The Kholm region and Southern Podlachia in 1938: “If any man defile the temple of God...”
The 20th-century Polish-Ukrainian history is full of tragic pages which both sides should reconsider and honor. Among the “difficult questions,” now the object of heated debates in Poland and Ukraine, are, above all, Polish-Ukainian conflicts in Volhynia (1943) and Operation Vistula. This year marks the 70th anniversary of the tragic events in 1938, when the Kholm region and Southern Podlachia saw a carefully-planned action to ruin Orthodox temples. It is all the more worthwhile to recall this because those events are little known to the general Ukrainian public.
The ruination of Orthodox churches in the Kholm region and Southern Podlachia were part of the Polonizaton campaign which in fact boiled down to radical and aggressive assimilation of the Ukrainian population. It was carried out in two directions: firstly, it was aimed at converting people to Catholicism - “conversion from non-Latin faiths and rites to Roman Catholic ones;” secondly, Orthodoxy was being Polonized by the introduction of Polish as liturgical and everyday language of the Orthodox Church in Poland. The “coordinate action in the former Kholm region” was masterminded by General Brunon Olbrycht who formulated the main principles of the Polonization campaign broadly based on the idea that all the Kholm region’s Orthodox believers were Russified Poles. The population of the Kholm region and Suthern Podliachia was in fact divided into three categories: 1) those who were “indifferent to the Orthodox Church” and could be easily persuaded to become Catholics; 2) those who clung to Orthodoxy but did not identify themselves as Ukrainians; and 3) “nationally-conscious Ukrainians.” Special measures were worked out for each of these groups: reversion to Catholicism for the first one, introduction of the Polish language in religious service for the second one, and isolation for third one (as the main instructions about Polonization of the Kholm region noted, “we should hinder and deride the influence of this group of Ukrainians in all the possible ways and reverse the centrifugal trends that are penetrating from Eastern Little Poland and Volhynia”).
One of the official reasons why the then Polish government was going to ruin Orthodox shrines was that in many areas, where there were no Orthodox believers, there remained unnecessary churches built during the Russian occupation of Poland - they were to be destroyed so they did not remind the people of the period of enslavement. Yet the historian who research into those tragic events claim that the action was aimed, first of all, against the Ukrainian populace.
The Second Polish Republic began to pursue a much tougher policy towards the Ukrainian populace in the mid-1930s. Historians have highlighted a certain evolution of the Polish state in the inter-war period. “The interests of state were unequivocally identified with those of the Polish ethnos,” Grzegorz Kuprianowicz says. “The national policy showed a marked transition from state-centered to ethnos-centered assimilation. The state was supposed to monitor the course of ethnic processes and promote a greater potential of the Polish ethnos. There was a widespread idea that that religious unity was the best way to ensure societal unity.” Analyzing the concepts of the nationalities policy pursued by inter-war Polish governments, the Polish historian Andrzej Chojnowski recalls the statements made at a Lublin voivodeship conference in 1935. There were, for instance, statements that the Polish state should get rid of “harmful” tolerance, eliminate the problem of the Ukrainian minority or at least reduce it to a trivial matter. It was suggested that the number of Orthodox parishes be limited, Ukrainians be removed from such jobs as foresters, teachers or public employees, and kept from entering military and paramilitary organizations.
In general, the Polish public opinion of the time formed a deep-rooted stereotype of the Ukrainian as a cutthroat and a “haidamaka.” So, to support Polonization and the ruination of churches, they used the pro-governmental press which carried articles on “Ukrainian threat” in the Kholm region: the Polish Orthodox Church was accused of Russification and Ukrainization. For instance, one can read in Ilustrowany Tygodnik Codzienny of March 24, 1938, that “the gathered residents of the city Kholm and its outskirts claim that: 1) the Orthodox church has become a seedbed of other-than-Polish national awareness in the district; 2) some Orthodox priests are trying to persuade the Orthodox Polish or Polish-origin population that it is not Polish; 3) they use the Russian language in dealing with this population; 4) sermons and religious education are being delivered in the Russian language; and 5) the activity of most Orthodox priests is disturbing and upsetting the hitherto quiet coexistence of the district’s entire population. The district is predominantly Polish. During the struggle against the church union the entire population, regardless of the language they use, showed the awareness of Polish national identity. Without opposing the Orthodox faith, we still promise to make every effort to prevent the Orthodox Church from being a place of Russian or Ukrainian propaganda and Orthodox priests from perpetrating it. We will be especially thwarting the attempts of Orthodox priests to incite the Polish-speaking Polish population.”
The operation began in the spring of 1938, on Easter Eve. At first they began to close part-time and unofficial churches, although several official parishes were closed as well. In some cases temples were torched and the Orthodox populace was intimidated. The campaign reached its peak in May-July 1938. More often than not, all the paraphernalia of temples were destroyed and there were instances of the desecration of sanctuaries and graveyards. The Polish researcher Miroslawa Papierzynska-Turek writes, “What were the consequences of this campaign? Destruction was wreaked on so many objects, not only the ones that had been intended to be ruined long ago. In this sense, from the authorities’ viewpoint, the operation was a success... No principles or directives were adhered to during the ruination. The authorities would ruin all that they considered superfluous, leaving the Orthodox Church just the bare minimum.” The local populace, fearful of the police and army, usually offered no resistance. There is still evidence that in some cases Orthodox believers defended their shrines, but they would suffer quite a brutal crackdown - they were beaten with rifle butts and arrested, dogs were sicked on them.
The question of church ruination was raised at the sessions of the Polish Sejm and senate. In particular, Stepan Baran, a Galicia-born member of the Ukrainian National Democratic Association, a Greek Catholic himself, submitted two interpellations to the Cabinet of Ministers chairman. Other Ukrainian MPs also devoted their speeches to the church ruination issue at the Sejm’s plenary session - among them were Stepan Skrypnyk, a representative of the Volhynia Ukrainian Association, and the Orthodox priest Rev. Martyn Volkov. Ethnic Ukrainian senators Mykola Maslov and Ostap Lutsky raised the question of church ruination in the Kholm region and Southern Podlachia at the July 14 senate session. The Lviv-based Greek Catholic Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky expressed indignation over the ruination of Orthodox churches in his pastoral message.
The 1938 campaign stirred up a negative international reaction. Words of condemnation came from the council of the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile, and the head of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church even gave back his Polish decorations. Traditionally Orthodox states were using diplomatic channels to express protest. Also up in arms were Russian and Ukrainians emigres in Western Europe, the United States and Canada, forming a negative image of Poland in the press.
Stanislaw Cat-Mackiewicz used a very good metaphor in this connection in an article published in the newspaper Slowo on July 31, 1938. He says, “A comparison with children is always coming to mind. I saw some children put up a pyramid of stones on the railway track. Could they be very wicked and spoilt children? No, just children. It is awful even to imagine what they could have done if they had laid their hands on the semaphore and the switch, what a wreck they could have provoked. So this ruination of Orthodox temples is a policy of the children who have reached semaphores and switches. These children are guided with good intentions. They know what everybody knows: it would be good if three million Orthodox believers were converted to Roman Catholicism, for it will tie them closer with Poland. But, like true children, they get down to business in a naive and devastating way - in their desire to repair they are breaking, destroying and spoiling things. A wise carpenter will not make furniture from wet timber. One should know how to wait in such thing as national and religious assimilation. Ruining a temple will result in nothing. On the contrary, this will only kindle the flame of passion.”
An historical reconsideration of and filling the blank spots in the campaign of Orthodox church ruination in the Kholm region and Southern Podlachia undoubtedly gives us a key to understand the factors that led to further Polish-Ukrainian conflicts during World War II. The historian Pawel Borecki writes, “The 1938 events only aggravated the animosity between the Poles and the Ukrainians, fitting in with the line of reciprocal grievances that date back to the Waza era. At the same time, they consolidated the Ukrainian minority in Poland, in spite of religious differences. It is the Poles, the population of the eastern lands, who had to pay dearly in the Second World War for the policy of the inter-war ruling elite.” This opinion is shared by Ryszard Torzecki who says that the government’s mistakes only deepened the rift between the Ukrainians and the Poles.
A link between the 1938 church ruination campaign and the Polish-Ukrainian conflict in Volhynia (1943) could be clearly seen in the debates of Polish political and intellectual figures about the Polish Sejm’s passage of a resolution on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of shrine ruination in the Kholm and Lublin regions. Some debaters claimed that passing this kind of a resolution would mean “reopening the old wounds.” There were heated debates at a session of the Sejm commission on culture and the media in July 2008. The press also published some radical opinions. For example, Konrad Rekas writes in a Tygodnik Chelmski that “instead of taking part in a debate that aims, by all accounts, to divert attention from the fundamental Volhynia question, one should increase diplomatic pressure on Kyiv in order to disengage once and for all from the bandits who were recently given the status of war veterans.”
On the other hand, President Lech Kaczynski of Poland wrote a preface to the historian Grzegorz Kuprianowicz’s book devoted to the tragic event in the Kholm region and Southern Podlachia. He notes that such a natural refuge as the House of God was not honored in 1938 and, accordingly, expressed regret over what had happened.
This year Kholm has seen a number of social occasions dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the ruination of Orthodox shrines in the Kholm region and Southern Podlachia. A website, www.kholm 1938.net, was also opened, which posts the basic information on the course of events, eyewitness reports, documents of that time, fragments of historical studies, as well as a number of unique photographs of the torn-down churches. All this is aimed at filling the blank spots in our common Ukrainian-Polish history. This heals, rather than “reopens,” the old wounds. For there still live eyewitnesses of those events, who have been bearing this tragic experience all through their lifetime. As St. Paul the Apostle says, “If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are” (1 Corinthians: 3, 17).
Dmytro Shevchuk teaches at the National University of Ostroh Academy
