The Huta Pieniacka massacre was a massacre of the Polish inhabitants of the village Huta Pieniacka, located in modern-day Ukraine, which took place on February 28, 1944. Estimates of the number of victims range from 500 (Timothy Snyder) to 600-800 (Grzegorz Motyka) to 1,200 (Sol Littman).
A 2003 investigation by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance and a 2005 investigation by the Institute of History at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences both concluded that the Galician SS carried out a massacre of civilians. They disagree on the scale and on the balance of responsibility between the Ukrainians and their German commanders. According to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, —700 to 1,500 people, including around 1,000 Huta Pieniacka residents, plus people from surrounding villages who had sought refuge in the village, were killed, and the action was committed by the German 4th SS Police Regiment and 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician). Polish witnesses testified that the orders were given by German officers. According to Polish witness accounts and scholarly publications, Nazi policemen were allegedly accompanied by a paramilitary unit of Ukrainian nationalists under Włodzimierz Czerniawski's command, including members of the UPA and inhabitants of local villages who intended to seize property found in the households of the murdered.
According to the Ukrainian investigation, the dead numbered 500, and the massacre was committed by Waffen-SS Galizien–affiliated soldiers under the initiative of SS Police regiments. The Warsaw division of the "Commission for the punishment of crimes against the Polish people" launched an investigation in July 2001.
Background
Huta Pieniacka was a village of about 1,000 ethnically Polish inhabitants in 200 houses, located in the Tarnopol Voivodeship, Poland (today Ternopil Oblast in Ukraine). In 1939, following joint German and Soviet attack on Poland, the voivodeship was annexed by the Soviet Union, becoming part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. After the 1941 German attack on the Soviet Union, it fell under German occupation.
The village was a major Polish resistance centre, fighting against German forces and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. In January and February 1944, Soviet troops were frequent visitors, and this was noticed by both the Ukrainians and the Germans. An armed stronghold, Huta Pieniacka had fought off several attacks in 1943 and early 1944.
Massacre
On 23 February 1944, a patrol of the 4th SS Police Regiment composed of Ukrainian volunteers , approached Huta Pieniacka. There was a skirmish with the local Polish self-defense in which two SS soldiers were killed. A unit of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army came to the aid of the patrol and the SS was able to withdraw. The German occupation force therefore ordered the "pacification" of the village.
Kazimierz Wojciechowski (who was burnt alive that day), commandant of Polish forces in the village, had been informed by the Polish Home Army of the approaching enemy around two hours before the attack, and told to refrain from fighting, hide or remove weapons, and evacuate leaving only women, children and the elderly behind. The Poles however, had too little time to prepare a defense or to escape, and only some young residents managed to flee.
The attack commenced around 5-6 am, and the village was surrounded by 500-600 Ukrainian and German fighters. It was shelled by artillery. The attackers herded the villagers into their barns, set fire to the village and it burned all day. According to Bogusława Marcinkowska, a prosecutor of the Branch Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation in Krakow,, the SS threw one infant against a wall and cut open the stomach of a pregnant woman. According to witnesses, the massacre was observed by a German reconnaissance plane. The perpetrators left at 5 pm. Many of them were drunk and singing songs. Only four houses remained, and on the next day a mass funeral took place. Those who survived escaped to Zloczow and other towns, never to return.
Witnesses interrogated by the Polish prosecutors of "The Head Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation" described the details of crimes committed against women, children and newborn babies. After murdering the inhabitants of Huta Pieniacka, the local Ukrainian population looted the remaining property of the murdered, loading everything on horse-drawn carts that had been prepared beforehand. According to those Poles who survived, the Germans did not participate in the massacre itself.