Ukrainian Freedom FightersPrint Page

The plaque commemorates Ukrainian Freedom Fighters.

In September, 1939, with the violent dismemberment of Poland by Nazi Germany, assisted by the Soviet Union. Western Ukraine had been in Polish hands, but was incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic through a staged plebiscite, even as a relentless persecution of anyone - Ukrainian, Pole or Jew - considered an enemy of the Stalinist regime was launched. Deportations and mass murder continued until Adolf Hitler turned against his Soviet ally on June 22, 1941. By October, 1942, the UPA had emerged as a national liberation army. After the war, its armed struggle would be reduced, finally, but only after the Soviet secret police and collaborators had brutally depopulated western Ukraine, destroying the insurgents' civilian support networks, and hunted down the last fighters, a campaign that lasted more than a decade.

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