Welcoming Ukrainian refugees in Poland, or how to heal the wounds of history

Poland is on the front line in welcoming Ukrainian refugees. Warsaw is nevertheless renowned for its intransigent migration policy and the relationship between the two countries is marked by a conflict of memories. But faced with the Russian invasion, Ukraine and Poland seem to be overcoming this painful past. Since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, Poland alone has taken in more than half of all refugees who have fled the country, that is to say about six out of 10 refugees. This represents, since February 24, more than two million people, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. A few months ago, however, Poland was accused, like its neighbour, Belarus, of sometimes violently turning back Iraqi, Syrian or Afghan migrants arriving at the gates of the EU. This outstretched hand policy seems , surprising at first sight, especially since relations between Ukraine and Poland have inherited a difficult past. In 2018, a law adopted by the majority PiS (Law and Justice) in power in Poland had raised serious tensions with Ukraine. This law aimed to penalize, with regard to the Holocaust, “the attribution to the Polish nation or state, despite the facts, of crimes against humanity”. One of its components punished, in addition, the denial of “crimes committed by Ukrainian nationalists or members of Ukrainian formations having collaborated with the Third German Reich”. Because Warsaw qualifies as “genocide” the massacre of some 100,000 Poles in the Volyn region by Ukrainian nationalists during World War II. The use of the term “genocide” is rejected by kyiv, which nevertheless recognizes its responsibility for this killing.>> See also: Poland: in Warsaw, nationalists want to review the history of the Second World WarIn Volhynia, these crimes against the population had begun under the German occupation in 1941 and continued after the recapture of Ukraine by the Soviets in 1943-1944. In retaliation, Polish guerrillas took revenge by massacring thousands of Ukrainians. socialist countries and could, paradoxically, revive the memory of the Soviet massacres committed against Poles”, explains to France 24 Paul Gradvohl, historian, professor at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and specialist in Central Europe. According to him, it is above all a “historic dispute which has been escalated by the conservatives of the PiS to fuel their victimizing rhetoric and counter the reminders of Polish anti-Semitism [pendant la guerre]”. Today, “he has no particular reason to stay on top of the bill. This reception of the Ukrainians by the Poles is a way of rewriting history and telling them: ‘You see that it can happen well'”, continues Paul Gradvohl.>> To read also: Operation Barbarossa: the beginning of a war of annihilationThe Ukrainians and the Poles have, moreover, paid a high price under Stalin and remembered these massacres.Some 5 million people died in Ukraine, in 1932 and 1933, during a great famine provoked by Stalin’s policy of collectivization.” They were killed on an ethnic and social basis. They were killed on the pretext that they had a tradition of small peasants compared to the myth of the Russian rural commune”, recalls Paul Gradvohl. Hundreds of thousands of Poles were also killed in the years 1937-1938, on Stalin’s orders, during the Great Purges, massive political repressions carried out by the NKVD, the political police of the Soviet regime. The solidarity movement towards the Ukrainians would find, in part, its roots in a solidarity founded against Russian imperialism. “For the Poles, it’s a way of saying, ‘The Russians are doing with you what they did with us. We are at your side'”, summarizes Paul Gradvohl. Ukrainians and Poles are not only neighbors with a painful past. Before this crisis, Poland was already home to around 1.5 million Ukrainians who came, for the most part, to work in this member country of the European Union. Many of them worked in particular in the personal services sector, represented by a majority of women. Today, some 90% of those who have fled Ukraine are women and children. Linked by language, religion and migration “Welcoming is all the easier and more understandable as they each speak a relatively similar language. An intercomprehension has developed between the two peoples, especially in recent years with population exchanges. The Ukrainians who were in Poland before February 24 left, then came back and left”, specifies the historian who contributed to the book Shared history, divided memories: Ukraine, Russia, Poland “by Korine Amacher, Éric Aunoble and Andrii Portnov (Éditions Antipodes Suisse, 2021). Ukrainians may be predominantly Orthodox and Poles Catholics, but the Christian religion is also a bridge between the two populations, especially in Poland, which presents itself as a defender of Christian values. >> See also: In Ukraine, “decommunization” and the fall of Soviet symbolsThese commonalities probably prompted many Polish citizens to support their Ukrainian neighbors. They housed them, provided them with food, served as translators or helped them move around Europe. But today, faced with the influx of refugees, the exhausted volunteers are asking the government to take over. registration, longer-term accommodation, psychosocial support, transport and other forms of assistance”. This appeal had been launched much earlier by the population. On March 9, the conservative daily Rzeczpospolita wrote a striking front page: ‘People helped, now it’s the government’s turn.’