posters appeared: Wer plündert—wird erschossen. Blood and parts of human bodies were left on the streets. ⁵³

The July pogrom became the next bone of contention between Poles and Ukrainians and a prominent cause for permanent mutual accusations. There are many different descriptions and interpretations of the pogrom. According to most Polish authors of oral and written testimonies, the Jews were brought to the former NKVD building by the Ukrainian militia, which assisted in unearthing and cleaning the bodies from the very beginning. The Jews were killed by the militia men, instructed and encouraged by the Wehrmacht officers and soldiers, participating in all the atrocities; by local Ukrainians and by Ukrainian peasants, who came to the town with axes and forks. Many Ukrainians participated in the crime for “ideological” reasons. The peasants came with their carts to rob. Polish sources admit that there were also Poles in the killing mob, but they formed a small minority. Some testimonies mention that the Ukrainians asked the Germans to allow them to organize a similar action against the Poles, but the Germans did not want to paralyze the oil industry and forbade an anti-Polish pogrom. ⁵⁴

According to the dominant Ukrainian version, not the Ukrainian militia but the relatives of the murdered people brought the Jews. Local hoodlums started beating them and robbing their houses, and since Poles were more numerous in the town than Ukrainians, they dominated numerically also among the murderers. Yet, continues the Ukrainian version, only the Wehrmacht troops killed the Jews in front of the NKVD building. Even more, a Ukrainian militiaman (which is confirmed by Polish sources) saved a girl, his schoolmate, and her father from the killing square. Moreover, the Ukrainian town mayor, appointed by the Germans allegedly against his will, demanded that a special commission should investigate the crime. The Ukrainian authorities appointed commission members who started working and made some photographs, but the Germans confiscated the pictures and stopped the investigation. The town mayor also claimed that he asked the German authorities to stop the pogrom and managed to frighten away some young Poles, who intended to bring a Jewish family to the killing square. ⁵⁵

Also, the Jews believed that the Germans gave a free hand to the locals to start a pogrom and instructed them how to treat the Jews. Most Jewish testimonies indicate that the Ukrainians, helped, instructed, and photographed by the Germans, dominated among those carrying out the pogrom. Some Jews recall, however, that Poles also participated. The Jewish population was absolutely terrified. Before the pogrom, they did not realize that they had been so hated by many local people. Rumors of about five thousand victims appeared. Even though after the pogrom the Jews were not attacked for several months, the events of early July 1941 became the first part of about ten anti-Jewish Aktionen in Boryslav, which led to a complete annihilation of this Jewish community. ⁵⁶

Soon many different rumors appeared among Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews. ⁵⁷ One of them claimed that these were members of the Ukrainian militia who massacred the bodies of the prisoners instantly after they had been discovered in the NKVD prison. The militiamen allegedly cut off tongues, gauged out eyes, laced up lips with wire to provoke the population against the Jews. ⁵⁸ Other rumors had it that some additional NKVD victims had been found in a nearby forest with Jewish identification documents in their pockets. They were soon recognized by their relatives and were not Jewish, but, according to the rumor, this was a trick to put the responsibility for this crime on the Germans. ⁵⁹ Some Poles claimed that the events of 2 and 3 July were not an anti-Jewish pogrom but a revenge on collaborators and some Polish communists were killed at the pogrom site. ⁶⁰ True, a Polish communist, Stanisław Dziedzic, was torn apart in front of the NKVD building, ⁶¹ but the masses of people from the town and from the surrounding villages did not know who had collaborated, and they killed and robbed the Jews, whom they considered allies of the Soviet regime.

After the tragic days of late June and early July 1942, the situation calmed down in Boryslav. The Germans concentrated on the reconstruction of the oil industry, introduced a very strict working discipline, and did their best to get as much oil as possible. The Soviet management structure of the oil industry was reformed into one big enterprise, which combined mining and refining. Initially, it was called Beskiden Erdöl Gewinnung Geselschaft, and several months later, it was renamed Karpathen Öl Aktien Geselschaft. The Nazi authorities brought to Boryslav a small group of German top managers who were responsible for oil production. They were led by the director of the oil enterprise, the despotic Erich Radecke (before the war Radecki, an ethnic German from Stanisławów) and his deputy, Berthold Beitz, who tried to save Polish and Jewish lives and, according to some rumors, had contacts with the Polish underground. In the fall of 1941, the oil industry almost returned to the prewar level. ⁶²

For a period of time, Polish-Ukrainian relations became less tense, even though Polish and Ukrainian neighbors became mutually more distrustful and Ukrainians stopped speaking Polish during “interethnic” conversations. Several factors contributed to this temporary calm. As before the war, Poles still occupied most managerial positions in the oil industry. This led to a sharp conflict with Ukrainians. Some of them tried to kill the most hated Poles. Yet the German director, Radecke, summoned the Ukrainian municipal authorities and threatened them that the Germans would execute fifty Ukrainians for each murdered Polish specialist. Later, Ukrainians denounced the Poles who tried to sabotage the oil production. In November 1942, Gestapo arrested thirty Poles accused of sabotage, but Radecke intervened and managed to release most of them. Many Ukrainians believed that the Germans favored the Poles, rehiring them in the oil industry. A group of Polish engineers found a refuge in a Geological-Oil Research Institute. ⁶³

On the other hand, most Poles believed that the Germans favored the Ukrainians, putting them in the top administrative positions; organizing the Ukrainian police and, later, the SS Division Halychyna; and tolerating Ukrainian press, as well as cultural and social organizations. Smart people on the both sides had no doubt: the German oppressors applied the classic divide et impera policy to Eastern Galicia. ⁶⁴

Boryslav, an important industrial center, was relatively well policed by the occupiers. In late October or in November 1941, a Schutzpolizeidienstabteilung (Police Division) was organized there. The closest Dienststellen existed in Drohobych, Stryj, Tarnopol, Kolomyja, Stanisławów, Zaleszczyki, and Brzeżany. In Boryslav, there was also a Schützenkompagnie (a militarized police unit), a Reiterzug (mounted police), the Wrkschutz (factory security), and a detachment of the Ukrainian Police. There was no Polish “Blue Police” in the town. The Boryslav Schutzpolizeidienstabteilung was supervised directly by the Komando der Schupo in Lviv. The Schupo was responsible for anti-Jewish operations, but it was helped by the Ukrainian Police. It was difficult to resist the occupiers in Boryslav. ⁶⁵

Extreme poverty and hunger was the next “mediating” factor between Poles and Ukrainians of Boryslav. In late 1941, unusually heavy rains and floods destroyed crops and multiplied the consequences of the German food requisitions. In early 1942, it was possible to find people starved to death on the streets. Inhabitants of Boryslav, especially women, used to travel to surrounding rural regions to exchange oil, salt, clothing, jewelry, and all possible manufactured goods for food. The situation was so dire that nobody cared about the ethnicity of the trading partners. Later, when the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) units appeared in the region, the procedure became more hazardous for the Poles. ⁶⁶ Germans tried to stop the trade and controlled people traveling on trains. The Bahnschutz, an extremely brutal railway police, beat, arrested, and sent many “smugglers” to concentration and labor camps. The Germans badly needed labor both locally and in the Reich. From the fall of 1941, the Germans organized roundups in the town and sent captured people to the German industrial centers and as agricultural slave workers to the German countryside. From April 1942, all non-German unemployed men between 18 and 60 had to join the Baudienst im Generalgouvernement, a Nazi governmental construction company, building roads and infrastructure facilities. There was also a labor camp in Boryslav, Lager für die Bohrungen der Karpaten-Öl-AG, that offered slave drilling workers for the oil industry. Yet the German persecutions only increased the food prices that had been already unbelievably inflated. ⁶⁷

In late 1942 and in 1943, the material situation of some Poles and Ukrainians improved due to a paradoxical albeit cruel circumstance. In October 1942, the Jews of Boryslav were crammed in a ghetto, and during the next year they were murdered during several Aktionen (some authors claimed that there were six of them, others list twelve killing operations). ⁶⁸ There is no doubt that the Ukrainian Police helped to kill the Jews. Yet as in the case of the July 1941 pogrom, Boryslav’s Poles and Ukrainians argued about their contribution to the Holocaust. The Germans took the most precious Jewish property, but a significant part of it, houses, furniture, clothing, tools, and other commodities, landed in Polish and Ukrainian hands.

In 1943, it was increasingly clear that the Germans would not win the war. Some time later, it became obvious that the Red Army would return to Eastern Galicia. To both sides of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict, it was a terrifying perspective. The people of Boryslav remembered the 1939 to 1941 Soviet occupation, and if the German atrocities overshadowed those remembrances, the news about the Katyn crime, announced in April 1943, revived the anti-Soviet attitude. Both Poles and Ukrainians started preparing themselves for the final stage of the war and had no doubt that they would have to fight each other to save Eastern Galicia for their states. On 25 March 1943, General Kazimierz Sawicki, the commander of the Lvov District of the Home Army, wrote to its commander-in-chief, General Stefan Grot-Rowecki, that the war had deepened the Polish-Ukrainian hostility. Before the war, continued Sawicki, Poles had mistrusted and disliked Ukrainians, but now, after all the things that Ukrainians had done under the Soviet and German occupations, Poles hated Ukrainians and there was no chance for a Polish-Ukrainian agreement. The general also expressed his (1943!) attitude towards the Jews: they had enjoyed equal rights in the prewar Poland but they betrayed us! ⁶⁹

Polish resistance revived instantly after the end of the first Soviet occupation. One of the first underground organizations established in Boryslav in the fall of 1941 was the Socialist Fighting Organization (Socjalistyczna Organizacja Bojowa), built by former PPS activists. Later, after the unification of the all-Polish resistance in February 1942, the organization joined the Home Army. Initially, other Polish political movements also had their groups in the town, but they were much smaller. In the second half of 1942, the overall AK structure in Eastern Galicia was finally settled. It was divided into three districts (Okręgi) of Lvov, Stanisławów, and Tarnopol. Each of them was divided into several inspectorates, and they, in turn, were divided into several units (obwody). The Drohobych Obwód of the South-Western Inspectorate of the Lvov District included Boryslav. On 1 September 1942, the Drohobych Obwód had eighteen underground skeleton platoons with 1 professional officer, 6 reserve officers, 8 officer cadets, and 82 NCOs sworn in. Later, these numbers grew and reached 964 people but, at least initially, they had almost no weapons (five rifles, twenty-one pistols, and four grenades). The town of Boryslav was divided between two AK regions: Boryslav-mining industry and Boryslav-town—altogether, probably, five platoons. They gathered information about Germans and organized the so-called little sabotage. They also tried to help the Boryslav Jews. ⁷⁰

The Home Army developed in Boryslav faster when, in April 1943, Lieutenant Jacek Przetocki came to the region. He had been trained in England and parachuted into occupied Poland as a special secret agent (cichociemny). He was appointed the commander of the Diversion Command (Kedyw) of the Home Army in Drohobych. Przetocki’s people started producing grenades and Molotov cocktails. The Polish soldiers had hidden caches of weapons in 1939. Now, the AK members found and cleaned them. In the fall of 1943, the Home Army established its Diversion and Sabotage Group in Drohobych, and in the spring of 1944, the first guerilla group was ready to go to the local forests. In April 1944, however, the Bahnschutz killed Przetocki at a small railway station outside Boryslav. The local AK organization weakened and did not organize any military actions against the Germans until July 1944. Soon, the German-Soviet front moved close to Boryslav, and with a huge concentration of military units, it was difficult to revive the Home Army activities. ⁷¹

The ZWZ and AK intelligence watched Ukrainians carefully throughout the entire war. As early as late May 1942, the authorities of the Lvov Home Army District sent a warning to Warsaw: the Ukrainians had been ready for everything, their activities had been growing constantly, and they had understood that they would have to build their state themselves in the case of Germany’s defeat. Some Ukrainians hoped, continued the report, that the Germans would help them in the last moment to establish an independent state and this would create a semblance of a legal status. Yet they had been hostile towards the Poles and had been preparing themselves to fight. ⁷²

The Home Army intelligence was also aware of the Polish emotions. Educational materials, produced for the AK soldiers in 1943, stated, “The attitude of the Polish society in Eastern Little Poland towards Ukrainians is overwhelmingly hostile. In 1918–1939, these [Polish-Ukrainian] relations had been far from being correct and the periods of the Soviet and German occupations did not reduce the antagonism. Even though, by the end of the Soviet occupation, one could notice various symptoms of the erosion of the antagonism as a consequence of the common fate and the common hatred towards the Muscovites, but the Ukrainian excesses and persecutions [of the Polish population] at the beginning of the German power kindled the conflict again.” ⁷³

Some Polish underground leaders hoped that an agreement with Ukrainians would be possible. Yet the Polish conciliatory initiatives were sometimes counterproductive. On 30 July 1943, the Polish underground semi-parliament, the Home Political Representation (Krajowa Reprezentacja Narodu Polskiego) issued an appeal “To the Ukrainian Nation.” The Representation called upon the Ukrainians to reverse their policies: to break with the Germans, to stop murdering Poles, to condemn the organization of the SS Halychyna, and to fight together against the Germans. The appeal included the following statement: “We understand and appreciate the striving of the Ukrainian Nation to establish an independent Ukraine. We announce, however, that we will not give up the eastern territories of Rzeczpospolita. In the southern parts of this territories, Poles have been living next to Ukrainians for centuries, and the Polish Nation made there a huge economic and cultural contribution.” ⁷⁴

On the other hand, the Home Army intelligence believed that, at least initially, the Ukrainian underground was not very developed in Boryslav. ⁷⁵ In 1943, when the UPA and OUN activities in Eastern Galicia grew constantly and “feverishly,” there were not too many signs of their work in Boryslav. Throughout the entire war, there were almost no Polish victims in Boryslav proper. Yet the atmosphere was getting tenser. A wave of Polish refugees escaped the UPA-organized genocide of the Polish population in Volhynia. The AK intelligence collected flyers signed by the OUN claiming that the UPA operations in Volhynia had been a revenge for the extermination of the Ukrainian population in the Chełm district and in Podlasie. In the summer of 1943, the AK provincial units reported that the Ukrainians had been preparing an uprising in Eastern Galicia. Yet, also in 1944, a Home Army reports did not list any Polish UPA victims in Boryslav. ⁷⁶

The Home Army also watched the Ukrainian-Jewish relations in Eastern Galicia. “Ukrainians and Jews,” wrote an AK analyst in Lvov in June 1942, “mutual hatred; no chance for any compromise.” Six months later, another report stated, “[Polish] attitude towards the Jews is passively sympathetic. Ukrainians’—decisively hostile.” ⁷⁷

From the very beginning of the Polish resistance, its leaders had been planning an overall Polish uprising. Initially, until early 1943, the ZWZ and AK commanders believed that the end of World War II would resemble the final year of World War I, that there would be a stalemate on the German-Soviet front somewhere east of Galicia, and a Polish uprising would restore Polish power behind this front. In Eastern Galicia, the Home Army planners expected a fight against the Germans and the Ukrainians—the Ukrainian militias, the underground organizations, the SS Halychyna, and organized civilians. In this context, according to the AK documents, the absolute priority was to take Lvov (detailed operation plans, concerning this city, look like carbon copies of the November 1918 Polish activities there). Several towns (Gródek Jagielloński, Mościska, Jaworów, Żółkiew, and Rawa Ruska) would link Lvov area with the territories in the West controlled by the Poles. In this plan, Drohobych and Boryslav were not important. If possible, they were supposed to be taken by local Poles, but they were not crucial for the entire operation. ⁷⁸ Consequently, and because of the special German regime in the oil region, the AK organization in Boryslav was neither strong nor particularly visible to the local people. ⁷⁹

In late 1943, when the Red Army was approaching the prewar eastern border of Poland, the AK commanders developed a new plan, called Tempest (Burza). According to it, the Home Army was supposed to attack the Germans when the Red Army would break the Wehrmacht defense lines. The AK units would cooperate with the Soviets but also would play a role of local Polish authorities vis-à-vis the Red Army. The Home Army commanders expected that their local units would take control over the Boryslav-Drohobych oil region and break all the communication and transportation lines crossing this territory. Moreover, in the last weeks before the entry of the Red Army, a part of East Galician population panicked and started escaping westwards. The local units of the Home Army were ordered to stop the potential refugees. ⁸⁰

The Tempest proved to be a failure. On 22 July 1944, the Red Army tanks entered Lvov. The local AK units joined the fight against the Germans and were very helpful, since the Soviets did not have enough infantry and were cut off from their supplies. After the battle, however, the Soviets disarmed the AK units and arrested their officers. At the same time, the Boryslav AK started its first cautious actions against the Germans on the outskirts of the town and established contacts with the Soviets, who wanted to take Drohobych and Boryslav as soon as possible and gathered together large forces to do so. On the other hand, it appeared that the Germans would defend the oil region. A rumor appeared in Boryslav that the Germans would round up all the men to dig antitank trenches and would kill them afterwards. Many people escaped to the nearby woods. The Germans still managed to destroy many shafts, to take with them a part of the machinery, to flood a wax mine, and to let off thousands of tons of oil from the tanks in the town. Some oil industry managers and engineers escaped with the Germans. On 6 August 1944, the Red Army took Drohobycz and, on the next day, with the limited help of an AK unit and almost no German resistance, Boryslav. The Drohobych and Boryslav AK commanders, unaware of the Lvov events, approached the Soviets and were arrested. Some of them were released several days later, but most AK soldiers did not reveal themselves vis-à-vis the Soviets. To them, the second Soviet occupation started. ⁸¹

The new authorities built their apparatus immediately. Some of the NKVD and administration officials knew Boryslav well. They had been working there between 1939 and 1941. In their understanding, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic returned to its territories temporarily occupied by the Germans. A new wave of arrests and executions began. New categories were added to the 1939 to 1941 list of punishable crimes: collaboration with the Germans and belonging to the Polish and Ukrainian resistance. ⁸²

The Home Army dissolved itself and its former members started leaving Boryslav, especially since the NKVD was looking for them and the communist-controlled Polish Army was trying to conscript as many young men as possible. Others stayed underground and establish new secret organizations to continue their struggle. ⁸³

On 9 September 1944, the Soviet-controlled Polish semigovernment, the Lublin Committee, signed an agreement with the Soviet Union. The agreement accepted the new Polish eastern border designed by Moscow and a decision about “voluntary repatriation” (dobrowolne przesiedlenie) of the Polish people to the new Poland. News about these “diplomatic” arrangements was devastating to the Poles. The next challenge to their emotional resistance came in December 1944, when the Soviets arrested about seventeen thousand people in the region of Lvov. In January 1945, the officially organized repatriation started. The Soviets did not oppose it. Everybody who wanted to go to communist-controlled Poland could leave the town. A mass exodus started; most Poles wanted to leave. Traumatized, desperate, and emotionally numb, they boarded the cattle trains prepared by the Soviet administration. Most of their property was taken over by the authorities or quickly and cheaply sold to the Ukrainians. They were going somewhere, but they had no idea where or what was waiting for them in those faraway unknown places. Some behaved like automatons. ⁸⁴

The five years of the war tore apart the Poles and Ukrainians of Boryslav. The Polish-Ukrainian relations had never been good there, especially after the war of 1918–1919. Yet there were still mixed marriages, people of complex Polish-Ukrainian identities, Polish-Ukrainian friends and good neighbors. The Ukrainian situation in Poland was still better than in the Soviet Union. Ukrainian political, social, cultural, economic, and sport organizations did exist in Boryslav and in other parts of Eastern Poland. Some of them blossomed. A few last bridges for a potential reconciliation did exist. They were destroyed during the war. The German and Soviet occupiers did their best to antagonize Poles and Ukrainians during the consecutive four occupations. Each time, when the new rulers came, they incited one part of the town population against the other. Even those who hated the Germans and the Soviets accepted elements of their propaganda and started believing that what was good for the Ukrainians had to be bad for the Poles and vice versa. After 1944, most Poles left. Their world disappeared forever—Central and Western Poland were quite different from their beloved Kresy, the Eastern Borderlands. Yet the Ukrainians were hardly winners. They stayed under direct Soviet power. An iron Polish-Soviet border divided the both sides for the next forty-five years. With no opportunity to exchange ideas and debate their unhappy past, many Poles and Ukrainians lived with their World War II attitudes frozen in time. Not infrequently, they brought up their children in a similar spirit. Many of them kept to themselves what they did or saw during the war and what had happened to the third sector of the Boryslav population—the Jews. The World War II trauma and moral numbness have not disappeared completely.