WOLISH SEARCH - GENOCIDUM ATROX

WOLISH SEARCH - GENOCIDUM ATROX

Volynska massacre: 30 August 1943 in the light of the accounts of witnesses of crimes committed.

July 11 is celebrated as the National Day of Memory of Victims of Genocide made by Ukrainian nationalists on citizens of the Second Republic of Poland. Therefore, we want to callback the date of 30 August, which was recorded in the past of Volyn by bloody events taking place in the village of Ostrówka and Wola Ostrowiecka in the territory of Luboml, as well as Stary and Nowy Gaj, Sucha-Loza and Budy Ossowskie in the territory of Kowel.

During the interwar period, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (CNS) was established in this area. The main goal was to fight the revolution of an independent Ukrainian national state, within its borders was to find territory besides inhabited by the Ukrainian minority. This meant that the imagination of the recently created state was to include modern Ukraine and lands belonging to Poland after planet War I, including Podlasie, Chełmszow, Zamojsko, Nadsanie and the area inhabited by Lemków. In order to accomplish the goal, it was decided to remove from these lands all aliens who took over Ukrainian land according to the CNS, which led to the extermination of the Polish population in this area.

An encouraging event for the implementation of Ukrainian nationalist plans was the 3rd Reich attack on the USSR on 22 June 1941, then the Ukrainians warmly welcomed the German troops entering. The Ukrainian police and the lower-level administrative authority were formed, consisting of CNS activists, which were accepted by the German authorities. This allowed Ukrainian nationalists to carry out their plan leading to the removal of Ukrainian Poles from the emerging state. The organization of Ukrainian Nationalists had its armed formation called UPA (Ukrainian Pows dancing Army), which murdered the Polish population inhabiting these areas. In light of the accounts of these events, we can illustrate the brutality of these crimes. Since the spring of 1943, attacks on Poles have intensified in Volyn. The following months led to the apogee taking place in July 1943. However, this did not end these tragic events. The collections of the Institute of National Memory preserved the memories of witnesses concerning these events directly.

Among the reports are those relating to the village Ostrowka and Wola Ostrowiecek by Antoni Łysiak and Tadeusz Kański, who served in the 27th Volynska Division of National Army Infantry. This division later fought with UPA troops attacking the Polish population. In the fall of 1942, a underground National Army facility was established in Ostrówków and Wola Ostrowiecka. Unfortunately, self-defense could not be created, due to the fact that the inhabitants of both villages felt that there was a low likelihood of attacks by Ukrainians, due to the fact that for many years they lived in accord with Poles.

Antoni Łysiak, 1 of the residents of Ostrówówka village, recalls that his seven-man household had murdered Konstanty and Karolina's parents and Adam's grandfather. He then mentions in his account that already before the local parish priest Fr Stanisław Dobrzański spoke about the murders committed on the Polish population. He pointed out the request to organize self-defense in Ostrówków and Wola Ostrowiecka, as they were purely Polish villages, without 1 Ukrainian resident. As a result, UPA troops were expected to attack, especially since respective people going to the village of Sokół and Przekurka did not return home. Antoni Łysiak acted in the local conspiracy, on the night from 29 to 30 August together with 5 colleagues kept watch. In the morning they thought the UPA patrols would never come to their village again. The last gathering with Antoni's parents was like this:

I just lay on the couch, and here I hear the shooting from the Plain. I put on my coat due to the fact that I didn't take my shoes off and run in front of the house, and there was my parent and father, and I'm telling them it started.

Writing down his account in 1985, Anthony didn't know where his parents were. He figured his parent had died along with another women and children under Kokoraczew. Antoni Lysiak survived only due to the fact that he hid in his uncle Pradun's barn. He mentioned that UPA troops had calmed the residents and told all residents to assemble at the school where everything would be explained to them at the meeting. erstwhile people arrived, device guns were placed and men were ordered to go to school, and women, children, and older people were ordered to church. 5 men were led from school to pits on Jan Trusiuk's farm, the buildings of Suszka, and behind Edward Balanda's forge, where they were murdered by blows to the back of the head with an axe or wooden machugs. The destiny of those gathered in the church was different due to the fact that UPA originally planned to burn down the local church, but the Germans coming from the village of Parasa interrupted them. As a result, they led women, children, and older people outside Kokorawiec Forest and there they ordered to lie face down and then shoot themselves in the head. A akin destiny happened to the village of Wolej Ostrowiecka, but that women and children were locked up in a school which was thrown down with grenades and set on fire. Antoni Lysiak claims that the survivors of those who hid in cellars or barns, due to the fact that the buildings during the execution were not burned due to the grain and livestock stored there.

According to Lysiak, about 1,200 people were murdered in Luboml County. According to Leon Popek, at least 474 people died in Ostrówków and 568 people died in Wola Ostrowiecka. In these 2 towns the massacres were made by the Łysego hens, on the night of 29 on 30 August attacking the village of Jankovec and Kąta. According to Antoni Łysiak's account, the local Ukrainian population from the village of Przekurka, Sokół, Traps, Zapola, Huszcza and Raża took part in the crime.

On 30 August 1943, during the liquidation by Ukrainians of the Polish villages Wola Ostrowiecka and Ostrówka, Fr Stanisław Dobrzański died. He belonged to the Home Army, he was the 1 who encouraged the citizens of Ostrówówka village to organize self-defense. The branch of the Ak from Ja hr wanted to take the priest to the parish in Rymaczach, but he did not want to leave his parishioners in specified a hard situation. During the robbery, he hid in a pile of straw, but was found by Ukrainians who most likely cut off his head with an axe. On the same day in Ostrówka, a monk of the Society of Christ, Józef Harmat, was killed helping him in the pastoral work.

After the UPA attack, soldiers of 27 Volyn National Army Infantry Division arrived in these 2 villages. 1 of them, Tadeusz Kański, ps. “Muszka” wrote down memories of these events, conveying their tragic image. After entering the village of Ostrówka together with another soldiers they found a mass grave, its appearance was forever recorded in the memory of Tadeusz Kański, who recounts:

Bodies placed in a dug ditch 1 by 1 rows, heads in 1 direction, and the next row heads in the other direction. On the advanced layer of bodies they put straw and set fire, the wind of the charred straw blew. These bodies looked terrible, there were bloated bladders on the bodies, any cracked and redned with ash meat, any charred bodies, this grave remains in my memory to this day. I don't want anyone anything like that.

Many bodies were thrown into the well in Wola Ostrowiecka. And as Antoni Lysiak recalls, the school was burned down. Tadeusz Kański gives a description of the beastry carried out by UPA troops:

...near school we encountered a lying female with a kid at her chest, a kid pinned with forks to the mother, and so these forks stuck in the body of the kid and the mother.

After passing the full village, soldiers encountered respective more mass graves. The most affected by the author of the account was the sight of foams coming to the surface stained with blood and bloodstains leaking from buried graves, which may have shown that the people buried there were inactive alive. Tadeusz Kański as a individual who saw the village after the tragic murders of UPA troops stated that people did not, but they were Satans in human skin.

In the study of the Lublin Kurenia of the UPA “Łysoho” of September 1943, there is information about the murders on the Polish population in Ostrówków and Wola Ostrowiecka: “On 29 August 1943 I conducted an action in the villages of Wola Ostrowiecka, Ostrówka of the Holovian region. I have destroyed all Poles from tiny to old. I burned all the buildings, and took the property and cattle for the purposes of curing.”

On the 68th anniversary of these events, re-burials were held in Ostrówków, and in 2011 an exhumation was carried out on a fresh game close Ostrówków on the so-called. Dead Pole, where mostly the remains of women and children were found. The re-burial ceremony took place at the old Polish cemetery, where exhumed victims were buried in 1992. In 1992, the Society of Friends of Silicon and Volynsko-Podolska Land in Lublin organized an exhumation of the collective grave in Wola Ostrowiecka. The remains of murdered Poles were buried in the cemetery in Ostrówka that same year. Dr. Leon Popek, Deputy manager of the Bureau of Commemoration of the Walk and Martyrdom of the IPN, which is derived from the village of Ostrówków, plays an crucial function in commemoration of Ostrówków and Wola Ostrówcka.

Other towns that were brought by the tragedy on August 30 are the neighbouring villages of Sucha-Loza and Gaj. It is worth noting the account of Józefa Cyniak from D. Fila. There were 26 families surviving in Sucha-Loza. From the events on August 30, 22 people survived, including 6 children: Czesław Fila (the brother of Józefa), Władysława Pora, Leon Stańcz, Franciszek Buczak, Mieczysław Buczak, Igliński. The UPA method of action was akin to in another towns. It was attacked since morning, surrounding farms and gathering residents in 1 place. In the case of the village of Sucha-Loza, this happened on the farm of Józef Wybult under the pretext of meeting. Joseph lost his father Antoni, parent Maria, brothers Jan and Kazimierz and sister Natalia during these bloody events. Among the survivors, Józef Cyniak remembers Gabriel Buczak, who managed to last with his full family, due to the fact that they hid in a shelter made in a cast manure behind a barn. On the same day in grove, the Polish population was locked up in school and murdered. Josepha Cyniak's godfather, surviving in Różyszcze, organized men into a kind of self-defense possessing a weapon, and then on the 4th day after the execution they went to Gaia and Sucha-Loza. There was blood in grove in the school there, and just outside the school there was a pile of axe, fork, and scythe from manure and blood. Next to the school building, there was a shooting ditch where the bodies were buried. After they were excavated, it turned out that the body was massacred and cut. In his account Cyniak describes the execution of his uncle's wife, showing the cruelty of UPA soldiers:

...she was killed from a bullet to the head, next to her boy 9 months, the head was trampled into the ground, and the knife or bayonet in the neck was stabbed ... seemingly the cruel killer stood on the head with his shoe, and the knife was inflicting fatal wounds.

According to Cyniak, 97 people were killed in Sucha-Loza, and around 1,000 people were killed in Gaju. Ukrainians from Wielick, Podlisy, and Janówka, together with the militants of the execution on the Polish population, performed. The full action was directed by Sotenna “Wowk”.

Poles were besides murdered in the village of Budy Ossowskie in Kowel region on 30 August 1943. The author of this study is Jan Remiszewski, ps. „Kajus” from the 27th Volyn Division of the Home Army, who lived from the side of the village of Wołczak. He mentions the brutality of soldiers. Ukrainian nationalists did not gather them all in 1 place, as was usual. They simply went and to the runners fired, children and elders killed bayonets or firearm flasks, and left badly wounded to die. In Remiszewski's account, there is simply a very drastic event erstwhile a UPA soldier pushed a kid into a bayonet and lifted it up while it was inactive moving, and the soldier cried "It's Polish Eagle!". In the village of Budy Ossowskie it is estimated that 289 people were murdered. The 27th Volynian Infantry Division of the National Army Lieutenant Władysław Czermiński, ps. “Jastrząb” entered this village on 5 September and found already burnt buildings, decaying corpses scattered all over the village, and drowned children in wells. Those who survived, the squad took with them to the village of Zasmyk.

The reports presented focused on the towns of Ostrówówka, Wola Ostrowiecka, Gaj, Sucha-Loza and Buda Ossowskie. The main component connecting these villages is the same date erstwhile tragic events took place, or 30 August 1943. On the basis of these accounts, it was possible to illustrate the manner of action and brutality from which murders were carried out by UPA troops in Volyn. The evidence of these memories helps modern people to realize the magnitude of the tragedy that the Polish population in Volyn experienced. Poles and Ukrainians utilized to live together as neighbors, and during planet War II this relation changed into victims and murderers. It should be stressed that not all Ukrainians agreed to the murders performed in Poland. Those Ukrainians who stood up for Poles met death.

Dr. Izabella Kopczyńska, Branch Office of National Education of the Institute of Education in Poznań

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Bibliography:

L. Popek, Ostrówwki: Volynian genocide, Lublin 2011.

Władysław Czasko, Ewa Czaszko, Genocide by Ukrainian nationalists on the Polish population Volyn 1939-1945, T. I and II, Warsaw 2000.

Fr Waldemar W. Żurek, Murdered on August 30, 1943 in the parish of Ostrówówka in Volyn, “Yearbook of the Lublin Genealogical Society”, T. III, 2011, pp. 132-168.

Source:

An account of Antoni Lysiak, the Union of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy. The Management Board of the Capital Warsaw Voivodeship. Environment Soldiers of the 27th Volyn National Army Division, IPN GK 932/1

The account of Tadeusz Kański, the Union of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy. The Management Board of the Capital Warsaw Voivodeship. Environment Soldiers of the 27th Volyn National Army Division, IPN GK 932/1

The relation of Józefa Cyniak, the Union of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy. The Management Board of the Capital Warsaw Voivodeship. Environment Soldiers of the 27th Volyn National Army Division, IPN GK 932/2

An account of Jan Remiszewski, the Union of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy. The Management Board of the Capital Warsaw Voivodeship. Environment Soldiers of the 27th Volyn National Army Division, IPN GK 932/2

Websites:

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Celebrations in Ostrówka