TheKorosciatyn massacre took place on the night of February 28/29, 1944,[1] during the province-wide wave ofmassacres of Poles in Volhynia inWorld War II. Korosciatyn, which now bears the name of Krynica and is located in western Ukraine, was one of the biggest ethnicPolish villages of theinterwar Poland's within Buczacz County inTarnopol Voivodeship(pictured). Located along the railway line fromTarnopol toStanislawów, in 1939 it had some 900 inhabitants, all of them being ethnic Poles.[2]
Korosciatyn had an elementary school, aCatholic church and a railway station. It belonged to the Catholic parish of nearbyMonasterzyska, which also covered several nearby villages. Among the most famous of the citizens of this parish, are Rev.Stanislaw Padewski (bishop of theDiocese of Kharkiv), professorGabriel Turowski (personal physician of the laterJohn Paul II) as well as two scientists, professorMichal Lesiow of Lublin’sMaria Curie University and doctorJan Zaleski of Kraków's Pedagogical College.[3] Altogether, in 1939 the Deaconry ofBuczacz 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 afterjoint Nazi and Soviet attack on Poland in September 1939, theUkrainian nationalists murdered the inhabitants of a Polish settlement of Kolodne near Wyczolki,[5] then the Sovietsdeported 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, whenGerman 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 Korosciatyn massacre took place on the night of February 28/29, 1944.[7] Ukrainian nationalists of theUkrainian 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 theHuta Pieniacka massacre.
The carnage lasted the whole night. According to Aniela Muraszka, a survivor of themassacre, 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 theHome 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 anethnic Ukrainian Greek-Catholic priest from Zadarow. The massacre lasted the whole night, and it ended only after a PolishHome 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 evenbabies 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 theBanderites 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]
The majority of those murdered were buried in a mass grave on March 2, 1944, in the local cemetery, during a service led byLatin Church Polish priest reverend Fr. Mieczyslaw Krzeminski. The majority of survivors left Korosciatyn forMonasterzyska, and in 1945 the majority were transported by Soviet authorities to the Polish so-calledRecovered Territories (former eastern German provinces), mostly to the area ofStrzelin andLegnica. In the meantime, ruins of Korosciatyn became houses of a large group ofLemkos, resettled from the area ofKrynica, who renamed the village after their old village inLesser Poland's mountainous regions from which they themselves had been expelled by Polish communist units duringOperation 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 nearPodhajce, including parish priest, reverend Jozef Suszczynski. After theRed Army entered the Buczacz County, the murders continued, with February 1945 being the most tragic month:
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 nearKraków.
The massacre continues to strain present relations between Poles and Ukrainians.
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