On 28 February 2026, in Warsaw, we commemorated the victims of the massacre in Huta Pieniacka. 

The ceremony commenced with a Holy Mass at the Field Cathedral of the Polish Army for the Poles murdered in Huta Pieniacka by Ukrainian nationalists. Subsequently, the Deputy President of the Institute of National Remembrance, Dr  Karol Polejowski, paid tribute to the victims by laying wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw.

A letter to the participants in the ceremony was addressed by the President of the Republic of Poland, Karol Nawrocki. It was read out by his advisor, Adrianna Garnik. In his message, the President recalled that five days after armed clashes between the Polish underground and the 4th Galician Volunteer SS Police Regiment and the UPA, on 28 February 1944, the village was encircled by substantial forces of both formations. In the burning buildings, from gunfire and as a result of brutal torture inflicted by Ukrainian assailants, more than 850 people perished. Huta Pieniacka ceased to exist, and today, apart from a monument commemorating the murdered inhabitants, nothing indicates that a large and vibrant Polish village once stood at the site of the crime.

“I do not lose hope that, thanks to people of good will, this great wound in Polish hearts - the memory of the suffering inflicted upon our compatriots in the name of the hateful ideology of Banderism - will be healed with the balm of truth, repentance, mercy, and reconciliation,” wrote President Karol Nawrocki in his letter.

The Deputy President of the Institute of National Remembrance, Dr Karol Polejowski, emphasized that in the Volhynian Voivodeship alone, of the two and a half thousand Polish towns which existed there during the period of the Second Polish Republic, more than one and a half thousand were irretrievably destroyed.

“The work that remains to be done there will span generations, yet we cannot abandon it. This is required of us by our duty as an institution of the Polish state, and by our conscience and our hearts. For we, Poles, feel a profound bond with the generations that came before us” the Deputy President stated.

The commemorative events were organized by the Huta Pieniacka Association and the Office for War Veterans and Victims of Oppression, in cooperation with the Institute of National Remembrance.

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Weeks into 1944, the Volhynian Genocide reached Huta Pieniacka, Galicia.
Late on 27 February, a messenger from Polish Home Army Złoczów Inspectorate arrived in the village. He brought a warning of approaching elements of the 14th SS "Galizien" Division, and orders for the local self-defence to mount no resistance and retreat: a nearby settlement raided a few days before was extensively searched for weapons but otherwise suffered no harm.

Towards the end of the Second World War, the villages in the eastern Polish territories under German occupation did not fear the Germans as much as Ukrainians: for several months, the genocide campaign by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, aided by Ukrainian peasantry, had been decimating Volhynian Poles. So far, Huta Pieniacka had not suffered it, but was not optimistic.

A few days before, local self defence ran into a patrol of the 4th SS Police Regiment. A few such regiments had been formed out of Ukrainian volunteers to the "Galizien" Division, and entrusted with anti-partisan operations and protecting the rear of the Wehrmacht troops fighting the Red Army. In the shootout near Huta Pieniacka, two 4th Regiment policemen were killed.

Early on 28 February, the village was surrounded by at least 500 more, as well as a Ukrainian Insurgent Army unit and Ukrainian peasants from nearby settlements. The villagers were herded into the school and church, their homes searched, looted and put to the torch. A few dozen people who had hidden inside and ran out of flames were cut down with machine-gun fire.

The bulk of the population, kept in the school and church buildings, waited. From time to time, 4th Regiment policemen took someone for questioning, which usually ended with death. The interrogators wanted information about Soviet partisans.

Having completed the questioning and executed a few Soviets found in a shelter in one of the houses, the 4th Regiment locked the residents in groups of 20 to 50 in several barns and set them on fire. Those who tried to escape, but were shot. The rest, over 800 Polish men, women and children, burned to death.

Other attempts at ethnic cleansing of Eastern Galicia would follow, both under German occupation and then Soviet domination, and the Polish death toll of the genocide would go over the 100,000 mark.

Read more about the Volhynian genocide on our dedicated website: https://volhyniamassacre.eu/

See our downloadable exhibition: https://tinyurl.com/k39ez9ta