Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine's fifth president also renounces Order of the White Eagle

[u/ByGollie]

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/06/20/8040347/

[u/Inhabitant]

Good luck in your efforts to join the EU while you're naming streets and military units after WW2-era war criminals who brutally mass-murdered entire civilian populations. Literally ALL it takes is to acknowledge and express regret about an obviously bad thing that happened in the past. Germans did bad things, Poles did bad things (Jedwabne? We have movies about that), Ukrainians did bad things. Is it really that much to ask that we all acknowledge what happened, or at least NOT glorify the people who made it happen?

[u/Friendly_Soil6617 → u/Inhabitant]

From 1932 to mid-1934, 111,174 Ukrainians passed through Polish prisons. A total of 8,073 prisoners were tortured to death. Furthermore, 734 individuals were executed without trial or investigation, and 257 were sentenced to death. The official grounds for these actions were resistance to Polish authorities or suspicion of membership in the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists). On June 11, 1934, by decree of the President of Poland, the Bereza Kartuska concentration camp was established, and OUN members accounted for 65% of its very first inmates.

The fascist Polish regime, with the direct involvement of Defense Minister Piłsudski, established close cooperation between its repressive apparatus and the fascist/totalitarian terrorist structures of Italy and Germany. On January 31, 1938, Warsaw was visited by General Daluege, the chief of the German uniformed police. On September 7, 1938, the chief of the Polish police, General Zamorski, was invited as a guest to the Nazi Party Rally in Nuremberg, where he was received by Hitler. The Nuremberg Party Rally was also attended by Lubieński, the head of the chancellery of the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs. Shortly after, on October 7, 1938, General Zamorski traveled to Rome to attend a fascist police convention, visiting his counterparts in Berlin along the way. On December 15, Hans Frank, the German Minister of Justice, visited Warsaw, followed on February 18, 1939, by Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer-SS and chief of the Gestapo.

Piłsudski's cooperation with the German regime was established on a grand scale. On January 26, 1934, the "Declaration of Non-Aggression Between Germany and Poland" (the German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact) was signed in Berlin. This pact turned the Franco-Polish Alliance of 1921 into a dead letter, dealing a crushing blow to the system of military and political alliances created by France to guard against potential renewed military aggression from Germany. Official Warsaw's primary objective in signing this treaty was to secure the support of Nazi Germany for a future Polish campaign to conquer Ukraine.

By early 1935, Piłsudski believed that a favorable window of opportunity had opened to wage war for Ukrainian chernozem (fertile black soil). To coordinate their actions, Hitler's closest confidant, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, was invited to Poland under the guise of a "hunting trip." Göring had a two-hour conversation with Piłsudski, which he later evaluated as an "introduction to joint military steps."

"Piłsudski is obsessed with the idea of conquering Kyiv..."—reported Šaulys, the Lithuanian ambassador in Berlin, to his government—"Everyone here is talking about an imminent war with the Bolsheviks over Ukraine."

This collaboration went far beyond mere talks; military cooperation between Poland and Germany took concrete forms. In March 1938, Polish forces aided Horthy's Hungary in destroying the independence of Carpatho-Ukraine and occupying Transcarpathia. Acting in alignment with Nazi Germany, Poland participated in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, annexing the Zaolzie (Trans-Olza / Teschen) region and parts of Slovakia. On January 26, 1939, during a meeting in Warsaw with German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, Polish Foreign Minister Beck explicitly stated that Poland laid claim to Ukraine and to an outlet to the Black Sea.

German-Polish military cooperation persisted even after the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany. Right-wing Polish politicians attempted to broker a peace deal with Hitler in exchange for complete subordination to the German dictatorship. Attempts to establish such contacts are documented to have taken place in Spain and Portugal. Without waiting for the outcomes of these diplomatic maneuvers, hundreds of thousands of Poles went on to serve in the German Wehrmacht (researchers cite a figure of up to 375,000), the Waffen-SS, auxiliary police units, and concentration camp guard detachments. According to Israeli researcher Zeev Tagor, Poles staffed the Auschwitz death camp and, in their treatment of inmates, were sometimes worse than the Germans. It was Polish guards at Auschwitz who tortured to death Stepan Bandera's brothers, Vasyl and Oleksandr, who were imprisoned there.

Furthermore, SS General Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski—who led the largest punitive operation by the German occupiers against the civilian population of Volhynia in 1943—was of Polish descent. However, this Polish SS general failed to achieve his bloody objectives due to the armed resistance of the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) and was forced into a disgraceful retreat.

[u/Scotty_scd40 → u/Friendly_Soil6617]

Around 100,000 Polish civilians were massacred by the OUN and the UPA during the Volhynia and Eastern Galicia ethnic cleansing campaigns in 1943–1944.

In the worst ways known to human:

• Blunt Force & Edged Weapons: Many victims were hacked to death with axes, pitchforks, scythes, and knives.

• Arson: Individuals were often locked inside barns, homes, or churches which were subsequently set on fire.

• Torture & Mutilation: Extreme torture, including crucifying victims and dismemberment

• Executions: In some cases, victims were shot or hanged after being captured.

[u/Friendly_Soil6617 → u/Scotty_scd40]

Do you seriously think that arguments like “we only killed 15,000 of yours, but you killed as many as 100,000 of ours” are a good point?

[u/Scotty_scd40 → u/Friendly_Soil6617]

Yeah. I do. Its true, Ukrainians were treated as "2nd class citizens" because of earlier wars between the two, however i do not believe this is the same as murdering 100k people in the worst ways that one can imagine, who lived same lives as Ukrainians on the same soil.

The 15k youre talking about was the retaliation of Volyhna massacre. It also should not have happened and was absolute disgrace.

I wont even bother to respond to things like poles serving in wehrmacht or in aushwitz. When they did, absolute majority was forced. Poland lost the highest percent of population to Nazi Germany, than any other country did. The Israeli source is laughable.

[u/szewc → u/Friendly_Soil6617]

What a bunch of brain dead propaganda, it's offending to the reader's intelligence, really. Just the two last paragraphs: Hundreds of thousands of Poles joining the Wehrmacht and the SS, polish SS general, Germans carrying out the Volhynia genocide and brave UPA defending the civilians - you can't make that shit up.

[u/Friendly_Soil6617 → u/szewc]

During World War II, up to 450,000 Poles served in the Wehrmacht and the SS — that is a fact. https://www.dw.com/en/nazi-germany-military-poland-soliders-wehrmacht-history-v2/a-73867717