MATERIALS ON VIOLENT DEATHS IN THE NEWSPAPER «HOLMSKA ZEMLIA» (1943–1944): REFLECTION OF EVENTS AND METHODS OF COVERAGE

Abstract

The article focuses on the study of the sole regular newspaper during the Second World War for the Ukrainian population of the Lublin District of the General Governorate – «Holmska Zemlya» (1943–1944). A specific segment of the publication's content is analyzed – obituary materials. In total, in 82 issues of the weekly «Holmska Zemlya,» no fewer than 210 obituaries were published. A small number of them – 23 obituaries – are dedicated to individuals who died of natural causes, at a respectable age, or from illness. Some of them reported on local figures, but also on losses in other districts – notable figures in science, culture, finance, economics, medicine, etc. The rest, the vast majority of obituaries, concerned individuals who perished from war-related and various violent actions, namely – executions by Germans of inhabitants of the General Governorate on the orders of the special court in Lviv, which served as a deterrent to the population; those who died on the German-Soviet front, Ukrainian fighters, and most importantly – losses of the civilian population from violent actions by Polish insurgents and unidentified criminals. Newspaper publications contain valuable and little-known biographical details, details of the activities of the deceased during the years of German occupation, a list of merits, the character and resonance of the committed murders, the course of funerals, etc. However, extremely few testimonies have been published about the motives and causes of violent actions, which was associated with the passage of materials through censorship mechanisms. The newspaper first brought to the public sphere a considerable amount of personal data about deceased Ukrainians, in many cases preventing their oblivion. However, this segment of content is not a sufficient source for a representative representation of Ukrainian losses, although, together with numerous documents from the relevant aid structures at that time, it provided primary material for accumulating such data in the emigration and later in contemporary research.