On the second Sunday of September, we honor the memory of Ukrainians who were forcibly deprived of their homes in the Lemkivshchyna, Western Boikivshchyna, Kholmshchyna, Nadsyannya, Southern Pidlaszcz, and Lubachivshchyna in 1944-1951. In 2018, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine established the memorial date. This year, the day falls on September 14.
One of the outcomes of World War II was the establishment of new state borders in Europe, in particular between the USSR and Poland. In order to establish the Soviet-Polish border and eliminate long-standing disputes over disputed territories between Ukrainians and Poles, on September 9, 1944, in Lublin, the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR, Nikita Khrushchev, and the Polish National Liberation Committee, Edward Osubka-Morawski, signed an agreement on "mutual exchange of population": Ukrainians from Poland to the Ukrainian SSR and Poles from Ukraine to Poland.
All citizens of Ukrainian nationality from the territories of Kholm, Hrubieszów, Tomaszów, Krasnostaw, Włodawa, and other districts of Lublin, Rzeszów, and later Kraków provinces were to be relocated to the USSR. The resettlement was supposed to be voluntary, but it turned into forced deportations, which were accompanied by repression, deprivation of property, and restrictions on people's political, social, economic, and cultural rights.
The grounds for resettlement were lists of persons who expressed a desire to leave Poland, renounce its citizenship, and receive a passport of the Ukrainian SSR. Moreover, the expression of will could be written or oral. This created ample opportunities for abuse. The agreement did not specify criteria for determining the nationality of a person. In the end, the main indicator for expulsion was the identification card of the Nazi occupation authorities (Kennkarte), which contained information about religion and nationality.
Under this agreement, in 1944-1946, more than 482,000 Ukrainians were forcibly relocated to the Ukrainian SSR. In Soviet Ukraine, they were resettled in 17 regions-from Galicia to the Black Sea region, Slobozhanshchyna, and Donetsk region.
At the same time, nearly 790,000 Poles and Jews were resettled from the western regions of Soviet Ukraine to Poland.
The deportation of Ukrainians from these territories was motivated by political and ethnic motives, with the aim of creating a mono-ethnic Polish state and resolving the "Ukrainian question." It was accompanied by violence, confiscation of property, restriction of rights, and terror.
"Voluntary resettlement" with "equivalent compensation for property" turned into collective farm slavery, hunger and poverty, years of humiliation and deprivation without the right to return to their native lands.
The deportation of Ukrainians continued with the "Vistula Action" carried out by the Polish communist regime. In 1947, those Ukrainians who refused to leave for the USSR were deported by the Polish authorities to the north and west of Poland. In a few months, almost 150 thousand people were forcibly relocated.
Several tens of thousands more Ukrainians were deprived of their homes during the exchanges of border areas between the USSR and Poland in 1948 and 1951.