The Korosciatyn massacre took place on the night of February 28/29, 1944,[1] during the province-wide wave of massacres of Poles in Volhynia in World War II. Korosciatyn, which now bears the name of Krynica and is located in western Ukraine, was one of the biggest ethnic Polish villages of the interwar Poland's within Buczacz County in Tarnopol Voivodeship(pictured). Located along the railway line from Tarnopol to Stanislawów, in 1939 it had some 900 inhabitants, all of them being ethnic Poles.[2] Korosciatyn had an elementary school, a Catholic church and a railway station. It belonged to the Catholic parish of nearby Monasterzyska, which also covered several nearby villages. Among the most famous of the citizens of this parish, are Rev. Stanislaw Padewski (bishop of the Diocese of Kharkiv), professor Gabriel Turowski (personal physician of the later John Paul II) as well as two scientists, professor Michal Lesiow of Lublin’s Maria Curie University and doctor Jan Zaleski of Kraków's Pedagogical College.[3] Altogether, in 1939 the Deaconry of Buczacz had around 45,000 Polish inhabitants.[4]
All of the residents of Korosciatyn were ethnic Poles (as was the case also of the village of Debowica). Some 2,000 ethnic Ukrainians lived in the surrounding villages in the area. Soon after joint Nazi and Soviet attack on Poland in September 1939, the Ukrainian nationalists murdered the inhabitants of a Polish settlement of Kolodne near Wyczolki,[5] then the Soviets deported leaders of the Polish community to Siberia. Among those deported, was the village administrator of Korosciatyn, Jozef Zaleski and his wife. Zaleski died in Siberia on September 14, 1941.
In June 1941, when German units pushed the Red Army out of the area, local Ukrainians of the village of Czechow murdered their Polish neighbors. All victims were buried in a mass grave - 11 Poles (including 6 kids), as well as 6 Ukrainians, who opposed the murders. It was a prelude of later events. On Christmas Eve of 1943, Ukrainian auxiliary police shot one Pole, Marian Hutnik, and on Christmas Day 1943, five additional Poles were killed. The Ukrainians returned on Boxing Day, killing additional four Poles.[6]
The massacre
The Korosciatyn massacre took place on the night of February 28/29, 1944.[7] Ukrainian nationalists of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, supported by local peasants, attacked the village from three sides. Altogether, there were 600 attackers, divided into three groups.[8] The first one took care of the killings, using guns, knives and axes. The second wave stole possessions of the murdered Poles, and the third wave set fire to all the houses. It must be mentioned that on the same day the Ukrainian SS troops murdered around 1,500 Poles during the Huta Pieniacka massacre.
The carnage lasted the whole night. According to Aniela Muraszka, a survivor of the massacre, who later became a nun, the perpetrators used a ruse. As she later recalled, the Ukrainian nationalists attacked at 6 p.m., knowing that the Poles, aware of possible invasion, were changing their guards. The killers knew the watchword, used by the Poles, because they had been informed about it by a Ukrainian woman, married to a Polish man.[9]
The perpetrators, using the watchword, entered the village, shouting in Polish that they were members of the Home Army and calling all Poles to come out to them. Soon afterwards, they attacked the railway station, killing those on duty (including one Ukrainian, who was murdered by mistake[10]), and people waiting for trains. Telegraph wires were then cut and the Ukrainian nationalists began burning houses, killing all Poles they encountered. According to witnesses, among the attackers were teenage boys, some of them aged 12. The nationalists were commanded by the son of a Greek-Catholic priest from nearby Zadarow, who died during the attack.[11]
A Polish defence unit, after the initial shock retaliated, killing one of the leaders of Ukrainian nationalists, who was the son of an ethnic Ukrainian Greek-Catholic priest from Zadarow. The massacre lasted the whole night, and it ended only after a Polish Home Army unit from the village of Puzniki came to the assistance of the villagers. It has been estimated that the Ukrainians killed some 150 Poles, of which only 78 were identified. The whole village was burned; only the church and the rectory were spared.[12] According to one witness, Danuta Konieczna, who was ten years old, the fanaticized Ukrainian nationalists did not spare anybody, killing even babies in their cribs.[13]
Jan Zaleski, a survivor, recalled:
In the morning, my parents went to the ruins of Korosciatyn. They heard stories which were difficult to believe. The Ukrainians got into the house of the Nowicki family. Mr Nowicki escaped, but the Banderites found his wife and their little daughter Barbara. Both were killed with axes, their skulls were crushed. Nowicki himself became insane and he walked around with his baby, who also survived, talking to everybody about his beloved wife and daughter.[14]
Tarnopol Voivodeship until September 17, 1939
The majority of those murdered were buried in a mass grave on March 2, 1944, in the local cemetery, during a service led by Latin Church Polish priest reverend Fr. Mieczyslaw Krzeminski. The majority of survivors left Korosciatyn for Monasterzyska, and in 1945 the majority were transported by Soviet authorities to the Polish so-called Recovered Territories (former eastern German provinces), mostly to the area of Strzelin and Legnica. In the meantime, ruins of Korosciatyn became houses of a large group of Lemkos, resettled from the area of Krynica, who renamed the village after their old village in Lesser Poland's mountainous regions from which they themselves had been expelled by Polish communist units during Operation Vistula.
The area of Korosciatyn was witness to several other massacres. Two weeks after the tragedy, the Ukrainians murdered 39 Poles from the village of Bobulince near Podhajce, including parish priest, reverend Jozef Suszczynski. After the Red Army entered the Buczacz County, the murders continued, with February 1945 being the most tragic month:
February 2, 1945. the UPA killed 133 inhabitants of Ujscie Zielone,
February 4, 126 Poles were murdered in Barycz,
February 7, 50 Poles were burned alive in Zalesie,
February 12, 110 Poles were murdered in Puzniki,
February 25, 39 Poles were killed in Zaleszczyki Male.
Currently, the only sign of the Korosciatyn Massacre is a wooden cross, which bears no inscriptions, placed in the local cemetery. The massacre is also commemorated with a special tablet, in the complex of Brother Albert Foundation in Radwanowice near Kraków.
The massacre continues to strain present relations between Poles and Ukrainians.
Around six million Polish citizens are estimated to have perished during World War II. Most were civilians killed by the actions of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the Lithuanian Security Police, as well as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its offshoots.
The massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia were carried out in German-occupied Poland by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) with the support of parts of the local Ukrainian population against the Polish minority in Volhynia, Eastern Galicia, parts of Polesia and Lublin region from 1943 to 1945. The ruling Germans also actively encouraged both Ukrainians and Poles to kill each other. The peak of the massacres took place in July and August 1943. The massacres were exceptionally brutal and affected primarily women and children. The UPA's actions resulted in up to 100,000 deaths. Other victims of the massacres included several hundred Armenians, Jews, Russians, Czechs, Georgians, and Ukrainians who were part of Polish families or opposed the UPA and sabotaged the massacres by hiding Polish escapees.
In July 1941, 25 Polish academics from the city of Lwów along with the 25 of their family members were killed by Nazi German occupation forces. By targeting prominent citizens and intellectuals for elimination, the Nazis hoped to prevent anti-Nazi activity and to weaken the resolve of the Polish resistance movement. According to an eyewitness the executions were carried out by an Einsatzgruppe unit under the command of Karl Eberhard Schöngarth with the participation of Ukrainian translators in German uniforms.
Wiktor Poliszczuk was a Polish-Ukrainian-Canadian politologist specialising in the history of political thought, who wrote about the Polish-Ukrainian relations during World War II and issues relating to the emergence of Ukrainian nationalism in the 20th century resulting in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Poliszczuk's work has been praised by several Ukrainian, Polish, Canadian, American, and Ukrainian historians, but also acknowledged for his Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation effort.
The Naliboki massacre was the 8 May 1943 mass killing of 127 or 128 Poles by Soviet partisans in the small town of Naliboki in German-occupied Poland.
The Huta Pieniacka massacre was a massacre of the Polish inhabitants of the village Huta Pieniacka, located in modern-day Ukraine, which took place on February 28, 1944. Estimates of the number of victims range from 500 to 600-800 to 1,200.
Zygmunt Jan Rumel was a Polish poet and, during World War II, underground officer of the Bataliony Chłopskie partisans in the Wolhynia Region of the Second Polish Republic. Rumel's poetic talent was acknowledged by renowned Polish poet Leopold Staff and dramatist Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. One of his poems entitled "Dwie matki" in which Rumel described his love of Poland and Ukraine, was published in a popular Płomyk magazine in 1935. He was killed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army during the massacres of Poles in Volhynia in 1943.
The village of Adamy was burned to the ground during the Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, and no longer exists. It was destroyed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army aided by the Ukrainian peasants who set ablaze 200 Polish farms and murdered whomever they could find. Adamy used to be located in powiat Kamionka Strumiłowa (county) near Busk in the Tarnopol Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic before the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939.
Stara Huta is a village in northwestern Ukraine, in Kovel Raion of Volyn Oblast, but was formerly administered within Stara Vyzhivka Raion. The population of the village is 1024 people.
Tadeusz Bohdan Isakowicz-Zaleski was a Polish Roman Catholic and Armenian Catholic priest, author and activist. He was a leader of the anticommunist student opposition in Kraków in the late 1970s, became a Solidarity chaplain in Kraków's Nowa Huta district in the 1980s, and later an avid supporter of the lustration of the Polish Church. On 3 May 2006, he was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, one of Poland's highest orders. Subsequently, in 2007, he was awarded the Order of the Smile and the Polish Ombudsman's Order of Paweł Włodkowic.
Massacre of Wola Ostrowiecka was a 1943 mass murder of Polish inhabitants of the village of Wola Ostrowiecka located in the prewar gmina Huszcza in Luboml County of the Volhynian Voivodeship, within the Second Polish Republic. Wola Ostrowiecka no longer exists. It was burned to the ground during the Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.
Massacre of Ostrówki refers to the mass murder of the Polish inhabitants of the Volhynian village of Ostrówki, located during the interbellum in the gmina Hushcha, Liuboml, Volhynian Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic, now known as Ostrowky, located in the Manevychi Raion of Volyn, Ukraine. On 30 August 1943, armed members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA) murdered 438 Poles. Among the victims were 246 children under the age of 14.
The Pidkamin massacre or the Podkamień massacre of 12 March 1944 was the massacre of Polish civilians committed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) under the command of Maksym Skorupsky (Maks), in cooperation with a unit of the 14th SS-Volunteer Division "Galician". The victims were ethnic Polish residents of the Eastern Galician village of Podkamień in the occupied Second Polish Republic's Tarnopol Voivodeship. During the war the area was administratively part of the Nazi German Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Estimates of victims include 150, more than 250 and up to 1000.
The Parośla I massacre was committed during World War II by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) under the command of Hryhorij Perehijniak "Dowbeszka-Korobka" on 9 February 1943 against the ethnic Polish residents of the village of Parośla in the Nazi-controlled Reichskommissariat Ukraine. It is considered a prelude to the ethnic cleansing of Poles in the Volhynia region by the UPA, and is recognized as the first mass murder committed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the area. Estimates of the number of victims range from 149 to 173.
Było sobie miasteczko... is a 2009 Polish historical documentary film about the 1943 Kisielin massacre in the village of Kisielin, located in the Wołyń Voivodeship in Poland before World War II,. The film, directed by Tadeusz Arciuch and Maciej Wojciechowski, was produced by Adam Kruk for Telewizja Polska.
Czarny Las massacre was a mass murder of around 250–300 ethnic Poles during World War II, carried out by the Gestapo on the orders of SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Krueger in Czarny Las near Stanisławów, during the night of August 14/15, 1941.
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