Wola Ostrowiecka massacre
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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 (powiat lubomelski) of the Volhynian Voivodeship,[1] within the Second Polish Republic. Wola Ostrowiecka no longer exists.[2] It was burned to the ground during the Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.[1]
Massacre of Wola Ostrowiecka | |
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Location | Wola Ostrowiecka, Volhynian Voivodeship, occupied Poland |
Coordinates | 51°17′50″N 23°55′2″E |
Date | 30 August 1943 |
Target | Poles |
Attack type | Shooting and stabbing |
Weapons | Axes, bludgeons |
Deaths | 529 |
Perpetrators | Ukrainian Insurgent Army |
Motive | Anti-Catholicism, Anti-Polish sentiment, Greater Ukraine, Ukrainisation |
The perpetrators were nationalists of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army's territorial command Piwnicz, aided by local Ukrainian peasants. On 30 August 1943, the Ukrainians surrounded the village, and began murdering the Polish inhabitants. Altogether, 79 families were murdered in their entirety, and in another 37 families, only one family member survived.[3] Polish sociologist and researcher Tadeusz Piotrowski puts the number of murdered Poles at 529,[4] out of total village's population of 870. On the same day, Ukrainian nationalists murdered 438 Poles in the neighboring village of Ostrowki (see Massacre of Ostrowki).