In the spring of 1944, about 30 Polish residents died in Gozdów close Hrubieszow, among them women and children. The work for the murders is borne by soldiers of the Ukrainian division of Waffen-SS Galizien and Ukrainian police in the German service. The names of any of the victims have been established, the remainder stay nameless in collective memory.
March 1944 in Gozdow
Gozdów lies in the municipality of Werbkowice, in the territory of Hrubieszów, on land which during the business became an arena of Polish-Ukrainian conflict. In the spring of 1944, the village touched a crime that for decades was mentioned little. The perpetrators were, as reported by publications dealing with this history, soldiers of the Ukrainian division of Waffen-SS Galizien and Ukrainian policemen operating in the German service.
About 30 people died. Among the victims were women and children, so people who had nothing to do with any armed struggle. The attackers entered the Polish village and left the dead behind and the fear, which long took distant the feeling of security.
Victims by Name
Some of the murdered were able to find by name, surname, and age. Eighteen people are listed as recognized, between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five. Among them were Joseph Bacon, who was thirty-six years old, and eighteen-year-old Władysław Bacon. Joseph Barański died at the age of thirty-one, 20-year-old Marian Koryczko and Zygmunt Pękalski, who was twenty-one.
Behind each of these names stands a peculiar man, family, farm. Restoring names to victims is the first step without which memory remains an empty word. The others are inactive waiting for full identification.
Formation charged with crime
14. The Waffen-SS Grenadier Division, known as SS Galizien, was formed in 1943 from Ukrainian volunteers under German command. Its name in Polish memory is connected primarily with the crime in Pieniacka Huta. In late February 1944, a fewer weeks before the events in Gozdów, troops of this formation pacified this Polish village in east Małopolska, killing respective 100 inhabitants and burning buildings.
The gozds fall into the same pattern of violence. It was not an isolated incident, but an component of a wider wave of assaults directed at Polish people of border and border lands in fresh years of war.
Memory obligation
Crimes like the 1 in Gozdow have long remained on the margins of authoritative history. They were not comfortable in the Polish People's Republic where the crime of Ukrainian nationalists was suppressed, or later, erstwhile political considerations made them avoid delicate cards of relations with their neighbour.
Refusing for fact is not an act of hostility towards the Ukrainians today. It's a work to the murdered. Until the victims of Gozdov are numbered and mentioned by name, the debtors stay those who inherit this memory today.
Source: Magna Polonia
