Korosciatyn massacre

Korosciatyn, which now bears the name of Krynica and is located in western Ukraine, was one of the biggest ethnic Polish villages of the interwar Poland's within Buczacz County in Tarnopol Voivodeship (pictured).

Stanislaw Padewski (bishop of the Diocese of Kharkiv), professor Gabriel Turowski (personal physician of the later John Paul II) as well as two scientists, professor Michal Lesiow of Lublin’s Maria Curie University and doctor Jan Zaleski of Kraków's Pedagogical College.

In June 1941, when German units pushed the Red Army out of the area, local Ukrainians of the village of Czechow murdered their Polish neighbors.

[9] The perpetrators, using the watchword, entered the village, shouting in Polish that they were members of the Home 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.

[12] According to one witness, Danuta Konieczna, who was ten years old, the fanaticized Ukrainian nationalists did not spare anybody, killing even babies in their cribs.

[14]The majority of those murdered were buried in a mass grave on March 2, 1944, in the local cemetery, during a service led by Latin Church Polish priest reverend Fr.

Two weeks after the tragedy, the Ukrainians murdered 39 Poles from the village of Bobulince near Podhajce, including parish priest, reverend Jozef Suszczynski.

After the Red 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.