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01.03.2021

Commemorating Poles murdered in Huta Pieniacka

On 28 February, Deputy President of the Institute of National Remembrance Krzysztof Szwagrzyk and Deputy Director of the IPN’s Office of Search and Identification Anna Szeląg took part in the ceremony honoring the 77th anniversary of the massacre of Polish population in Huta Pieniacka, Ukraine.

IPN's Deputy President Krzysztof Szwagrzyk in Huta Pieniacka

The day before, a solemn mass at the Lviv Cathedral, attended by K. Szwagrzyk, initiated the celebrations. Then, the Deputy President lit candles at the plot of the insurgents of the January Uprising at the Łyczakowski Cemetery in Lviv.

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76 years ago, Ukrainian nationalists murdered several hundred of Huta Pieniacka residents. The crime on the Polish population of the village, took place on 28 February 1944. On that day, Ukrainian soldiers of the 4th SS Police Regiment (consisting of volunteers to the SS Division "Galizien"), commanded by a German commander and supported by the troops of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, as well as members of a paramilitary detachment of Ukrainian nationalists, murdered Polish men, women and children.

According to estimates of the investigation carried out by the Institute of National Remembrance in Cracow, about 850 people were killed. Professor Grzegorz Motyka estimates that there were between 600 and 800 victims. The inscription on the monument in Huta Pieniacka informs about 1,000 killed Poles.


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