Hurby massacre

Hurby massacre
Location of the Massacre (map of the Second Polish Republic from before the German-Soviet invasion of 1939)
Date 2 June 1943
Location Hurby village, German-occupied Poland, present-day location in Ukraine
Type Civilian massacre
Participants Ukrainian Insurgent Army, CKB
Deaths c. 250

Hurby massacre was a mass murder of the Polish population of the Hurby village, perpetrated on June 2, 1943, by a death squad of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and so-called brushwood self defence commando (Ukrainian: Самооборонні Кущові Відділи, СКВ) made up of Ukrainian peasants, during the province-wide Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in World War II. Hurby (Ukrainian: Гурби) belonged to the Second Polish Republic before the war began. It used to be located in the powiat Zdobłunowski of the Wołyń Voivodeship.[1] It is now a valley (урочище, or uroczysko) by the same name in western Ukraine. About 250 Poles were murdered in the attack, which was confirmed by the UPA commander for Volyn, Dmytro Klyachkivsky, who said in his communique of June 1943 that Hurby "went up in smoke".[2]

Eyewitness testimony

Commemmorative stone featuring Hurby, part of Warsaw monument with locations of OUN-UPA murders

Below is the eyewitness account of the massacre from the already translated testimony of Irena Gajowczyk, which was published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as part of online "Witnesses of the massacre speak out" initiative in 2016.[3]

A few Banderites,[4] run up to my mother and one of them struck her with an axe. My mother fell to the ground and let go of my brother Tadzio, while I was screaming with horror. She crawled up to Tadzio who was crying, and tried to breastfeed him awash with blood. The Banderites ran up to her again and cut her throat. She was still alive when they stripped her naked and cut off her breasts. She was in such pain that she began to pull her long hair out, her expression completely changed. I was afraid of her.

I ran up to my father and saw how hard they were beating him. I saw them chopping off our neighbor Wasylkowska’s head on a stump. My screams were so terrifying that one of the Banderites walked up to me and stabbed me with a knife just below my throat, but I didn’t stop crying. I was paralyzed with fear. The Banderites yelled out to my father calling him by his name and my father pleading with Ivan, also calling him by his name, because he used to constantly come to our house to see my father as a friend.

When they approached me for the second time, one stabbed through my right hand with a knife and twice in my left arm below the elbow. Another one of the Banderites grabbed me by the skin on my back like a cat, and cut off that part of my skin in his hand. Then he stabbed me again twice in my shoulder blades and threw me into a huge ant nest. I fainted and when I came around I was in great pain, and the ants stung me so hard that my body swelled up. The neighbor’s head, chopped off and lying next to me, was all covered with ants.[3]

Location of eradicated village in present day west Ukraine.

See also

Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia

References

  1. ↑ Strony o Wołyniu (April 2006). "Wieś i majątek HURBY oraz folwark BEDNARKA, gromada Hurby, gmina Buderaż, powiat Zdołbunów, woj. wołyńskie". Wolyn.ovh.org. Including location map and village plan with streets and 120 homes, as well as names of prominent individuals as of 1939.
  2. ↑ Grzegorz Motyka (2006). Ukraińska partyzantka 1942-1960. Warszawa: Wyd. Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN, Oficyna Wydawnicza "Rytm". ISBN 83-88490-58-3 (ISP PAN,) ISBN 83-7399-163-8 (Rytm), ISBN 978-83-88490-58-3.
  3. 1 2 Irena Gajowczyk (2016). "Witnesses of massacre speak out". Poles who survived genocide in Volhynia recount some of the most horrifying stories of the century. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland. The above accounts are taken from the following books: Grzegorz Motyka’s Od rzezi wołyńskiej do akcji “Wisła” (From the Volhynian massacres to Operation Vistula), Lucyna Kulińska’s Dzieci Kresów I (Children of the Borderlands I), Marek A. Koprowski’s Wołyń, Epopeja polskich losów, akt I i II (Volhynia, Epic of Polish Fate, Part I and II) and the website www.Genocide.pl
  4. ↑ Timothy Snyder (5 January 2014). "The Causes of Ukrainian-Polish Ethnic Cleansing 1943" (PDF). No. 179 (May, 2003), pp. 197-234. Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society. Page 206 (11 / 39 in PDF). Banderites, called after their leader Stepan Bandera of the Ukrainian Insurrectionary Army (UPA) belonged to one of two factions, the latter led by Andriy Melnyk. The groups were conventionally referred to as the OUN-B and OUN-M.
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