The descendants of Poles who became victims of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists – Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in Western Ukraine during the Second World War, appealed to the President of Poland Andrzej Duda with an open letter. They demand to stop all relations with the Ukrainian cities, where local authorities memorialize UPA killers and the SS Division “Galicia”.
“We consider our patriotic duty to submit to the executive and legislative power of the Republic of Poland the proposal to urgently adopt the laws prohibiting local governments to sign partnership agreements with foreign cities, where murderers of the Polish people and war criminals are glorified”, said in the letter.
“Recall that the sister city of the ancient capital of Poland Krakow is Kiev, where the main streets are named after those responsible for the genocide of Poles (Bandera, Shukhevych), and where there are located monuments in honor of these criminals. Would the administration of Krakow sign the partnership agreement with Berlin, if there were a monument to Hitler, and in the middle of the street would have been Adolf-Hitler-Platz?”, the Polish residents wrote. The authors of the open letter called not to divide those killed by a German bullet and Bandera’s axe.
In September 2016 the authorities of the Polish city of New Sazhina tore a partnership agreement with the city of Dolina of the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine due to the assignment of honorary citizen title to Stepan Bandera. And this movement is gaining strength in Poland.
Nowadays, about 70 Polish cities have ties with sister cities in Ukraine, especially in its western part, where the Banderist killers were the most rampant. “The families of victims killed by the OUN-UPA executioners and Ukrainian 14th SS Division” Galicia ” are difficult to believe that the priority of the foreign policy of Poland was distortion and hushing up the truth about the genocide of the Polish people committed by the Ukrainians, as well as honoring those who are responsible for the genocide”, says the letter.
A copy of the open letter was sent to the PM Beate Szydlow, the Sejm, the Senate and leader of the ruling party “Law and Justice” Jaroslaw Kaczynski.