This article is about the 1947 deportation of Ukrainians by the Polish government.
Vistula Operation redirects here. For other possible meanings, see Vistula Offensive.
Operation Wisła (Polish: Akcja Wisła) was the codename for the 1947 deportation of southeastern post-war Poland's Ukrainian, Boyko and Lemko populations, carried out by the Polish Communist authorities[1] [2] About 200,000 people, mostly of Ukrainian ethnicity, residing in southeastern Poland were forcibly resettled to the new territories in the north and west of the country.[3] The operation was named after the Vistula River, Wisła in Polish.
After the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the operation was condemned by Polish and Ukrainian politicians and historians. It has been described as an ethnic cleansing by Polish[4] and Western sources[5] [6] as well as by Ukrainians.
The stated goal of the operation was to suppress the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which had been terrorizing and murdering Armia Ludowa units and ethnic Polish civilians in those southeastern territories since 1944.[2] The direct pretext for Operation Wisła was the March 28, 1947, assassination of the Polish communist General Karol Świerczewski in an ambush which had allegedly been set up by the UPA's Chrin and Stach sotnias.[7] About 12 hours after the incident, the Polish communist authorities took the official decision to deport all the Ukrainians and Lemkos from the southeastern territories of the People's Republic of Poland (1944-1990). It is known, however, whether Operation Wisła had in fact been planned many months in advance.
According to the order of the Ministry of Recovered Territories "the main goal of the relocation of 'W' settlers is their assimilation into a new Polish environment, all efforts should be exerted to that end. Do not apply the term 'Ukrainians' to the settlers. In cases when the intelligentsia element reaches the recovered territories, they should be settled separately and away from the communities of the 'W' settlers."[8]
The operation was carried out by Operational Group Wisła consisting of about 20,000 personnel commanded by General Stefan Mossor. This personnel included soldiers of the Ludowe Wojsko Polskie and the Korpus Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego, as well as functionaries of Milicja Obywatelska and Urząd Bezpieczeństwa.[7] The operation commenced at 4 a.m., April 28, 1947. The expellees comprised about 140,000 to 150,000 Ukrainians and Lemkos still remaining after the 1944-1946 forcible repatriation of Ukrainians from Poland to the Soviet Union (Ukrainian SSR and Siberia), and the inhabitants of Polesie, Roztocze, Pogórze Przemyskie, Bieszczady, Beskid Niski, Beskid Sądecki, and Ruś Szlachtowska.
Members of the intelligentsia, including clergy (both Greek Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox), were sent from collection points to the concentration camp in Jaworzno called the Central Labour Camp, and was a branch of the formerly German camp Auschwitz. At the latter camp, almost 4,000 persons were held, including 800 women and dozens of children. The captives, of whom 200 died in the camp, were subject to harsh interrogations and beatings despite the fact that no active members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists were sent to the camp. For the latter, show trials by the extraordinary Operation Group Wisła Tribunals or regular military tribunals were held, and over 500 were sentenced to death and executed.
The remaining expellees were resettled to the Northern (Warmia and Masuria) and Western Territories acquired by Poland following the Potsdam Agreement. The last resettlements took place as late as 1952, in Polesie. Operation Wisła closed officially with a ceremonial bestowing of decorations on what were deemed the most deserving Polish soldiers, held on the Polish-Czechoslovak border.
A consequence of Operation Wisła was the almost total depopulation of Pogórze Przemyskie, Bieszczady and Beskid Niski. The relocation of the population put the UPA forces in Poland in a difficult position: deprived of human and other resources, the outnumbered Ukrainian partisans were unable to uphold their own armed resistance and guerilla against the communist Polish forces. Nevertheless the UPA continued its fight for several more years. After the last relocations, the UPA's activities on Polish territory died out, while some Ukrainian insurgents fled to Western Europe, notably to West Germany, and the United States.
Operation "Wisła" ended on July 31, 1947.
The resettling occurred in three stages.[9] The first stage occurred at the end of World War II. Poland and the Soviet Ukraine conducted population exchanges - Poles that resided east of the established Poland-Soviet border were deported to Poland (c.a. 2,100,000 persons) and Ukrainians that resided west of the established Poland-Soviet Union border were deported to Soviet Ukraine. Population transfer to Soviet Ukraine occurred from September 1944 to April 1946 (ca. 450,000 persons). Some Ukrainians and Lemkos (ca. 200,000 persons) left southeast Poland more or less voluntarily between 1944 and 1945. Bilateral agreements were signed between Poland and the Soviet Union on September 9 1944 and August 16 1945. As a result of these treaties, some 400,000 Lemkos and Ukrainians were deported to the Ukraine, and some 300,000 managed to stay in their native regions, within the borders of Poland (they lived in such Rusyn former territories as Podlasie).
The second event occurred in 1947 under Operation Wisła . The Rusyn and Ukrainian population that still existed in southeastern Poland were forcibly resettled to western and northern Poland. The resettlement to West-Poland occurred from April 28 to July 31 1947, and involved 130,000 - 140,000 persons who were internally relocated in Poland.
A third deportation of Ukrainians and Poles occurred in 1951. It occurred when Poland and the Soviet Union adjusted the border in the upper San River area and in the Belz area. Poland was given land east of the San River south of Przemyśl and Soviet Ukraine was given land that was west of and including Bełz that was in Poland. Populations were exchanged.
Some five thousand Lemko families returned to their home regions in Eastern Poland in 1957 and 1958.[10]
While the 2002/2003 Polish census shows only 5,800 Lemkos (self-identification), there are estimates that up to 100,000 Lemkos total live in Poland today, and up to 10,000 of them in Lemkivshchyna. The larger groups of Lemkos live in villages: Łosie, Krynica, Nowica, Zdynia, Gładyszów, Hańczowa, Zyndranowa, Uście Gorlickie, Bartne, Bielanka, and in eastern part of Lemkivshchyna – Mokre, Szczawne, Kulaszne, Rzepedź, Turzańsk, Komańcza. Also in towns: Sanok, Nowy Sącz, and Gorlice.
Memories of Operation Wisła remain another scar in the complex, often troubled 20th-century relations between the Ukrainian and Polish peoples, alongside the massacres of Poles in Volhynia by the UPA during the WWII in the wake of the interwar oppression of the Ukrainians in the Polish controlled territories that followed the Polish-Ukrainian War in Galicia in 1918-1919 and the subsequent Peace of Riga.
On August 3, 1990, the Polish Senate adopted a resolution condemning the postwar Polish government's Operation Vistula. In response, the Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) adopted the statement of understanding of the Polish Senate resolution as a serious step towards the correction of the injustices towards the Ukrainians in Poland. In the same resolution the Rada condemned the criminal acts of the Stalinist regime towards the Polish people.
On April 18, 2002 in Krasiczyn, Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski expressed regret over Operation Wisła. The President described the operation as the symbol of harm against Ukrainians committed by the communist authorities. "Speaking on behalf of the Republic of Poland I want to express regret to all those wronged by the operation" - Kwaśniewski wrote in a letter to the National Remembrance Institute (IPN) and participants in the conference on the 1947 Operation Wisła. "It was believed for years that the Vistula operation was the revenge for slaughter of Poles by the UPA forces in the east in the years 1943-1944. Such attitude is wrong and cannot be accepted. The Vistula operation should be condemned."[11]
In 2007 the presidents of Poland (Lech Kaczyński) and Ukraine (Viktor Yushchenko) condemned the operation as a violation of human rights.[12] President Yushchenko also noted that the operation was executed and was the responsibility of a "totalitarian communist regimes".[13]