Norman Davies

Volhynia and the forgotten massacre of the Second World War

The Shved family were all murdered in the Volyn atrocity (Credit: IPN; (INSTITUTE OF NATIONAL REMEMBRANCE))

Completely innocent men, women and children have been slaughtered. ‘Terrorism’ hardly suffices to describe the savage rampage beyond the Gaza Wall undertaken by men from Hamas on 7 October. In the aftermath of the Second World War, when knowledge emerged of the crimes perpetrated by Nazi Germans and their collaborators, humanity vowed ‘Never Again’. Yet the world has descended once more into ever lower levels of depravity. What is more, thousands of innocents are now being killed as collateral in the on-going counterattacks.

The kibbutz of Kfar Aza and kibbutz Be’eri, where some of the most barbaric crimes were carried out by Hamas, joins the long list of places of infamy where scenes of murder and bloodshed have occurred. Some of these places are familiar. But many are not. Ukraine, whose conflict with Russia has been somewhat sidelined by the war in Gaza, is a country with far too many forgotten memory sites: Hanaczów, Laskiv, Sakhryn, Szerokie Pole, and Ziemianok.

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