Wołyń Poem by Leo Yankevich

"The massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia were part of an ethnic cleansing operation carried out in Nazi German-occupied Poland by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) against Poles in the area of Volhynia, Polesia, Lublin region and Eastern Galicia beginning in 1943 and lasting up to 1945 The peak of the genocide took place in July and August 1943. Most of the victims were women and children UPA's methods were particularly brutal, with many of the victims being tortured and mutilated, and resulted in 40,000-60,000 Polish deaths in Volhynia and 30,000-40,000 in Eastern Galicia, with the other regions for the total about 100,000."


The noble's face lies in the pail;
white horses neigh a yard away.
Skulless, trusting, without fail,
he'll never rise to tell today
of slaughter: bodies split in two,
skin stripped from bone, heads chopped off with
crude peasant axes, country stew
in kettles, Jews praying at Sabbath.
Father, Abba, whom to blame?
The wolf, the badger, fox or hawk?
In verdant valleys of the lame
the bearded priests no longer talk.




10 July 2018