Huta Pieniacka massacre

Memorial to the victims of the Huta Pieniacka massacre (2008)

One of the memorial plaques (2007)

Memorial plaque with names of the victims (2007)

In the Huta Pieniacka massacre during the German occupation of Poland on February 28, 1944, all Polish residents of the eastern Polish village of Huta Pieniacka were murdered and the entire village burned down. Estimates of the number of victims range from 500 to 1200. The town is located in what is now Brody Raion in the Ukrainian Lviv Oblast .

Investigations

The Warsaw Department of the Polish Institute for National Remembrance (IPN) began the investigation in November 1992. The investigations were interrupted between 1997 and 2001 and are now being continued by the Kraków department.

During the investigation it was found that the massacre was carried out by the 4th Battalion of the 14th SS Volunteer Division “Galicia” . According to Polish witnesses, German officers issued the orders, which were then carried out by Ukrainian members of the division. Subsequently, Ukrainian civilians plundered the property of the murdered.

On the other hand, partisans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) stated that members of SS Police Regiment 4 - which consisted of Ukrainians but was not yet officially integrated into the SS division “Galicia” - had committed the massacre with the support of fighters from the UPA .

memorial

On February 28, 1989, a memorial for the victims was erected in the destroyed village, which was desecrated by strangers a short time later. On the initiative of Andrzej Przewoźnik from the Polish Council for the Preservation of the Remembrance of Struggle and Martyrdom , the Government of the Republic of Poland had a new memorial for the victims erected in 2005. On February 28, 2009, a commemoration ceremony for the 65th anniversary of the massacre took place in Huta Pieniacka, under the auspices and in the presence of the Presidents of Poland and Ukraine, Lech Kaczyński and Viktor Yushchenko .

On January 9, 2017, the memorial was desecrated by strangers: They blew up the central stone cross and smeared the stone tablets with the names of the victims with the colors of the Ukrainian flag and the Ukrainian insurgent army as well as with the double victory rune of the SS. Before the 73rd anniversary After the massacre in February 2017, residents of the surrounding Ukrainian communities renewed the memorial: the stone tablets with the names of the victims were cleaned and a replica of the cross made of black granite was erected. The inscriptions are the same as before, but without the quote from Kornel Ujejski . The procedure was not discussed with the Polish side, which had initially spoken out in favor of a temporary solution with a simple wooden cross without inscriptions. The Polish ambassador to Ukraine welcomed the restoration as a “nice surprise”.

literature

Howard Margolian: Unauthorized entry: The truth about nazi. Was criminals in Canada: 1946–1956. University of Toronto Press 2006, pp. 136-146.
Grzegorz Motyka: Ukraińska partyzantka 1942–1960. Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN, Oficyna Wydawnicza Rytm, Warszawa 2006, ISBN 83-88490-58-3 (ISP PAN), ISBN 83-7399-163-8 (Rytm), ISBN 978-83-88490-58-3 .
Tadeusz Piotrowski: Poland's holocaust: ethnic strife, collaboration with occupying forces and genocide in the Second Republic, 1918–1947. McFarland 1998, ISBN 0-7864-0371-3 .
Sulimir Stanisław Żuk: Skrawek piekła na Podolu: Huta Pieniacka - Hucisko Brodzkie. Warszawa 2007, ISBN 978-83-924746-0-9 .