Vistula operation

The Operation the Vistula (in Polish: Akcja Wisła ) was the code name given to the deportation into 1947 of Ukrainian S, Boykos and Lemkos which lived in the South-east of the Poland. It was carried out by the Polish Army. More than 140.000 people, belonging especially to the Ukrainian ethnos group, and who resided in these territories, of force, were often reinstalled in the “Territories Recovered” in the North and the West of the country. The operation took its name of the the Vistula, the large river of Poland.

Background

The official goal of the operation was to put an end to the exactions Ukrainian insurrectionary Armée which, claimed one, terrorized the Poles of these territories since 1944.

The direct pretext was the assassination, on March 28th, 1947, of the Polish general Karol Świerczewski. It was killed in a ambush with Jabłonki, close to Baligród in the Mountains of the Beskides, whereas it moved towards a military station in Cisna. One allotted the ambush to Chrin of the AIU and the stonias of Stach. However nothing proven forever, and certain historians supposes that the assassination had been organized by Soviet NKVD.

A dozen hours hardly after the incident, the Polish communist authorities made the official decision to off-set all the Ukrainians and Lemkos living in Poland of South-east. It is known, however, that the Vistula Operation had been planned many month in advance with an aim of dispersing the Ukrainian minority which remained in Poland.

The Ministry for the recovered Territories gave this order: “The first goal of reinstalment of the colonists “W”, it is their assimilation in a new Polish environment; all the efforts should be made to arrive there. Do not use the term “Ukrainian” to appoint the colonists. Whenever elements of intelligentsia would arrive in the recovered territories, they would have by all the being means installed in a separate way and with good distance from the communities of colonists “W””.

The operation was carried out by the Operational team Wisła made up of approximately 20.000 men under the command of the general Stefan Mossor and who was composed soldiers of the Polish Army and KBW (Security body interior), as well as of civils servant of Milicja Obywatelska and UB. The operation started at 4 o'clock in the morning on April 28th, 1947. Exiled were 140.000-150 000, they was the Ukrainians and Lemkos who still remained after expulsions towards the USSR of 1944-1946 and which lived in Polésie, like in the territories of Roztocze, Pogórze Przemyskie, Bieszczady, Beskid Niski, Beskid Sądecki and Ruś Szlachtowska.

One sent the members of intelligentsia, including the clergy (as well uniate as orthodoxe), since gathering points to the concentration camp of Jaworzno called the Camp of Central Work. In this last camp, almost 4.000 people were held, including 800 women and a few dozen children. The prisoners, of which 200 died in the camp, were subjected to brutal interrogations and accepted blows whereas none the active members of Ukrainian nationalist resistance (the Organization of the Ukrainian Nationalists) or Ukrainian insurrectionary Army was in the camp For the latter one made parodies of lawsuit in front of the courts especially created for the Vistula Operation or in front of the regular military tribunals; more than 500 marked were condemned to died and were carried out.

The others were reinstalled in Warmie and Mazurie in North, or the Territories Recovered in the West. The last reinstalments still took place in 1952, in Polésie. The Vistula Operation ended officially in a great ceremony at the polono-Czechoslovakian border, with handing-over of decorations to the Polish soldiers whom one considered deserving more.

A consequence of the Vistula Operation was the almost total depopulation of the areas of Pogórze Przemyskie, Bieszczady and Beskid Niski. The displacement of the population put the AIU in a difficult position: deprived of human and different resources, the lower Ukrainian partisans number were unable to hold against the Polish communist army. The AIU did not continue of it less its fight during several years still. After the last reinstalments, the activities of the AIU on the Polish territory ended, while some insurgent Ukrainians fled in Western Europe.

The Vistula operation finished on July 31st, 1947.

Repatriations and reinstalments after the Second world war in the new Polish territories of the West and North

Displacements of population took place in three stages.

The first date completion of the Second world war when Poland and the Soviet Ukraine carried out demographic exchanges - the Poles who resided at the east of the new border polono-Soviet were expelled in Poland (approximately 2.100.000 people) while the Ukrainians who resided at the west of this border were expelled in Soviet Ukraine. This last evacuation took place of September 1944 in April 1944 (approximately 450.000 people). Part of the Ukrainians-Lemkos (approximately 200.000 people) voluntarily left Poland of south-east (between 1944 and 1945). Bilateral agreements were signed in this direction between Poland and the USSR on September 9th, 1944 and on August 16th, 1945, after which approximately 400.000 Ukrainians were off-set in Ukraine while approximately 300.000 succeeded in remaining in their native areas, inside the borders of Poland. They lived in the old territories rusyns like the areas of Lemkowszczyzna and Chełmskie and in Podlasie.

The second phase was carried out in 1947 at the time of the Vistula Operation in Poland. The Ukrainian population which lived since always in Poland of South-east was reinstalled of force in Poland of the West and North. The reinstalment in Poland of the West took place from April 28th, 1947 to July 31st, 1947. 130.000 to 140.000 people lived in districts like Rzeszowskie, Lubelskie and Małopolskie. This time nobody was sent in Ukraine.

A third deportation of Ukrainians and Pole occurred in 1951, when Poland and the Soviet Union regulated their problem of border in the higher valley of San and the area of Belz. In the south of Poland Przemyśl accepted a territory in the east of San and the Soviet Ukraine accepted Belz, which was in Poland, with a territory in the west of this city. The populations were exchanged.

The situation of Lemkos in Poland after 1956

In 1957-1958, approximately five thousand families of Lemkos could return in their areas of origin to Eastern Poland.

Whereas the Polish census of 2002/2003 indicates only 5.800 Lemkos (each one was identified itself), there would be according to estimates up to 100.000 Lemkos on the whole living today in Poland and up to 10.000 of them in Łemkowszczyzna. The greatest groups of Lemkos live villages: Łosy, Krynica, Nowica, Zdynia, Gładyszów, Hańczowa, Zyndranowa, Uście Gorlickie, Bartne, Bielanka, and in the oriental party of Łemkowszczyzna: Mokre, Szczawne, Kulaszne, Rzepedź, Turzańsk, Komańcza. Also in cities: Sanok, Nowy Sącz and Gorlice.

The memories left by the Vistula Operation remain another scar in the tormented relations of the Ukrainians and the Poles at the 20th century, with the Pole massacre in Volhynie by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army during the Second world war to counteract the oppression of the Ukrainians between the two wars by the Poles who controlled Galicie following the polono-Ukrainian war of 1918-1919 and of the Peace of Riga which had followed it.

August 3rd, 1990, the Polish Senate adopted a resolution condemning the Vistula Operation carried out by the Polish government of post-war period. In answer, the Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Split) adopted a declaration in which it looked this resolution like an important step towards the correction of the injustices made towards the Ukrainians of Poland. Consequently resolution Split it condemned the criminal actions of the mode of Stalin against the Polish people.

April 18th, 2002 with Krasiczyn, the President of Poland, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, expressed his regrets about the Vistula Operation. The President described it like the symbol of the wrongs caused to the Ukrainians by the communist authorities. “While speaking in the name of the Republic of Poland I want to express my regrets with all those with which this operation made wrong”. In a letter at the Institute of Remembering national and the participants in the conference on the Vistula Operation 1947, Wisła Kwaśniewski wrote: “During years one believed that the Vistula Operation was revenge for the Pole massacre by the AIU in the East, during the years 1943-1944. Such an attitude is bad and cannot be accepted. The Vistula operation should be condemned. ”

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