Ołeksandra Wasiejko z d. Łukaszko (ur. 1946) - Instytut Pileckiego

The medal / Recipients

Ołeksandra Wasiejko z d. Łukaszko (ur. 1946)

Awarded in 2019.

During the Volhynia Massacre in the summer of 1943. Over the next seventy years Oleksandra Vaseyko kept alive the memory of the victims, bringing flowers to their graves and keeping them in her prayers.

During the Volhynia Massacre in the summer of 1943, Ukrainian nationalists systematically attacked and murdered Poles living in the eastern provinces of the country. The majority of those killed were buried in mass graves, the locations of which remain unknown to date. Before 1939, Kalennyk Lukashko, Oleksandra’s father, was on very good terms with the Polish residents of neighboring villages. When during the War the Ukrainian Insurgent Army commenced its campaign of anti-Polish violence, he shunned from his fellow Ukrainians and provided aid to three Poles who had survived the massacre and hidden in a forest close by. Learning a few days later that they had been murdered, he buried them and pointed out their last resting place to Oleksandra, 6 years old at the time, marking the spot with crosses cut out in the bark of some nearby trees. Over the next seventy years Oleksandra Vaseyko kept alive the memory of the victims, bringing flowers to their graves and keeping them in her prayers. She also helped Polish archeologists uncover the mass burial sites of Poles murdered in Wola Ostrowiecka and Ostrówki.


fot. Znak Publishing

See also

  • Aleksander Ładoś (1891-1963)

    awarded

    Aleksander Ładoś (1891-1963)

    He was the leader of the group which issued illegal Latin American passports to persecuted Jews. Ładoś gave the group diplomatic protection.

  • Petro Bazeluk (1903–1949)

    awarded

    Petro Bazeluk (1903–1949)

    Mykola Bazeluk said that there was no difference between who was a Pole and who was a Ukrainian in Volhynia before the war. That all changed in 1943, when, as he put it, “Brother turned on brother.”

  • Anastasija Koreń (1908–1967) Mykoła Koreń (1905–1944)

    awarded

    Anastasija Koreń (1908–1967) Mykoła Koreń (1905–1944)

    On the evening of 15 July, Mykola’s brother-in-law appeared at the Korens’ doorstep, accompanied by four children of their neighbors, the Adamowiczs: nine-year-old Teresa, five-year-old Janusz, three-year-old Stasia and one-and-a-half-year-old Henio.