World War II Isn't Quite Over for Poland and Ukraine

World War II isn't quite over in what historian Timothy Snyder called the Bloodlands. The nationalist government in Poland is eager to confront Ukraine about an ethnic cleansing episode in 1943, and the Ukrainian authorities, whose own nationalism is a sometimes violent reaction to Russian aggression, are torn between glorifying the perpetrators of those crimes and apologizing to the Poles, their closest allies in Europe.

In the Volhynian massacre, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the military wing of Stepan Bandera's Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, killed up to 100,000 Poles mainly in the Volhynia, or Volyn region that is part of today's western Ukraine but was part of Poland before World War II. The reasons the Ukrainian nationalists did this were twofold. Between the two world wars, Poland had oppressed Ukrainians living in the area, forcibly converting them to Catholicism and generally treating them as second-class citizens. And in 1943, many Volhynian Poles sympathized with the Red Army, which had turned the tide against Nazi Germany's onslaught, and cooperated with Moscow-backed guerrilla units.