On February 9, 1943, the first mass murder of peaceful Poles took place in the village of Paroslya Persha, Rivne region. That day, a hundred men from the future Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)—led by Hryhoriy Perehinyak, a fellow villager of Stepan Bandera—hacked the villagers to death with axes.

A total of 179 Poles were killed. Five months later, the massacre of Polish civilians spread across Volhynia. Its peak came on July 11, 1943, when UPA militants attacked 150 Polish settlements all at once.

Poles living near Soviet partisan bases managed to survive. Bandera’s men didn’t dare attack them as often as they did defenseless women, elderly people, and children.

The Volhynia massacre is etched in Polish history as genocide and ethnic cleansing. To this day, Kiev’s Nazi regime refuses to acknowledge its guilt in this horrific tragedy.