Władysław Siemaszko (born 1919) is a Brazilian born Polish publicist and lawyer. Former member of the Polish resistance Armia Krajowa. Author of numerous publications focusing on the massacres of Poles in Volhynia. Father of writer Ewa Siemaszko, co-author of Ludobójstwo dokonane przez nacjonalistów ukraińskich na ludności polskiej Wołynia 1939-45 (English: The Genocide Committed by the Ukrainian Nationalists on Polish Citizens of Volhynia in 1939-45) consisting of two volumes of 1500 pages of research.
Siemaszko was born in Curitiba, Brazil, to a Polish diplomat who was sent there by the Second Polish Republic to a diplomatic post. Władysław moved with his family back to Poland in 1924, and settled in Wołyń Voivodeship. The Siemaszko family had lived in Volhynia since January Uprising of 1863, after which Wladyslaw's grandfather bought some land from the Ukrainians in the area of Wlodzimierz Wolynski.[1]
Władysław Siemaszko joined the 27th Volhynian Division of the Home Army (AK) during World War II and remained in Volhynia until 1944. In 1940, the Soviet authorities captured and sentenced him to death, but reduced the sentence to 10–year imprisonment. Initially Siemaszko was imprisoned by NKVD in Lutsk, until the Nazi German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941. Siemiaszko managed to survive the massacres of Polish political prisoners carried out by the retreating Soviet military units and the NKVD. In 1945, Siemiaszko was arrested again by the Soviets and transferred over to Polish communist authorities. He was imprisoned for two years in Poland until 1947 and released in 1949. Siemiaszko graduated from the Faculty of Law of the Jagiellonian University of Kraków and became a legal advisor and defence lawyer.
Siemiaszko's first research project based on witness accounts related to the Volhynian massacres of Poles began in mid 80s. It was inspired by the initiatives of the surviving community of combatants of the 27th Volhynian Division of AK, and the apparent lack of historical documentation resulting in numerous misconceptions. Initially, Władysław Siemiaszko was asked to assist military historian Józef Turowski of the Polish Society of War Veterans, gathering materials for a memorial project. Turowski died on July 24, 1989, before their collaborative work, kept unpublished for four years by the authorities, became first available in Poland in 1990 as limited edition print.[2][3]
Subsequently, Władysław with daughter Ewa Siemaszko, in their own ten-year long research project went on to document murders committed on Polish citizens by Ukrainian Insurgents in some 1,865 villages and towns of Volhynia during the Nazi and Soviet occupations. Their books were based on witness accounts, court documents including transcripts from trials of Ukrainian war criminals, as well as the Polish national archives and statistical censuses.[4] They were published and distributed by a Polish non-governmental organization KARTA Center. The Siemiaszko's collaborative work continues. In 2010 the Institute of National Remembrance (Bulletin No. 7–8, 116–117) published an overview of their joint research with the following up-to-date table of collected data.[5]
| Polish people murdered by OUN-UPA and other Ukrainian nationalists in 1939–1948: documented numbers and approximations | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voivodeships | Recorded number of settlements where the murders took place | Documented number of Poles massacred (a round number)[6] | Number of Polish victims known by their names | Estimated victims above numbers already established[7] | Approximated number of murdered Poles (a round number)[6]+[7] | ||||
| Wołyń | 1,865 | ~ 38,600 | 22,113 | 21,400[6] | ~ 60,000 | ||||
| Lwów | 1,007 | ~ 15,400 | 6,397 | 9,395[7] | ~ 24,800 | ||||
| Stanisławów | 422 | ~ 11,700 | 3,843 | 6,700[8] | ~ 18,400 | ||||
| Tarnopol | 850 | ~ 23,000 | 10,143 | 4,585[9] | ~ 27,600 | ||||
| Total | 4,144 | ~ 88,700 | 42,496 | 42,080 | ~ 130,800 | ||||
According to the Ukrainian historian,[10] Yaroslav Tsaruk,[11] who studied the materials collected by Siemaszko from Polish villagers, the number of ethnic Poles given by them, in some of the villages he is familiar with, does not correspond with the Ukrainian statistical data.[12] According to Tsaruk, Siemaszko included in the number of Polish casualties those who emigrated before the commencement of these hostilities, and that Siemaszko in his book included colonies, subdivisions of villages and population points which were never separate administrative units, thus enlarging the number of Polish population points.[13] Siemaszko also minimized or fails to mention the murders of Ukrainian civilians.[14] Tsaruk stated that in the Volodymyr region initially there were attacks on Ukrainian villages by Polish-German police units which were retaliated in self-defence. According to Siemaszko 1915 Poles died there in the hands of Ukrainian Nationalists. According to Tsaruk - 430.[14] Siemaszko replied in his book by stating that Tsaruk's research is based on statements made by local Ukrainians long after the war and "explained by psychological defense mechanisms".[2] Ukrainian historian Ihor Ilyushin echoes Tsaruk's observations, questioning whether Siemaszko's approach, based on testimony from one side, can be truly scholarly, objective and impartial, and shows mistakes in Siemaszko's work. Ilyushin also states that because he was a participant at the central time of the conflict he is not a credible witness.[15]