Controversial monument

Lviv regional authorities have appealed to the Polish government to rebuild a controversial monument to the former Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in the southeast of Poland. 

 The appeal, by the Lviv Oblast Council is addressed to Poland’s central government as well as the authorities of Podkarpackie province in which the monument resided.

There was a monument in the Polish village of Hruszowice which honored members of the UPA who fought Poles during and in the aftermath of World War II and who were killed during clashes with Polish soldiers in 1946.

Without the consent of Polish authorities the monument was illegally erected in 1994 and was dismantled at the end of April this year by members of Polish right-wing organizations with the consent of the local authorities.

The illegally built monument in Hruszwice

Councilors in the Lviv region have termed the dismantling of the monument an anti-Ukrainian provocation. They have adopted a resolution in which they suggest that Poland should rebuild the Hruszowice monument just as the Ukrainians have rebuilt a monument honoring Polish victims of Ukrainian soldiers that was destroyed by unknown perpetrators earlier this year in the no-longer-existing village of Huta Pieniacka in what was once eastern Poland and is now western Ukraine.

The councilors express their support for the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, which, after the dismantling of the Hruszowice monument, declared that it would halt the legalization of Polish memorial sites in Ukraine.
According to the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, there are more than 100 such sites in Ukraine.