March, 2024
The 80th anniversary of the tragic events in Sahryn in the Kholm region was marked by the continuation of the academic research project “Victims of the Polish-Ukrainian Confrontation of 1939-1947”, launched in 2020 with the assistance of USF donors
The year 2024 marked the 80th anniversary of the tragic events in Sahryn in the Kholm region, when on March 10, 1944, units of the Polish Home Army and Polish Peasant Battalions attacked the Ukrainian villages of the Hrubeshiv region with the aim of annihilating the Ukrainian population. In Sahryn, 612 Ukrainians were killed in one day, including 385 women and children. The events in Sahryn had been ignored for the longest time in the history of World War II, although it is the largest war crime committed by the Polish armed forces during the war. Those historical events which form the perception of the past for Poland’s Ukrainian population, put the “Aktsia Visla” camp in Jaworzno at the top of the list. Second on the list are the crimes in the Nadsyannia region and the forced resettlement to the USSR in 1944-46. Meanwhile, the tragedy of the Kholm region, the Kholm villages and the Kholm martyrology did not fit into the historical memory of the community for many years. The academic research project "Victims of the Polish-Ukrainian Confrontation of 1939-1947", launched in 2020 with the assistance of the Ukrainian Studies Fund’s donors, should fill just such a blank spot in the history of Ukraine during the Second World War. Dr. Ihor Halahida, a professor in the Department of History at the University of Gdańsk, serves as the head of the project, and the Warsaw-based weekly newspaper "Nashe Slovo" (Our Word), published an interview featuring Dr. Halahida and highlighted the relevance of this research project.
