In the middle of the 20th century, in the center of Europe, under an agreement between two political regimes – the Soviet Union and Poland – ethnocide was committed: the forced eviction of the autochthonous population from the southeastern lands of Poland. As a result of this international crime, the subethnos called LEMKOS almost no longer exists in their original lands.
The eviction process was conducted in several stages:
- 1944-46 – the forced deportation of almost 500 thousand autochthons from historically ethnic lands within Poland to the Ukrainian Soviet Social Republic (SSR).
- 1947 – total ethnic cleansing during the military-political operation “Akcja Wisla” with the brutal resettlement of 150,000 Ukrainians from the southeastern to the northwestern lands of Poland
- 1948 – eviction of residents of the western regions of Ukraine along the Soviet-Polish border (more than 9,000 people) to the eastern Ukrainian SSR.
- 1951 – the forced resettlement of Ukrainians (more than 32,000 people) from the western Boyko region (Boykivshchyna) to the southern Ukrainian SSR.
So far, neither Ukraine nor Poland nor other states or international organizations have adequately condemned the deportation of Ukrainians from the Lemko, San River, Kholm and Podlasie regions.
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