No Honor for the Killers of Poles and Jews

For Israelis and Jews, Poland’s decision to move against Volodymyr Zelensky’s Order of the White Eagle should not be read as a quarrel over old Polish grievances. It should be read as a warning about the price of historical amnesia. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army was not merely a controversial anti-Soviet force. Its legacy is inseparable from the massacre of Polish civilians in Volhynia and from the wider world of wartime nationalist collaboration that helped make the Holocaust possible. When Kyiv honors the “Heroes of the UPA,” it does not only wound Polish memory. It also insults Jewish memory.

On June 19, Polish President Karol Nawrocki moved to revoke Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Order of the White Eagle — Poland’s oldest and highest state distinction, established in 1705. Critics in Kyiv and beyond called it a betrayal of an ally at war. It was nothing of the sort. It was Poland refusing to let the memory of genocide be dressed up as military virtue.

The decision followed a choice made in Kyiv: Zelensky’s approval of naming a Ukrainian armed forces unit after the “Heroes of the UPA” — the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the armed wing of the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. For many Ukrainians, the UPA is invoked as a symbol of anti-Soviet resistance. For Poles, the name first evokes something else: Volhynia.

Between 1943 and 1945, UPA units carried out a campaign to remove the Polish population from Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. Entire villages were erased. Polish historians estimate that as many as 100,000 Polish civilians — men, women, and children — were killed. They were not collateral victims of war. They were the target. UPA’s own language spoke of an “anti-Polish action.” Poland remembers it for what it was: ethnic cleansing, mass murder, and genocide.

But the stain does not end at the Polish border. Several OUN and UPA figures passed through German-organized auxiliary police formations or collaborated with Nazi structures involved in the persecution and murder of Jews. Ukrainian nationalist formations and leaders were part of a wartime landscape in which anti-Jewish violence, German occupation, local collaboration, and ethnic terror overlapped. To name a military unit after the “Heroes of the UPA” is therefore not merely to reopen a Polish wound. It also reaches into the killing fields of the Holocaust.

That is why Israelis should recognize the instinct behind Warsaw’s decision. Israel has objected before when Ukraine has elevated figures associated with the OUN, UPA, or Nazi-linked formations. Yad Vashem has repeatedly warned against state-sponsored rehabilitation of nationalist leaders whose records are tied to antisemitism, collaboration, and violence against Jews. Israel’s Foreign Ministry has also raised concerns when Ukrainian public honors have been given to men whose wartime biographies cannot be separated from the persecution and murder of Jewish victims.

This is not a theoretical dispute about plaques and names. Memory is never neutral when the dead are still being denied justice. For Jews, the twentieth century taught that public honor is not harmless. Statues, state funerals, military names, stadiums, and national cemeteries tell citizens whom they are expected to admire. When such honors are given to men associated with ethnic cleansing or Holocaust-era collaboration, the message is not only historical. It is moral.

Nawrocki was careful to draw a line between Ukraine’s people and the symbols chosen by Ukraine’s state. His decision was not directed against Ukrainians defending their country. It did not cancel Poland’s support for Ukraine against Russian aggression. Poland has armed Ukraine, hosted Ukrainian refugees, and stood beside Kyiv since 2022. Russia remains the aggressor. Vladimir Putin remains responsible for unleashing the largest war in Europe since 1945.

But solidarity is not amnesia. An alliance does not require Poland to applaud the rehabilitation of men associated with the slaughter of Polish civilians and the machinery of the Holocaust. Support for Ukraine’s survival cannot mean silence about the names placed on its regiments, stadiums, and cemeteries.

Nor should Jews be asked to accept a false choice between supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression and telling the truth about the Holocaust. These obligations are not contradictory. One can stand with Ukraine’s right to exist and still reject the glorification of those whose legacies are tied to the murder of civilians. One can oppose Putin’s war without pretending that every anti-Soviet nationalist was a democrat, a liberator, or a hero.

Ukraine has genuine heroes. Its soldiers fighting today against Russian invasion are defending their homes and their country. Its medics, rescuers, journalists, dissidents, and civilians have shown courage that needs no historical laundering. These are the names that belong on military units and public monuments. Ukraine does not need the UPA to prove its dignity. In fact, clinging to such symbols weakens the moral clarity on which Ukraine’s cause depends.

The victims of the UPA cannot speak. Their graves are still being searched for. Their villages, in many cases, no longer exist. Jewish victims of wartime collaboration also cannot answer when their persecutors are recast as patriots without qualification. That is why symbols matter. A state honor is not a decorative accessory. A military name is not a neutral label. When a democratic state chooses whom to honor, it tells the world what it is prepared to excuse.

Kyiv still has an opportunity to correct course before the Ukraine Recovery Conference convenes in Gdańsk on June 25–26 — a summit that depends, more than diplomats like to admit, on trust between Poland and Ukraine. That trust cannot be built on selective memory. It requires truth about Volhynia. It requires truth about the Holocaust. It requires the courage to say that some men who fought Moscow also murdered civilians — and that murder does not become heroism because history later became inconvenient.

Poland did not move against Zelensky’s honor because it is abandoning Ukraine. It did so because some symbols are too poisoned to be shared with the innocent. An ally may deserve support against Russian aggression, but no ally deserves silence when murderers are turned into heroes. The Order of the White Eagle was never meant to decorate the memory of men whose victims were Polish, Jewish, or both.