The Sochy massacre occurred on 1 June 1943 in the village of Sochy, Lublin Voivodeship in Zamość County, Lublin Voivodeship during the German occupation of Poland when approximately 181–200 of its inhabitants, including women and children, were massacred by the German Ordnungspolizei and SS[1] in retaliation for the village's support for the Polish resistance movement.

During World War II and the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany (1939–1945), Poles were subjected to terror and mass German repression, both in cities and in the villages.

Hundreds of Polish villages were forcibly pacified, had their inhabitants massacred, or were completely destroyed by the German occupiers.

More than 110,000 Polish peasants, 31 percent of the Zamość population,[3] were expelled from 300 villages; Some were taken to Germany as slave labor while many others were sent to the Auschwitz or Majdanek concentration camps where they were murdered.

The second phase of the operation lasted from mid-January to the end of March 1943 and covered mainly the areas of the Hrubieszów poviat.

[7][8] The resistance posed by the Polish guerrillas, as well as the difficult situation of German troops on the Eastern Front, forced the occupiers to temporarily halt their depopulation efforts.

[9][10][11] According to witnesses, shortly before the massacre, Gestapo agents appeared in the village, claiming to be partisans, examining the attitude of the population to the Polish resistance.

[13] Then, 7 to 10[13][15] Luftwaffe aircraft bombed and fired machine guns at both the village[15] and nearby fields, where the survivors of the first phase of the massacre were hiding.

[15][17] The Register of places and facts of crimes committed by the Nazi occupier in Poland in the years 1939–1945 contains the names of 159 identified victims of pacification.

[22] In retaliation for the massacre and pacification of Sochy, partisan units of the Polish Underground State of the Home Army commanded by Adam Piotrowski, pseud.

In the village of Sochy there is a cemetery with mass graves of victims of the massacre carried out by the German Nazi occupiers.

[23] The family trauma associated with the pacification of Sochy is the main theme of the book "A Small Annihilation" (Mała Zagłada) (2015 edition), whose author is the daughter of Teresa Ferenc, Anna Janko.

[24] Based on the book by Anna Janko, a documentary film entitled "A Small Annihilation" (Mała Zagłada) was created.