In 1939, began his ministry in the small town of Zofjówka, located in the forests, c. 30 km northeast of the Lutsk district, in the Polish Volyn Voivodeship. It was essentially a Jewish town, where in 1921 a Catholic church was built to serve Poles from the surrounding villages and settlements. In 1939, the town — called Trochimbrod by the Jews — had an estimated population of c. 1,600 Jews, while the Roman Catholic parish numbered c. 3,889 souls.

There survived the Russian occupation, which began as a result of the German and Russian invasion of Poland in 09.1939 and the start of World War II Volyn, pursuant to the genocidal German–Russian agreement of 23.08.1939, known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, confirmed on 28.09.1939, by the so‐called „Treaty on the Borders and Friendship between Germany and Russia”, also known as the second Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, fell to the Russians. In the first step, the Russian occupiers arrested Polish intelligentsia, teachers, doctors, landowners, government officials, foresters, policemen, and the families of Polish military personnel. In the years 1940‐1941, many Poles became victims of four large waves of deportations „to Siberia”. Accounts often mention that „they came at night, without warning, and took away entire families, from infants to the elderly”. „When we went out into the yard, they allowed my mother to look into the chest — unfortunately, it was empty, because our neighbors had already emptied it. We took practically nothing, because they did not allow us to move around the house […] There were large snowdrifts and heavy frost”. In addition, 150,000–200,000 men were conscripted into the Russian army, and c. 100,000 were forced to work for Russian industry, mainly in the mines of the Donets Basin, in heavy industry plants in the Urals and in Siberia. Then the surveillance of priests and monks began. The clergy were subjected to high taxes.

After the German attack on 22.06.1941, on its erstwhile ally, the Russians, and the beginning of the German occupation, became administrator of the small parish of Lysyn, c. 35 km south of Lutsk, in the Berestechko deanery. The village, in 1939 in the Polish county of Dubno, was inhabited by an c. 550 people, of whom Roman Catholic Poles constituted c. 22% and Orthodox Ukrainians c. 78%, which corresponded to the ethnic structure of the county. There were no Jews. In c. 1938 the Roman Catholic parish had c. 691 faithful.

Arrived there in 1942 — the village was in the Germ. Kreisgebiet Dubno (Eng. Dubno County) within the Germ. Generalbezirk Wolhynien–Podolien (Eng. General District Volyn‐Podolya), part of the body known as the Germ. Reichskommissariat Ukraine (Eng. Reich Commissariat of Ukraine) — prob. during the culmination of the persecution of Jews in the area. His parish included the small town of Demydivka, which became the local center of the implementation of German policy towards Jews. It was inhabited by c. 1,200‐1,400 people, of which Jews — living in the center — constituted half of the population, and the other half being Ukrainians living on the outskirts. During the first week of the occupation, based on Ukrainian denunciations, the Germans murdered several local Jews, accused — admittedly not without justification — of collaborating with the Russians during the Russian occupation. A Germ. Judenrat (Eng. Jewish Council) was established among the Jews, which was made responsible for the implementation of German orders by the Jewish community. Among the Ukrainians, on the other hand, a collaborative formation was established, the Germ. Ukrainische Hilfspolizei (Eng. Ukrainian Auxiliary Police), also referred to, depending on the actual subordination to the relevant German authorities, as the Germ. Schutzmannschaft (Eng. Protection Battalions), i.e. Schuma. The Germ. Ukrainische Hilfspolizei quickly began to enrich itself on property stolen from Jews, e.g. by robbing the food rations allocated for Jews by the Germans.

At the beginning of 1942, the Germans began implementing the genocidal plan Germ. «Endlösung der Judenfrage» (Eng. Final Solution of the Jewish Question), i.e. the extermination of all Jews in the occupied territories. In the Germ. Reichskommissariat Ukraine, Jews were not actually sent to the specially established Germ. Vernichtungslager (Eng. Extermination camp), but were murdered on the spot. For this purpose, ghetto was established in Demydivka in 05.1942, and Jews from the surrounding villages were herded into it — with the help of the Germ. Ukrainische Hilfspolizei. The liquidation of the ghetto took place on 08.10.1942. The murders were committed by a German unit of the Germ. Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers SS (Eng. Security Service of the Reichsführer SS), i.e. «SD», with the support of local functionaries of the Germ. Ukrainian Hilfspolizei. C. 600 Jews were murdered near Demydivka. For the next few months, the génocidaires of the Germ. Ukrainian Hilfspolizei were still hunting for Jews who had escaped death. The town was deserted, and the empty houses were slowly occupied by Ukrainian executioners, but the German génocidaires could report that Demydivka was Germ. „Judenfrei” (Eng. „free of Jews”).

Soon after, it was the turn of the Poles. In 02.1943 Roman Shukhevych, nom de guerre „Taras Chuprynka”, the chief commander of the Ukrainian, genocidal OUN/UPA organisation, who in 1941 was a member of the Ukrainian Germ. Sondergruppe Nachtigall (Eng. Special Group Nightingale) — a unit of the Germ. Wehrmacht that took part in the German attack on Russians in 1941, accused of participating in the Jewish pogrom in Lviv in 1941 — and later a member of the Germ. Schutzmannschaftsbataillon 201 (Eng. 201st Protection team Battalion) — responsible for the murder of Jews and civilians in the territory of Belarus — issued an order: „The extermination operation [of Poles] should be carried out according to the following principles: Polish villages are to be burned, and their populations massacred. Attacks on towns will take place in broad daylight, not at night. In mixed villages, the Polish population alone should be liquidated, and farmsteads should be burned only if they are 15 meters away and when there is no risk of the fire spreading to neighboring Ukrainian buildings. The Ukrainian population will receive instructions as to where to gather during the attack […] For every Ukrainian murdered, whether by Poles or Germans, 100 (one hundred) Poles will be executed”.

It was the de facto signal for the commencement of the «Genocidium Atrox» — i.e. the genocide perpetrated by Ukrainians, known as „Volyn genocide”.

Immediately thereafter, in 03.1943, the UPA issued an appeal to members of the Germ. Ukrainische Hilfspolizei, to desert and join the UPA. Perhaps as many as 10,000 Ukrainians did so.

The choice of Volyn for the beginning of the «Genocidium Atrox» was not accidental. Firstly, Volyn in pre‐war Poland had prob. the smallest percentage of Polish population in the entire country. Secondly, it was probably the least economically developed voivodeship of Poland, which was caused by the deliberate policy of the Russians in the 19th century, ruling then in part of partitioned Poland — the direct route to the heart of Russia, to Moscow, runs through Volyn, so no roads were laid there, no bridges built, no marshy areas around the Pripyat drained, no industry located, and no schools established. Thirdly, and finally, it was Volyn (and the Chełm region) that was to be incorporated into the borders of the short‐lived Ukrainian state, to be established on the basis of the Treaty of Brest‐Litovsk of 09.02.1918 during World War I, agreed by the Central Powers (German Empire, Austro–Hungarian Monarchy) — in 1941 the Germans by creating Germ. Reichskommissariat Ukraine simply fulfilled the obligations undertaken at that time.

In the vicinity of his parish village, the first Ukrainian attacks had prob. taken place in 03.1943. They did not yet have the character of collective, genocidal brutality — this was to happen later, after the „detailing” of the OUN/UPA tactics by the UPA commander in Volyn, Dmytro Kłaczkiwski, nom de guerre „Klym Savur”, in 06.1943, who, anticipating Germany's defeat in the war with Russia, explained and ordered: „We should carry out a major operation to eliminate the Polish element. When the German troops withdraw, we should use this opportune moment to eliminate the entire male population aged 16 to 60 […] We cannot lose this fight, and we must weaken Polish forces at all costs. Forest villages and villages located near forest massifs should disappear from the face of the earth”. They took the form of individual attacks on Polish farms. Thus, in Tesluhiv, seat of the neighboring parish, between 03‐04.1943 (and prob. also in 05.1943), Ukrainians murdered a dozen or so Polish families, i.e. practically all the Polish inhabitants of that village.

And then, the parish priest of Tesluhiv, Fr Jerome Szczerbicki, moved to the village of Vovkovyi, which belonged to his parish, c. 13 km from Lysin. It was a larger village, inhabited in 1939 by an estimated c. 2,700 people, of whom c. 67% were Ukrainians, but there were also c. 550 Poles. The Ukrainians did not yet dare attack such Polish communities.

On the night of 18‐19.05.1943, in the village and settlement of Kalynivka, on the other side of the Zhabychi River, a right tributary of the Styr River, c. 4‐5 km from Vovkovyi, „the neighboring Ukrainians murdered over 30 Poles and another 7 people while escaping to Dubno”. Went then to visit Vovkovyi.

Both priests decided to move to Lysyn, or perhaps even — as sources seem to suggest — to leave the area and make their way along the Zhabychi River, through the town of Demydivka, c. 8 km away — now devoid of Jews, but prob. with the German police stationed there — then through Lysyn, to Lutsk, c. 45 km away, or by a roundabout route to Dubno, c. 38 km away.

They didn't get far, barely 2.5 km, to the village of Rohizne, where, in a similar manner as in Tesluhiv, the Ukrainians murdered all the Poles between 03‐05.1943, c. 20 families, i.e. c. 120 people.

There they were detained by the Ukrainians. These were prob. former policemen of Germ. Ukrainian Police, „seasoned” in the murder of Jews in Demydivka, and by then „unemployed”, who had deserted to the genocidal OUN/UPA.

The murder took place on the road from Vovkovyi to Demydivka. The two priests were bound with barbed wire, hacked with axes, thrown alive into a 19‐meter–deep well, and then buried under earth and stones.

In 1944, after the German defeat and the beginning of another Russian occupation — the Russians drove the Germans out of Volyn in 02.1944, during the so‐called Dnieper–Carpathian Operation — a Polish priest, Fr Stanislav Mazak, attempted to unearth the bodies. Obtained a guarantee of safety from one of the Russian units, but only for one day. The work could not be completed and, due to the constant threat from Ukrainian génocidaires, the area had to be abandoned.

The priests" bodies remain in a filled‐in well to this day.

For this, on 12.10.2007, the génocidaire Roman Shukhevych was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine. And in 12.2020, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, in a resolution, recognized génocidaire Dmitry Klachkivsky as „the leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Volyn and a participant in the struggle for Ukraine's independence in the 20th century”. In several locations, monuments and commemorative plaques have been erected to these Lat. „hostis humani generis”, the schools were named after them.

Lat. „O Tempora! O mores!”