Anatomy of a Genocide

by Omer Bartov

  Following the example of the gymnasium faculty, all other Polish teachers in Buczacz declined to declare their loyalty to the Ukrainian state and were promptly dismissed and replaced by Ukrainians and Jews. In Siewiński’s view, this made education a farce since “nothing sensible was taught in the schools, everything was politicized, and therefore there were often fights between the students.” He was appalled to find that several Jewish teachers had remained on the staff, noting sarcastically that once the Jews signed the Ukrainian loyalty declaration, “they all promptly forgot how to speak Polish.” But this was only the beginning. On December 26, barely two months into their rule, the Ukrainian authorities arrested sixty-seven members of the local Polish elite, including Siewiński and two of his sons back from military service in the defunct Austrian Army, and interned them in a monastery in nearby Jazłowiec for several weeks. Siewiński saw this as part of a larger pattern of lawlessness and criminality dressed up as law and order. The war, he observed, “had taught people to describe crimes and other rights violations with pretentious Latin terms” so that “simple robbery was called requisition,” while “the expulsion of entire families from their homes, leading them to die of hunger and poverty,” was called “evacuation,” and “the arrest and incarceration of completely innocent people” was labeled “internment.”43

  But despite the growing violence between Poles and Ukrainians, Siewiński and many of his fellow Polish nationalists reserved greater animosity and disdain for the Jews. Even at the moment of their arrest, what bound this local Polish elite together was the surprising presence of a Jewish attorney in their midst, “who was as much use to us as a hound in church.” His “desperate expression and terrified eyes,” recalled Siewiński, “made us burst out with laughter,” while his eagerness to sign the loyalty declaration so as to be released simply proved once more that “the Jews were real chameleons” who “would have hoisted the Chinese flag” for all they cared, “since their coat of arms is only gold.” To Siewiński’s mind, “the only salvation” for the Jews was “to convert to the Catholic faith, and thereby to become real sons of the soil on which they live.” But he did not think that likely.

  The Poles found greater affinity even with the Ukrainian guards who led them to the internment camp through the forest; once the arrested Poles began singing Polish and Ruthenian Christmas carols, “the severe faces of the soldiers lightened up”: “They sang along with us and also made fun of Bochurkiv and Luchkiv and all the other idiots who had given orders to intern us.” It would appear that at that point, just as it was often inconceivable that Jews could ever become part of either national group in Galicia, it was also still difficult to draw clear distinctions between Poles and Ukrainians. Yet both alleged essential differences and natural affinities could be causes of much violence. And, of course, whereas Poles and Ukrainians were claiming attachment to and competing over ownership of the same land, Jews were never seen as the “real sons of the soil on which they live.”44

  By late April 1919 the ZUNR was being threatened by the Poles from the west and the Bolsheviks from the east. In the ensuing chaos, the Ukrainian commandant in Buczacz ordered another round of requisitions from civilians, primarily from Jewish homes. People were even stopped on the street in broad daylight. Siewiński wrote, “Shoes were removed from the feet of pedestrians, clothes stolen, hats taken off the heads of people, and anyone who uttered but one word of protest would come into contact with a rifle butt.” Items confiscated from Jews soon showed up among the local peasants. Young women coming into town from nearby villages were “all dressed up like dolls in lacquered shoes, with colorful kerchiefs on their heads and flashy skirts,” all “presents from their admirers.” Many other “impoverished citizens came into much property. Before the war they did not have enough sheets to cover their beds, now they can pile them up to the ceiling.” Former paupers, snickered Siewiński, now “stroll down the avenues like respectable gentlemen,” while village boys and girls were selling wares on the street for close to nothing: “No one asks where these things come from. This is war loot.” And since Ukrainian troops were given leave to celebrate Easter with their families in the villages, and brought along their weapons, the incidence of armed robbery and murder also rose. “Even in Buczacz this kind of shooting went on, especially of Jews,” wrote Siewiński, depicting in graphic detail the murder of two Jewish men on the street by a Ukrainian official and a soldier, carried out with total impunity. “That’s how things were at that time, all thefts and murders went unpunished.”45

  As the front disintegrated and the Poles appeared poised to return, some Ukrainian soldiers rediscovered their Polish ancestors and relatives. The gendarmes of Buczacz, depicted by Siewiński as “a bunch of scatterbrains” and “good-for-nothing losers,” who had previously “benefited from these times” by looting and evading frontline service, now melted back into the population. The brutalities went on. In early May a column of deportees was led through the city to the train station, “all in very bad shape, hungry, making a pitiful impression,” some “close to death,” many of them “Jews with anxious faces.” But the Ukrainian Galician Army was falling apart: on May 23 Polish forces were reported in Stanisławów, forty miles southwest of Buczacz, and a column of two hundred carts carrying women and loot rolled through Buczacz on the way to Czortków, followed by trains filled with troops. As artillery fire could again be heard in the city, the looting and random violence also intensified. With enemies on both sides, it was not clear where the local Ukrainian leadership might flee. On May 30, 1919, seven months after the Ukrainian takeover, a Polish airplane flew low over the city, signaling the approaching end of Ukrainian rule.

  By now public order was no longer maintained, and looting, robbery, and murder by peasants and soldiers became ever more prevalent throughout the region. In Buczacz itself, two Ukrainian workers were erroneously executed as “Poles and traitors,” while Ukrainian troops arrested all young Polish men attending Sunday mass on June 1, although they were later released. The last Ukrainian Army patrol passed through the city a couple of days later; two stray soldiers randomly threw a grenade at a Jewish woman, severely wounding her, and robbed a passing Jew of his shoes; they were both shot dead by Luchkiv in a desperate attempt to restore his reputation just before the Poles arrived.46

  On June 4, 1919, after fighting their way through much of Western Ukraine, Polish troops captured Buczacz. The small military contingent that entered the city assembled in the marketplace, and Polish and Ruthenian women served the troops sausage, ham, roast beef, coffee, and tea. Luchkiv was promptly put under house arrest. The Jews, as Siewiński acerbically commented, quickly transformed the city, covering their businesses with signs in the Polish national colors of white and red, so that within minutes “the city had a Polish coat of paint and 5,000 new Poles. . . . A miracle had taken place! In an instant all the Jews forgot the Ruthenian language and began speaking only Polish.” Yet this joy, whether genuine or pragmatic, was premature; four days later a Ukrainian counterattack brought Buczacz under artillery fire, and Siewiński fled to Lwów, fearful of what he called “the army of the Haidamaks” (the Cossack paramilitary rebels and brigands of the eighteenth century), which he depicted as “largely composed of bandits who acted arbitrarily and were responsible to no one, murdering with impunity not only Poles, but also Ruthenians.”

  The Ukrainians returned to Buczacz on June 12 and went on to push the Poles out of much of the territory they had occupied. Yet the second Ukrainian occupation lasted only three weeks, even though it was accompanied once again by a wave of violence, in which civilians and captured Polish soldiers were robbed, beaten, raped, and murdered. At the end of the month the Poles struck back, seizing Buczacz again on July 4, and finally driving the Ukrainian Galician Army across the Zbrucz River and out of Eastern Galicia altogether over the following two weeks. The Poles, for their part, emphasized fraternity with local Ruthenians in an effort to undermine the very notion of sol
idarity with Ukrainians across the border. As Siewiński saw it, the “uprising ended as quickly as it had broken out, and the population went back to work, especially the villagers, who had never dreamed of a West Ukraine.” It had all been merely the product of cunning Austrian machinations intended to “sow discord between the Ruthenian nation, which comes from our blood, and the Poles,” but “now love and reconciliation” would surely “prevail in the nation.” In fact, however, the fighting had cost the lives of ten thousand Polish and fifteen thousand Ukrainian troops, not counting the mass violence against civilians and the substantial destruction and plunder of property, as well as several brutal pogroms by the Polish military against Jewish communities.47

  Siewiński’s own contribution to normalization was to reopen his school. Since the original “building overlooking the Strypa was totally destroyed,” he went back to the alternative school “in the so-called barracks,” which had also housed a military hospital, and could serve the purpose after some minor repairs. The bigger issue was the impact of the war on the children, many of whom had had little or no education for several years and had learned to “focus only on survival,” having “watched numerous armies marching in and out of the city” and been exposed to “arbitrary plundering and unpunished robberies.” Clearly, stressed Siewiński, “such youth could not be moral”; in fact the school became a site of “daily thefts.” One student “even managed to remove a glass panel from the school window and bring it home, where the culprit was actually praised by his parents.” Even after “the locksmith installed locks on the school’s doors” and gave the keys only to the teachers, “within a quarter of an hour the keys were stolen.” It was “under such conditions,” concluded Siewiński, “that we taught school until mid-June 1920.”48

  During those early months quite a few complaints were lodged against fellow Poles who had not been punished for collaborating with the previous Ukrainian regime. But the need to establish stable rule in the city and the province as a whole made it imperative to avoid retribution against those who were willing and able to serve the Polish state, certainly if they happened to be ethnic Poles. The maintenance of law and order was handed over to Major Józef Wolgner, a local landowner, who was appointed sector commander of the Buczacz district. This was hardly an impartial administration. As early as August 10, Wolgner chaired a patriotic rally in Buczacz, whose purpose was “to emphasize the indissolubility of Eastern Galicia with Poland.” He also dealt aggressively with anything he perceived as anti-Polish agitation. “For some time now,” he reported to Lwów on August 30, “secret and elusive groups of local Ukrainians and Jews have been observed, and rumors have spread regarding plans for an armed movement” aiming at “the seizure of this part of the country.” Stating that “in the district and especially in Buczacz the Ukrainians announce openly and with impunity that armed Ukrainian troops will soon come to occupy Buczacz,” Wolgner was adamant that in the face of this “vast Ukrainian-Jewish agitation” he needed substantial reinforcements in manpower and matériel. “It would be a complete disaster,” he warned, “if the town of Buczacz were conquered by the Ukrainians, because they would massacre the Polish population.”49

  Such concerns only intensified with the approach of the defunct ZUNR’s first anniversary. Consequently, when the Buczacz district command finally did receive reinforcements, it energetically set about removing any potential activists. By late October Wolgner could report that “public safety” had “greatly improved” after “about 400 former Ukrainian soldiers” were “interned and transferred to the concentration station for prisoners of war in Lwów.” The Poles were now doing to Ukrainians precisely what the Ukrainians had done to them only a few months earlier. Much relieved, on November 1, the day of the anniversary, Wolgner confidently announced, “There is peace in the district and no visible signs of a planned armed revolt.” Still, he warned, “knowing the relations in the district, we should note that pacification, which means first of all disarmament, may also result in several problems, since not a single peasant keeps weapons hidden at home but rather hides them somewhere in the woods, etc., so it is virtually impossible to find them.”50 Harassing the Ukrainian population, he observed, could increase its resentment and drive it underground, which is, in fact, precisely what eventually happened.

  In mid-August 1920, just over a year after Buczacz’s takeover by the Poles, the war between Poland and Soviet Russia brought the city briefly under Bolshevik rule. But only a few weeks later the Polish counteroffensive, supported in Galicia by anti-Bolshevik Ukrainian forces, led to the city’s final liberation. In October 1920 a Polish-Soviet truce was signed, leading to a peace agreement in 1921, which divided the entire territory between the two states. With this all hopes for Ukrainian independence were dashed, leaving a bitter legacy that would fester for the next two decades, before erupting into an even greater wave of violence in World War II. Especially in the former Pale of Settlement the fighting had been accompanied by mass violence against Jewish populations, costing the lives of an estimated sixty thousand Jews, with many more wounded and mutilated.51

  Siewiński did not experience Bolshevik rule. As the Red Army approached, he wrote, “we received orders that the teachers and civil servants must head west, and so I had to flee for the third time.” Boarding the train, he could already hear artillery fire from the east. But he returned in October, remaining in the city throughout the interwar period. In the early postwar years and before his retirement, Siewiński did his best once more “to restore the school building, so that the youth would not suffer.” Even more important, he hoped to repair the psychological damage inflicted on youngsters who had little memory of peace and order. “The youth,” he observed, “was badly brought up, which was hardly surprising, because for seven years all they had seen was plunder, murder, slaughter and other immoral events.” As he saw it, “our task was to heal the youth as quickly as possible.” Yet the legacy of those war years remained etched in people’s attitudes and mentalities for decades thereafter.52

  As it was struggling to establish its rule over the multiethnic eastern territories, Poland came under increasing international scrutiny for acts of violence against its national and religious minorities. In June 1919, under pressure from the Western powers, Poland signed a minorities treaty intended to protect the rights of the approximately 40 percent of its citizens who were not ethnic Poles. This attempt to address the dilemma of a nation-state created in the wake of ethnic conflict, almost half of whose citizens were perceived as not belonging to the majority nation, ended up in failure. In certain ways the treaty may have even exacerbated matters, since many ethnic Poles perceived it as imposing limits on their new state’s sovereignty through a combination of pressure from these minorities, especially the Jews, and Great Power politics, also allegedly orchestrated by international Jewish influence.53

  The struggle between Poles and Ukrainians over Eastern Galicia highlighted the extent to which external and internal conflicts became inextricably linked in this era. This was well understood by foreign observers, even as both sides tried to put the best face on their own aspirations and actions and to paint the other side as criminally murderous in an effort to gain international recognition for their irreconcilable territorial and political claims. In the process the other major ethnic group in the region, the Jews, was cast in the role of a minority whose status could never be truly acceptable to either of the two major warring parties. Jews could be ignored, tolerated, or expelled, but by the nature of the nationalism that had evolved in this region, they could neither be recognized as a separate indigenous national group nor assimilated as ethnically kindred—the two options open to Polish Ukrainians. And as a supposedly protected and allegedly privileged minority group the Jews were seen as undermining the very core of Polish nationalism.54

  Conditions in Eastern Galicia were of particular international concern in the immediate aftermath of World War I both because of the tense interethnic situation ther
e and thanks to the region’s position on the border of Soviet Russia. As early as July 1919, the secretary and the assistant military attaché at the American legation in Warsaw set out to visit the territory, which had just been taken over by the Polish Army. They quickly found that the local Polish administration was using the same methods to establish its rule and Polonize the province that the ZUNR had employed, rather less efficiently, before its demise. The Greek Catholic metropolitan of Lwów, Andrey Sheptytsky, told them that the Polish authorities had arrested two hundred Ukrainian priests, four of whom were “shot without trial by the troops.” In Stanisławów the military hospital was “replacing the Ukrainian nurses and doctors with Polish nurses and doctors” and Ukrainian patients were being moved “to internment camps.” In Buczacz the two Americans were told that 3,220 Ukrainian soldiers had been sent from the district “to places of internment,” while in Tarnopol over a thousand mostly Ukrainian soldiers in a military hospital were lacking supplies and a typhus epidemic was decimating the city’s largely Jewish population. The newly installed Polish governor of Galicia, Kazimierz Galecki, expressed few regrets about the “departure of a considerable number of Ruthenian inhabitants with the Ruthenian army.”55

  The British were also trying to better understand conditions in the region. In April 1920 Britain’s vice consul in Lwów, Lieutenant-Colonel Wilfred James Whitehead, reported on a four-day tour he had recently undertaken in Eastern Galicia. The province’s “certainly bad” economic situation, he concluded, was greatly exacerbated by the Jews, who sold on the black market surpluses of the aid supplies they received “from their own sources abroad” for exorbitant prices. Indeed much of the corruption and incompetence Whitehead detected everywhere could be traced back to the Jews, he believed, as well as to the inefficiency and lethargy of the local Polish administrators and to the fatalism of the “Ruthenian peasant.” Additionally, the acute “scarcity of food and clothing” and the dearth of trained physicians also led to epidemics. As for “whether the animosity of the Ruthenian Population against the Poles is as bitter as is alleged,” Whitehead insisted that the “Ruthenian peasant” was actually “a lazy fellow” who was “content with his lot.” Having “lived about 700 years in harmony with the Poles,” the peasant “desires to ‘carry on’ as before.” “Of War he has had more than enough,” whereas “his grievances” were largely material and could be easily addressed. It was rather with the “educated class of Ruthenians, such as School Teachers, Officials, and Clergy that one meets with discontent, and these form a very small minority indeed of the whole Ruthenian Population, but as usual they make the most noise.”56