Western Ukraine saw a brutal ethnic cleansing of Poles

Yes: during World War II, Ukrainian nationalist units of the OUN-UPA carried out an ethnic cleansing of Polish civilians in western Ukraine, with estimates ranging from 35,000 to 60,000 dead in Volhynia alone and 100,000 to 500,000 Poles across Ukraine. The exact figure remains unknown.

## A crime with no final count
The ethnic cleansing of Poles in western Ukraine during World War II has no exact tally. Historians put the number of Polish civilians murdered in **Volhynia** alone at between **35,000** and **60,000**. Estimates for the total number of Polish victims in Ukraine range from **100,000** to **500,000**.
It was not collateral damage of war. The violence was directed at unarmed rural populations, because the **UPA** had no presence in the cities.

## Mixed families and Czech settlers
The **OUN-UPA** did not limit itself to Polish families. The historian **Piotrowski** documents that it also killed Ukrainians who helped Poles or cooperated with Soviet units. Czech settlers disappeared in the same process.
That fits the pattern of ethnic cleansing: not only eliminating the neighbor of another nationality, but also punishing anyone who crossed the communal boundary the nationalists wanted to impose. Mixed families were trapped in that logic.

## Lviv and the emptiness that trinc
Before 1939, **Lwów**, later **Lviv**, had a Polish and Jewish majority population. After World War II, the border drawing by the Soviet Union and forced population transfers almost completely emptied it of its original composition.
Poles were left virtually nonexistent in **Galicia**; in Ukraine there are more Hungarians and Romanians than Poles. The ethnic cleansing and border engineering did the rest.