Roman Catholic parish
St Sigismund
05-507 Słomczyn
85 Wiślana Str.
Konstancin deanery
Warsaw archdiocese
Poland
GENOCIDE perpetrated by UKRAINIANS on POLES
Data for 1943–1947
Site
II Republic of Poland
Nieledew
Hrubieszów pov., Lublin voiv.
contemporary
Hrubieszów cou., Lublin voiv., Poland
Murders
Perpetrators:
Ukrainians
Victims:
Poles
Number of victims:
min.:
35
max.:
35
events (incidents)
ref. no:
07138
date:
1944.05.26
site
description
general info
Nieledew
The Ukrainians murdered 31 Poles.
source: Żurek Stanisław, „Calendar of the genocide – May 1944”; in: portal: Volhynia — web page: wolyn.org [accessible: 2021.02.04]
source: Motyka Grzegorz, „So it was in Bieszczady. Polish-Ukrainian battles in 1943-1948.”, in: Volumen Publishing House, Warsaw 1999, Warsaw 1999, p. 202
Konieczny Zdzisław claims that 22 Poles, including 19, were burned alive.
source: Żurek Stanisław, „Calendar of the genocide – May 1944”; in: portal: Volhynia — web page: wolyn.org [accessible: 2021.02.04]
source: Konieczny Zdzisław, „Polish-Ukrainian relations in what is now Poland in the years 1918-1947, Wrocław 2006”, in: , p. 212
Marian (Momot – note S.Ż.) instinctively withdrew and hid in a nearby barn. After a few minutes, through the cracks in the planks, he noticed armed Ukrainians approaching along a dirt road from the side of the forest. They were wearing dark uniform coats. They led his father under the barrels of their rifles. Without delaying a moment, he ran towards the house. Rushing into the room, he only shouted:
— „Run away, Ukrainians!” — and ran out.
At that time, Marian's mother was staying at home, talking to a friend of hers, a friend named Mrs. Bielecka, and his 11‑year‑old sister Zuzanna, who at the same time started to run away. The mother stayed home. A dozen or so meters from the building, UPA uniformed with a long weapon in their hands were already sitting on a long oak log. Somewhat surprised, they watched the two children run away. From the surrounding fields covered with already quite high grains, more and more Banderites emerged immediately surrounding the hamlet.
— „I was running, breathless” — recalled today 80‑year‑old Zuzanna Głąb nee Momot. –— „The cereal crops were already high, I was running downhill, I was falling over every now and then, I was picking up and running. My legs were tangled. Bullets whistled around me, the machine gun rattled behind me”.
Above the meadows, closer to the village, there was a farm by the Małyszów family. The farmer had just returned home when his wife noticed the sound of gunshots and that someone was escaping through the nearby grain. The horses were still tied to the cart. Malysz jumped on the cart and urged it towards the running girl. Reaching the height of the child, without leaving the goat, he grabbed the collar of Zuzia's dress and threw it on the wagon, while covering it with a bundle of hay. He drove away as quickly as possible towards his yard.
— „The shots of the machine were silenced. From the corner of my eye I glanced towards my house” — Ms Zuzanna recalls — „The Ukrainian, who was shooting behind me, hung the gun over his shoulder and returned uphill towards our buildings”.
Małysz and his child drove to their yard. After some time, Zuzia left the Małysz's farm on her own and marched towards the manor, where she was looked after by an unknown woman. With her, tired, she fell asleep.
At the same time, when the girl ran away through the crops, the other Momota brothers, 13‑year‑old Janek, grazed cows in the meadow. Seeing from a distance that something was happening in his family farmyard, he instinctively started running towards the buildings. When he got there, the Bandera followers caught him, pushed him into the apartment and after a while they opened fire. The witnesses who inspected the fire site with the bodies of the murdered Poles the next day claimed that they found the charred body of Aniela Momot, hugging her youngest son with one hand. Apparently, the woman was still alive when the boy, unaware of near death, was pushed inside the house. Meanwhile, Zuzia's older brother was running away in a different direction. When he ran down the hills where the buildings of the hamlet stood, he headed for a footbridge on a small tributary of the Huczwa — Białka river — a river crossing the surrounding meadows. Right behind the footbridge, he came across a native of the village of Bereść Rusina, a cousin of Ukrainian neighbors from Nieledewo colony. The Ukrainian, seeing the boy fleeing in terror, tried to stop him and downplayed the whole incident, urging him to go home. The boy did not obey. He ran away until he could observe what was happening with his house from a safe distance.
The Banderites expelled Poles from their homes. A dozen or so unfortunates were driven from the colony to the Momota farm. They were placed in a house where they were ordered to lie down side by side with their bellies on the floor, and then shot in the back and back of the head. The Banderites opened fire with machine guns on those who tried to escape, as evidenced by the scales found near the windows and doors of a wooden house. The bodies of those shot while trying to escape were thrown back into the building, which the bandits set on fire a moment later. The animals were released from the wooden livestock buildings, which were then set on fire.
Among the murdered was a certain Filipczuk, one of the local Ukrainians, who was helping Mr. and Mrs. Wincenty and Katarzyna Oleszczuk with pig slaughter that day. The bandits knew it was their homie. A bloodied Kenkarta was found in Filipczyk's pocket. The UPA did not know him, however. They did not want to leave any uncertain witnesses after their crime. After the destruction of the house with the bodies of the murdered people, the Banderites began to burn the rest of the farm buildings. It seemed completely irrational to take farm machines and tools outside the yard and set them on fire outside.
After dusk, long after the bandits had withdrawn, Marian decided to see for himself what they had done. Only the Momot family farmyard was burnt out of the entire colony. The Ukrainians murdered 19 people, including the boy's parents and two of his brothers: Janek, described earlier, and 21‑year‑old Wacek, whom the bandits had dragged out of the Szymański family's apartment, where he was visiting his fiancée Regina. He died with her, her two younger siblings and her parents. All the bodies were charred, but the boy recognized his family members by the scraps of clothing that had survived.
In despair, he reached the manor house in Nieledewo, where a German military unit was stationed, protecting e.g. Polish refugees rescued from the Volhynian massacre, as well as inhabitants of the surrounding villages burnt by Ukrainians. Fugitives from Volhynia and local fire victims crowded on the floors of manor barns […] The next morning, Marian found his sister asleep among other children.
— „When I saw Marian above me, I immediately wanted to come back.
— «Let's go home», I said.
— «We don't have a home anymore, Susan».
— «So we're going back to mom».
— «We also do not have mom anymore»”
— Zuzanna recalls the dramatic conversation with her brother many years later […]
At that time, the inhabitants of Nieledwia were digging up the remains of their relatives from the site of the camp site. Charred bodies of human bodies were collected in sheets and tied in bundles. Wacław Momot was recognized only by the metal lighter found under one of the human hulls. The remains of the Momots were placed in one square box. The rest of those murdered without identification were placed in separate boxes. The funeral in the cemetery in the village of Trzeszczany was protected by a mounted unit of German soldiers. One Ukrainian from Nieledwia, Jan Maciocha, a friend of Wacek Momot, attended the funeral. He told his mother:
— „If our people killed him, the Poles can kill me”.
Maciocha attended his friend's funeral from beginning to end. A hair did not fall off his head. After the war, he was resettled together with other Ukrainians beyond Bug river to Soviet Ukraine.
source: Żurek Stanisław, „Calendar of the genocide – May 1944”; in: portal: Volhynia — web page: wolyn.org [accessible: 2021.02.04]
source: Ferenc-Chudy Piotr, „We don't have a home anymore, Zuzia”; in: „Gazeta Polska”, in: July 13, 2011
perpetrators
Ukrainians
victims
Poles
number of
textually:
35
min. 35
max. 35
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