In discussions with various Polish interlocutors, I have repeatedly heard: “Ukrainians are collaborators; they even formed a separate Waffen-SS division, Galizien, while Poles did nothing of the sort, so they bear no stain of collaboration.” As always, this is a highly selective approach to historical truth, where facts are deliberately or unconsciously chosen to confirm Polish moral superiority over Ukrainians. Oleksiy Panych, PhD, Senior Research Fellow at the Ukrainian Humanities Publishing House ‘Dukh i Litera,’ writes.
Indeed, the Germans did not form separate Polish Waffen-SS units. But this was not a consequence of Polish morality, but rather of German policy: Berlin simply planned to use the Poles and Ukrainians it had subjugated in different ways. A lesser-known fact is this: the total number of Poles who served in the Wehrmacht and the same Waffen-SS (approximately 450,000–500,000) is nearly double the total number of such Ukrainians (approximately 250,000).
In 2025, an exhibition titled “Our Boys” dedicated to precisely such Poles took place in Gdańsk. The exhibition caused a scandal. The Polish right, led by then-President Duda, loudly protested that this exhibition undermined the already established (and lovingly maintained by the Polish right) image of Poles as victims who were not and could not have been accomplices to German terror. (But they were.)In contrast, one of the exhibition’s curators, Andrzej Gerszewski, expressed a truly wise thought in an interview with Deutsche Welle: “Polish memory policy knows only black and white, heroes or traitors. We wanted to show shades of gray: the tragic fates of people who faced brutal pressure in 1939.” In fact, this is exactly how Ukrainian memory policy works: we honor heroes, but we do not forget about crimes and betrayals, which were often the consequence of tragic circumstances, the weight of which is difficult even to imagine today.
But the Polish right has already managed to infect a significant part of Polish society and a clear majority of the Polish political class with its black-and-white approach. And if, with regard to Poles who, for various reasons, found themselves in the German military, there are at least sober voices in Poland reminding us of the complexity and acknowledging “shades of gray,” then with regard to Ukrainians from “SS-Galizien,” a false unequivocalness prevails in the minds of many Poles: there are no complexities here, simply murderers, collaborators, and traitors.
I have written before about the influence on the Polish mentality of the traditional image of Poland as the “Christ of nations.” Some Poles objected to me then, saying that this has nothing to do with the present. But I keep seeing evidence to the contrary: the image of the “unblemished victim” is in fact the biggest problem, even the biggest stumbling block, for Polish historical memory. And when this memory turns to Ukraine, it becomes a serious problem for Polish-Ukrainian relations as well. For as soon as it comes to ranking the significance of various historical facts, this approach generates on the Polish side a “positive selectivity” toward “one’s own” and a “negative selectivity” toward “others.”
However, reconciliation with Ukrainians cannot be built on the basis of such claimed moral superiority. And do the Polish right actually want it?
The comments from Polish commenters turned out to be surprisingly unanimous: “Poles in the Wehrmacht and SS – that’s fine, because all 500,000 of them were forced into it, whereas 250,000 Ukrainians in the Wehrmacht and SS – that’s pure evil, because they joined voluntarily.”
Regarding coercion and voluntariness – this is partly true (but only partly). But whether Poles could have resisted coercion, or for what reasons (realistic or misguided) Ukrainians enlisted in the SS Division “Galizien” – these are already unnecessary details, those “50 shades of gray” that only complicate the desired picture. And for Poles, the main thing is to fit all the facts and explanations into a simple conclusion: “ours are white, yours are black.” Some 100 or 300 years ago they would have said “ours have blue blood, yours have peasant blood,” but the essence is the same.
In the shortest possible terms: if a zebra is Polish, it is white with black stripes (and those black stripes are barely noticeable), and if it is Ukrainian, it is black with white stripes (and those white stripes are barely noticeable).
