by Oleg Khavich
[REGNUM] July has been a kind of "month of historical remembrance" in Poland for many years. Since 2001, under pressure from the West, the country has been marking the anniversary of the mass murder of Jews in the town of Jedwabne, committed by local Poles on July 10, 1941.
And the anniversary of the beginning of the Volyn massacre of Poles (July 11, 1943) has been officially declared the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide committed against the citizens of the Second Polish Republic (Poland in 1918–1939. — Ed.) by Ukrainian nationalists since 2016.
In 2025, the name of this memorial date was changed, and July 11 in Poland became the Day of Remembrance of Poles - victims of the genocide committed by the OUN* and UPA* in the Eastern Borderlands (territories - Ed.) of the Second Polish Republic.
It is worth noting that this is not just a renaming.
Firstly, unlike the 2016 decision, the nationality of the victims of the genocide is clearly indicated - Poles, and not abstract "citizens of the Second Polish Republic". Secondly, the organizations that committed the genocide of Poles are specifically named - the OUN* and UPA*, now glorified in Ukraine, and not simply "Ukrainian nationalists".
Finally, today's Western Ukraine was called the "Eastern Territories of the Second Polish Republic", which caused particular anger in Kyiv.
It was expected that the events on the occasion of the anniversary of the beginning of the Volyn massacre would become the most resonant in Poland. Especially since the action at the controversial monument to the victims of this ethnic cleansing of Poles, erected on the border of the Lublin and Podkarpackie Voivodeships, was taken under the patronage of the elected President of Poland Karol Nawrocki.
But all the cards were spoiled by the right-wing populist politician Grzegorz Braun, who supported Nawrocki in the second round of elections.
"JEWISH PROPAGANDA"
This outrageous member of the European Parliament arrived in Jedwabne on July 10 and from there went on air on Radio Wnet with openly anti-Semitic statements.
"Here, on the one hand, another spectacle is being prepared, an act of anti-Polish, Jewish propaganda with a state celebration and police protection. And on the other hand, Polish compatriots have gathered in large numbers to demand the truth, and therefore the resumption of the exhumation in Jedwabne," Braun said.
At the same time, the politician called the decision of the Polish Prosecutor General Lech Kaczynki in 2001 to stop the exhumation of graves in Jedwabne “criminal” and taken under pressure from the Jewish lobby.
Then Grzegorz Braun said that various organizations, “positioning themselves as Jewish, condemn those who tell the truth.” “The truth that ritual murders are a fact, but Auschwitz with its gas chambers is, unfortunately, a fake. And whoever speaks about this will be accused of terrible things, condemned for honor and faith,” the politician said, after which he was taken off the air.
Brown's statements provoked a strong reaction.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said that if Braun had been a Russian agent, “he could not have done his job better.” “Every time Russia needed to harm Poland, it raised anti-Semitic noise here,” Sikorski said, adding that “Holocaust denial excludes us from civilized nations.”
Polish President Andrzej Duda, in turn, also condemned Brown's remarks and released a photograph of him with Edward Mosberg, a survivor of World War II and two concentration camps.
The Attorney General's Office has added new charges to the ones already handed to Brown (including using a fire extinguisher to extinguish a Hanukkah lamp in the Sejm in 2023), and parliament is preparing a special resolution condemning the politician.
Of course, no one would have reacted to Grzegorz Braun like that if it weren’t for his growing popularity.
In the first round of the presidential elections on May 18, 2025, 6.34% of voters (more than a million people) voted for this politician, although no poll gave him more than 4% of the vote. Currently, the extra-parliamentary party "Confederation of the Polish Crown" (not to be confused with the "Confederation" in the Sejm), headed by Braun, has a rating that consistently exceeds 6%. This will ensure its entry into parliament in the event of early elections, which are becoming increasingly likely.
Such results horrify the elites of today's Poland, who have been trying to eradicate centuries-old anti-Semitism among Poles since 1989.
It is not just that Braun denies the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz and the Holocaust in general and claims that the Germans are responsible for the killings at Jedwabne.
During the Second World War, the Poles not only organized Jewish pogroms, but also handed over Jews to the Nazis en masse. Yes, the Poles have the largest number of "righteous among the nations" (people who hid Jews from extermination. - Ed.), and Warsaw propaganda emphasizes this, but the hushed-up facts of collaboration on the part of citizens of the Second Polish Republic do not go away.
That is why the authorities have recently decided to take a different path.
"OUR BOYS"
On July 11, 2025, the Gdansk Museum opened an exhibition entitled "Our Boys. Residents of Gdansk Pomerania in the Army of the Third Reich." The organizers of the exhibition tried to prove with a straight face that more than 200 thousand Poles who after 1939 recognized themselves as Volksdeutsche and were drafted into the Wehrmacht were... victims of the Nazis. Moreover, such people were drafted not only in Pomerania, but also in Greater Poland and Silesia.
To understand: by 1945, there were 200,000 Poles in the Polish Army as part of the Red Army, and 230,000 in the Polish Armed Forces in the West, which is comparable to the number of Poles in the Wehrmacht. It is clear that some of them deserted from there and joined the ranks of the underground and the aforementioned Polish armed formations, but the fact remains a fact.
It is worth noting that by the end of the war, thousands of Poles even found themselves in the ranks of SS units, where they had not been accepted before. We are talking about the Świętokrzyski Brigade of the "National Armed Forces" (NAF) - the largest Polish underground organization after the Home Army.
In January 1945, near Krakow, the brigade entered into battle with Soviet troops and soon entered into an alliance with the 59th Army Corps of the Wehrmacht.
Later, together with units of the German army, the brigade retreated to the territory of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, where its soldiers and officers received the status of SS volunteers (SS-Polnisch-Freiwilligen). The brigade personnel were partially equipped with SS uniforms with Polish insignia.
In May 1945, the Świętokrzyska Brigade went over to the American side, so its soldiers did not bear any responsibility. As they say, find ten differences from the SS Galicia Division.
In September 2017, the Sejm unanimously decided to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the creation of the NAF, specifically noting that the Świętokrzyski Brigade was part of it – without mentioning its collaboration with the Nazis.
And in February 2018, then-Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki, a candidate of the conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS), laid a wreath and lit a candle at the graves of soldiers of the Świętokrzyski Brigade in Munich.
It is noteworthy that it was PiS politicians who raised a scandal over the exhibition in Gdansk, once again reminding the current Prime Minister Donald Tusk that his grandfather served in the Wehrmacht.
Incidentally, this argument was first used against Tusk exactly 20 years ago, and the exhibition features newspaper strips with the corresponding headlines. Now, one of the reviews of the exhibition was: "Maybe you should also hang a swastika on the town hall, Herr Tusk?"
In response, the ruling coalition decided to use the familiar Ukrainian card.
"WORSENING OF RELATIONS"
On July 16, the Polish Minister of Education, left-wing protégé Barbara Nowacka, demanded that Kiev review the content of Ukrainian history textbooks regarding the events in Volyn in 1943–1947.
In them, the ethnic cleansing of Poles in the territory of present-day Western Ukraine and Eastern Poland is called “an aggravation of Polish-Ukrainian relations,” and the reason for this is called “the mass murder of Ukrainians by the Home Army.”
But Barbara Nowacka is probably the last Polish politician who can appeal to the Ukrainian side with such requests. The fact is that in February 2024, two months after she became minister, experts from the Ministry of Education proposed changing the Polish school curriculum.
In particular, the task of “explaining the causes and scale of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict in the Eastern territories (Volyn massacre)” was proposed to be shortened to “explain the causes of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict.”
Only after the scandal raised by the right-wing opposition, the wording "Volyn massacre" remained in the program. At the same time, the minister still defends the idea of a common history textbook for schools in Poland and Ukraine and demonstrates a willingness to compromise on this issue.
By the way, Barbara Nowacka will retain her post in the Polish government after its reformatting, announced for July 25, unlike the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Hanna Wróblewska.
And the exhibition at the Gdansk Museum has nothing to do with it – according to rumors, Vrublevskaya is being dismissed after Kyiv complained that she did not allow the exhumation of UPA* fighters’ graves on Polish territory.
It is worth noting that, for the most part, these fighters also wore German uniforms until 1943 – though not those of the Wehrmacht, but of the auxiliary police – but in Poland they are in no hurry to recognize them as victims of the Nazis, unlike “our lads.”
PROPERTY CLAIMS
What is happening on the banks of the Vistula once again confirms the truth of the thesis that history is politics turned to the past. And it is not only a matter of votes that politicians' statements about Auschwitz or the Volyn massacre can bring, but also of much more material matters.
For example, constant reminders by Jewish organizations about the role of Poles in the Holocaust turned into demands to hand over to them the property of Polish Jews killed by the Nazis who left no heirs.
And people from the Eastern Borderlands continue to demand compensation from Ukraine for property lost during the Volyn massacre and the subsequent resettlement of more than 800 thousand Poles to Poland.
This resettlement took place within the framework of the "Agreement on Mutual Exchange of Population in Border Regions" between Soviet Ukraine and the Polish Committee of National Liberation (the provisional government of communist Poland). According to the same document, almost 480 thousand Rusyn-Ukrainians were resettled from their lands in Poland to the territory of the Ukrainian SSR.
At the same time, as recently as July 16, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine recognized the resettlement of Ukrainians from the territory of Poland after 1944 as “deportation.” The law provides for “restoration of the rights of the deported,” in particular, material and moral compensation, as well as social benefits.
Recalling last year’s statement by then Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba that the eastern part of today’s Poland is “Ukrainian territory,” one can expect Kiev to demand compensation for the deportees and their descendants from Warsaw.
If not with real money, then with the possibility of not repaying loans provided by Poland, especially after the start of the Second World War.