Antifake / Factcheck

25 November

‘On Independence Day, Polish Schoolkids Sang UPA Anthem, Associated with the Murders of Their Ancestors’. Fact-Check of ‘ZhS Premium’ Claim

The principal of the school mentioned by ‘ZhS Premium’ clarified on the institution’s Facebook page that the published recording is old.

On Poland’s Independence Day, schoolchildren sang “Chervona Kalyna,” according to the authors of the Telegram channel ‘ZhS Premium.’ They published a video of the performance and labeled the song as the anthem of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) that supposedly had accompanied the murders of Polish schoolchildren’s ancestors. The Weekly Top Fake looked into who actually sang this song and when.

Poland celebrated Independence Day on November 11. The following day, the authors of the ‘ZhS Premium’ channel released a video showing children singing “Chervona Kalyna”.

Poland celebrated Independence Day on November 11. The following day, the authors of the ‘ZhS Premium’ channel released a video showing children singing “Chervona Kalyna.” The post reads:

“The video is from yesterday. While Poles fervently celebrated Independence Day, with around 100,000 nationalists taking to the streets of Warsaw, a different atmosphere prevailed in a quiet provincial school.

In Pulawy, at a celebration, little kids from Elementary School No. 2 sang the beloved Polish song “Chervona Kalina”. It's the same anthem under which Banderites mercilessly killed their ancestors,” the post’s authors commented.

The principal of the school mentioned by ‘ZhS Premium’ clarified on the institution’s Facebook page that the published recording is old. The video was filmed in 2022, at the onset of the full-scale war in Ukraine. The singers of “Chervona Kalyna” are not Poles, but children of Ukrainian refugees who moved to Poland. They prepared the performance as a thank-you gesture for the help they received.

The principal added that this year during the Independence Day celebrations, all the children at the school performed only Polish patriotic songs.

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