MIGRATION MOVEMENT IN THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT ON THE PAGES OF THE REGIONAL NEWSPAPER KHOLMSKA ZEMLIA (1943–1944)

Abstract

The article analyzes the content of the sole regular newspaper during the World War II, serving the informational needs of the Ukrainian population in the Lublin district of the General Government. It identifies groups of materials dedicated to the problematic issues of resettlement movements. These include official appeals from Ukrainian legal structures, information about relief actions, journalistic reports, and interviews with refugees from the military zone, the Reichskommissariat “Ukraine”, and the eastern territories of Galicia. Also examined are articles that prompted Ukrainians to contemplate their personal future choices against the backdrop of interethnic conflict in the region and the approaching German-Soviet front. 
Newspaper materials are compared with information about the outflow of personnel from the Holm region, as cited in documents from Ukrainian committees. In the documents of relief structures of that time, facts are recorded of the Ukrainian population's ambiguous attitude towards the decisions of committee officials, public figures, and clergy to leave their native lands. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that thanks to such choices, hundreds of lives were safeguarded from persecution and destruction. Additionally, numerous documents, testimonies, and memoirs about the Holm-Podlasie region during the German occupation have been published in emigration and are now widely known. These shed light on the bloody events and crimes, echoes of which were not always found in the contemporary legal press.