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

Medal 'Virtus et Fraternitas' / 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

  • Jozef Lach (1905–1993)

    awarded

    Jozef Lach (1905–1993)

    One night in October 1939, four men knocked on the door of Jozef and Žofia Lach’s home in Poprad, Slovakia. They came from the nearby Tatra Mountains, from occupied Poland.

  • Alfred Iversen

    awarded

    Alfred Iversen
    (1908–1987)

    A Norwegian citizen who helped Poles, prisoners of a German forced labor camp, escape to Sweden.

  • Józsefné Margit Károlyi

    awarded

    Józsefné Margit Károlyi
    (1892–1964)

    From the first days of the Second World War, many representatives of the Hungarian elite were involved in helping the Polish refugees in Hungary. One of them was Countess Margit Károlyi Józsefné.