From c. 1938 ministered in the parish in Ozeryany, then in Tlumach district of the Polish Stanislaviv Voivodeship, c. 7 km south of Tlumach, on the road from Tlumach, c. 10 km to the northwest, to Horodenka in the southeast, c. 2‐6 km from the Dniester, which runs in the same direction and separated Stanislaviv Voivodeship from Ternopil Voivodeship. In 1939, it had an estimated population of c. 2,200 people. It is more difficult to estimate the nationality of the village's inhabitants. In 1921, according to the census, in Ozeryany Polish Roman Catholics constituted c. 48%, and Greek Catholic Ukrainians c. 51%, but it is known that in the years 1921‐1931, between the two censuses, in the rural part of Tlumach district, there was an c. 50% increase in the number of Poles and a c. 2% decrease in the number of Ukrainians. This is prob. reflected in the population of the parish in Ozeryany. In c. 1939, in the Ozeryany Roman Catholic branch of the Tlumach parish, there were c. 2,080 parishioners, i.e., c. 57%, while in the Greek Catholic parish, there were c. 1,580, i.e., 43%. It can be assumed with a great degree of probability that in Ozeryany itself the national structure was similar. It is also possible that a few Jews lived in Ozeryany.

After the German and Russian invasion of Poland in 09.1939 and the start of World War II, 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, his parish found itself in the territory granted to Russia by the allies. The Russian occupation began. The Russians subjected Poles in particular to repression, arresting Polish intelligentsia, teachers, doctors, landowners, government officials, foresters, policemen, and families of Polish military personnel. Many other 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. High taxes were imposed on the clergy, and religious education was removed from schools. The fate of the Greek Catholic clergy did not differ from the experiences of the Polish clergy during this period.

After the German attack on 22.06.1941, on their erstwhile ally, the Russians, the area around his village was first occupied by Hungarian troops fighting alongside the Germans, then by German troops, who in 09.1939 handed over control to the German civilian authorities. When the Germans took over actual control, the village became part of the Germ. Kreishauptmannschaft Stanislau (Eng. Stanislaviv County), within the Germ. Distrikt Galizien (Eng. District of Galicia), part of a German‐occupied and run quasi‐state called the Germ. Generalgouvernement (Eng. General Governorate), i.e. GG. Although no information has survived about the behavior of Ukrainians in his parish at that time, it is worth quoting a significant, prophetic entry by a nun, Sr Sophie Matilde Ustyanowicz CSIC, a later victim of the genocidal OUN/UPA, who served at the time in the house of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception CSIC in Yazlovets, c. 35 km to the east, on the other side of the Dniester, from a letter to her superior: „You have to devote yourself to the local population (I am talking about educational work) […] Spreading hatred towards everything Polish has completely depraved this unfortunate people. Social relations after this war will change the world even more than after that one [i.e. World War I]”.

Although the Germans quickly dissuaded Ukrainian nationalists from their hopes for a „free Ukraine”, they exploited the revealed anti‐Polish and anti‐Jewish resentments in a different way. The years 1941‐1943 were marked in particular by the extermination of Jews, i.e. the implementation of the genocidal plan Germ. «Endlösung der Judenfrage» (Eng. Final Solution of the Jewish Question), which in the GG was codenamed «Aktion Reinhardt» (Eng. Operation Reinhardt). The local center for gathering Jews was Tlumach. There, units of the Ukrainian, collaborative Germ. Ukrainische Hilfspolizei (Eng. Ukrainian Auxiliary Police), operating in some regions as Germ. Schutzmannschaft (Eng. Protection Battalions), took an active part in all stages of the Germ. «Aktion Reinhardt». Already in 08.1941, according to Jewish sources, c. 1,200‐1,500 Hungarian Jews were driven to Tlumach. The Jewish „Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos” states: „The Ukrainians ordered their expulsion [from Tlumach] to a camp near Horodenka, together with several local Jews who had helped them. [There] they tied them with barbed wire and threw them into the Dniester”. At the end of 08.1941, the Germans ordered the establishment of a Germ. Judenrat (Eng. Jewish Council), charging it with responsibility for all matters of the Jewish community. The Germ. Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst (Eng. Jewish Order Service) were to help in achieving these goals. In the spring of 1942, Jews from the surrounding villages were herded to Tlumach, including prob. from his Ozeryany, and the number of Jews in the town increased to c. 3,500. On 05‐06.04.1942, in the first so‐called Germ. Aktion (Eng. operation), the Germ. Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst gathered c. 1,000 Jews in a Polish school, who were then deported to Stanislaviv and soon murdered there. At the end of 05.1942, the ghetto in Tlumach was closed — earlier, in 03.1942, was established, with the active support of the Germ. Judenrat, as an open ghetto — prob. surrounding it with a barbed wire fence and posts of the Germ. Ukrainian Hilfspolizei. According to Jewish sources, the ghetto was to be run, on German orders, by three Poles, agents of the Germ. Kriminalpolizei (Eng. Criminal Police), i.e. Kripo, former „teachers”, coming from various parts of Galicia, although information about this can not be confirmed. In the ghetto itself, c. 160‐260 Jews were murdered, c. 280 died of hunger, disease and exhaustion, and several hundred were deported to the Germ. Zwangsarbeitslager für Juden (Eng. Forced Labor Camp for Jews) in Lviv on Janowska Street, i.e. the so‐called Janowski ZALfJ Lemberg camp, providing slave labor for the Germ. Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke DAW company — belonging to the genocidal Germ. Die Schutzstaffel der NSDAP (Eng. NSDAP Protection Squad), i.e. «SS», a paramilitary formation subordinate to the ruling National Socialist German Workers' Party NSDAP in Germany — which supplied the German war machine with supplies of uniforms, wood, metals, and repairs to war equipment. The ghetto was liquidated on 08.09.1942, after the harvest had ended and the Jews who took part in it had been driven into the ghetto. C. 2,000 Jews were herded by the Germans and the Germ. Ukrainian Hilfspolizei to the train station and from there taken to Stanislaviv, where some were murdered and the rest sent to the Germ. Vernichtungslager (Eng. extermination camp) VL Belzec. In 12.1942, the German authorities were able to declare Tlumach and the surrounding area to be Germ. „Judenfrei” (Eng. „Jew‐free”).

Immediately thereafter, in 02.1943, in Volyn, c. 200 km to the north, 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 (Eng. Armed Forces) 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 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 ranks. Perhaps as many as 10,000 Ukrainians did so.

Volyn was drenched in Polish blood. Tens of thousands of Poles were murdered by the Ukrainians — with German passivity — in an extremely barbaric manner. Hundreds of villages were burned.

In the Germ. Distrikt Galizien, the UPA — so as not to „annoy” the Germans — did not operate. Instead, groups emerged operating under the euphemistic name Ukr. Українська Народна Самооборона (Eng. Ukrainian National Self‐Defense), i.e. UNS, and later also Ukr. Самооборонні кущові відділи (Eng. Self‐Defense Unit), i.e. SKW, reinforced with those experienced in the genocide of Jews, „unemployed” after the end of the Germ. «Aktion Reinhardt», deserters from the Germ. Ukrainische Hilfspolizei and Schuma. Shukhevych entrusted the position of commander of UNS to the génocidaire Alexander Lutsky, nom de guerre „Andriyenko”, trained in 1940 in Kraków, the capital of the GG, in the so‐called „Konovalets Officers' School”, a degenerate with a similar career path to his commander, i.e. through the Germ. Sondergruppe Nachtigall and the Germ. Schutzmannschaftsbataillon 201 to the UNS.

At the same time, the Germans decided to create a battlefront‐line Ukrainian division. From 28.04.1943, the formation — within «SS» — of the Germ. 14. Waffen‐Grenadier‐Division der SS – ukrainische Nr. 1 (Eng. 14th Grenadier Division of the Waffen‐SS – 1st Ukrainian), i.e. «SS‐Galizien» began. The formation of the «SS‐Galizien» deepened the division within the OUN — one faction supported the collaborationist «SS‐Galizien», another, associated with Shukhevych, among others, condemned it — maybe because he got acquainted with the speech of the Reichsführer of the Germ. Die Schutzstaffel der NSDAP (Eng. NSDAP Protection Squad), i.e. «SS», a paramilitary formation subordinate to the ruling National Socialist German Workers' Party NSDAP in Germany, Heinrich Himmler, Germ. „auf dem Appell des Führerkorps der Galizischen SS‐Freiw. Infanterie–Division in Heuhammer am 16 Mai 1944” Eng. „at the roll call of the commanders of the Galician Volunteer Infantry Division of the SS in Heuhammer on 16 May 1944”, i.e. the 14th Grenadier Division of the Waffen SS (1st Ukrainian), commonly known as «SS‐Galizien», in which the German leader said: „Your homeland has become so much more beautiful since you got rid of — on our initiative, I must say — those inhabitants who were so often a dirty stain on the good name of Galicia, namely Jews. I know that if I ordered you to liquidate Poles, I would give you permission to do what you already desire so much. However, the privilege of issuing such an order belongs exclusively to the savior of Europe, Adolf Hitler”.

Hitler, it seems, did not manage to issue such an order, but Shukhevych undertook the task without his permission.

The ordinary of his Stanislaviv eparchy, Bp Gregory Khomyshyn, acted yet differently, condemning the nationalist and genocidal policies of the OUN. According to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance IPN, Bp Khomyshyn „opposed the German occupation authorities' decree regarding the involvement of Greek Catholic priests in the creation of the SS‐Galizien division, forbidding priests from leaving their parish jobs and serving as division chaplains”. The Greek Catholic Metropolitan of Lviv, Abp Andrew Szeptycki, did exactly the opposite.

His attitude in Ozeryany towards these events is unknown. It seems certain, however, that acted in accordance with the recommendation of his shepherd, Bp Khomyshyn.

When, at the turn of 1943/1944, it became clear that Germany was losing the war in the East — on 24.12.1943, the great Russian offensive known as the Dnieper–Carpathian Operation began, which rapidly began to shift the German–Russian battlefront, e.g., towards Lviv, Ternopil, and Stanislaviv — the OUN/UPA decided to extend the «Genocidium Atrox» to the Germ. Distrikt Galizien. The Ukrainian génocidaires then formed, among others, the OUN/UPA operational group „UPA‐West”, under the command of Vasyl Sydor, nom de guerre „Shelest” — a degenerate with a similar career path to his superior, the aforementioned génocidaire, Roman Shukhevych, and his predecessor as UNS commander, Alexander Lutsky, i.e., from the Germ. Sondergruppe Nachtigall, through the Germ. Schutzmannschaftsbataillon 201, where they gained experience exterminating Jews — who ordered to „continuously strike at Poles until they are completely destroyed from these lands”. The responsibility for carrying out the «Genocidium Atrox» near Tlumach rested in the UPA Military District WO‐4 „Hoverla”, commanded by Mykola Tverdokhlib, nom de guerre „Hrin” (Eng. „Thunder”), a degenerate who perfected his genocidal craft — of course! — exactly the same way as his superiors.

In the Ozeryany area, attacks on Poles began. Till 04.1944, they were individual in nature. In Ozeryany and the neighboring village of Grushka, Ukrainians murdered c. 4‐5 Poles.

The murders stopped when the Russians occupied the area around Tlumach at the end of 03.1944. For a short time, for the Germans on 07.04.1944 launched a counterattack. This coincided with the Russians ending the Dnieper–Carpathian Operation and halting frontline fighting for the spring period. The Germans managed to push the Russians back to the northeast, beyond Buchach, and the area became a frontline area. And then, in 04.1944, OUN/UPA génocidaires murdered „on the roads” — as sources state: prob. the road between Tlumach, then in German hands, and Horodenka, perhaps in Russian hands — 14 Poles near his village.

The chronology of the events of his life in 1944‐1945 is unfortunately unknown. The events described above took place at the end of the Greek Catholic Lent and Easter, which that year fell on 16.04.1944. Therefore, the thesis that it was then that began „openly in his sermons to condemn the murder of Poles by the genocidal Ukrainian organization OUN/UPA” seems very probable, and its formulation justified.

At the same time, the prob. also in connection with the events described above, the Greek Catholic parish in the village of Hrushka was „abandoned”/„left” — as various sources put it — by its parish priest. Took then under his pastoral care this village as well. Hrushka, c. 3 km west of Ozeryany, in 1939 inhabited by c. 2,600 people, was de facto a Ukrainian village — prob. c. 95% were Greek Catholic Ukrainians; perhaps c. 100 Poles also lived there.

After a few months, the Russians launched a new offensive, i.e., the Lviv–Sandomierz Operation, and on c. 24‐25.07.1944, they entered Ozeryany and Hrushka. The Russian occupation began.

The genocidal OUN/UPA „lay low” for half a year, adapting to the changed conditions — after all, it no longer had tactical support, or at least neutrality, from the Germans, for the Russians treated the OUN/UPA as an enemy. At the end of 1944, however, it launched another wave of attacks on the Polish community. The decisions of the Tehran Conference of 28.11‐01.12.1943, when the treacherous British and Americans agreed to establish the post‐war Polish border along the Curzon–Namier line, i.e. de facto recognizing the legitimacy of the Russian invasion of Poland in 09.1939 and Russian claims expressed in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pacts of 1939, were not yet known. The Yalta Conference of 04‐11.02.1945, when the Allies and the Russian occupier formally decided to move the Polish border westward, to the line of the Bug River, had not yet taken place. But signals about the new order that was to come were already reaching both Poles and Ukrainians. The OUN/UPA intensified the genocidal anti‐Polish campaign.

Around 20‐21.12.1944 — Polish sources say in 11.1944 — the OUN/UPA attacked the prison in Tlumach. According to Ukrainian sources, 45 Ukrainians imprisoned there were released. Polish sources supplement this information — 15 Poles were also murdered. According to reports from the Polish underground, in 11.1944 in the Stanislaviv Voivodeship, Ukrainians murdered 173 people, including 30 in Tlumach.

And then, on in 01.1945, was murdered in the village of Hrushka — some sources add that „in his home”, prob. meaning the rectory of the local parish — murdered.

Basically, all sources give the reason as „sermons in which he condemned the murders of Poles”.

It is not known who committed the murder. Perhaps — and this thesis seems most plausible — it was a unit of the Ukr. Служба Безпеки (Eng. Security Service), i.e. SB OUN, a part of the genocidal OUN, tracking down political and ideological opponents of the OUN, carrying out their physical liquidation, and also participating in the murders of the Polish population. Sources state that „SB OUN could only issue death sentences to "enemies of the Ukrainian nation" […] For minor offenses, the so‐called "buki" were used, i.e. beatings with beech sticks 10 to 50 times. Major offenses were punished by death. The sentence was carried out by shooting or hanging […] some group commanders "chopped off the heads of their victims"”. SB OUN was founded back in 1940, in the GG, under the watchful care of the Germans, and training was conducted, among others, in Zakopane, at the „Stamary” hotel. According to the contemporary website of this hotel, „the training included the principles of sabotage, sabotage, Gestapo interrogation methods and killing methods”. At the same time, i.e. on 20.02.1940, in Zakopane, in the villas „Pan Tadeusz” (Eng. „Sir Thaddeus”) and „Telimena”, the third so‐called „thematic conference” began between the Germ. Geheime Staatspolizei (Eng. Secret State Police), i.e. the Gestapo, and the Rus. Народный Комиссариат Внутренних Дел (Eng. People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs), i.e. the NKVD, two genocidal allied organizations, debating cooperation and ways of combating and exterminating Poles in the territories they occupied. In Zakopane, all these undertakings were supervised by the Gestapo, which had its headquarters in the „Palace” villa, where Polish patriots were being murdered. In 1944/1945, the commander, i.e. the referent, of the SB OUN was its co‐founder, the génocidaire Mykola Arsenych nom de guerre „Mykhailo”, and in the Stanislaviv region the command was held by a certain Petro Fedoriv nom de guerre „Dalnych”, who in 1940 trained near Kraków — perhaps in Zakopane.

After his death, in 03.1945, the genocidal OUN/UPA murdered 12 Poles in Hrushka, including the 6‐person family of the blacksmith and his relatives. They hacked 11 people to death in their beds while they slept, and threw one man — also hacked — into the Dniester.

On 12.10.2007, the génocidaire Roman Shukhevych was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine. On 10.12.2017, on behalf of the „Coordination Council for the Commemoration of Decorated Knights of the OUN and UPA”, génocidaire Vasyl Sydor was posthumously awarded in Lviv the Silver Cross of Military Merit of the UPA, 1st Class (No. 009). On 05.12.2017, on behalf of the same Council, the génocidaire Mykola Tverdokhlib was in Ivano–Frankivsk (i.e. Stanislaviv) posthumously awarded the Bronze Cross of Military Merit of the UPA (No. 042). génocidaire Mykola Arsenych received the UPA Golden Cross of Military Merit, 2nd Class, in 02.1946, confirmed by the Lviv Regional Council on 05.03.2008. Because he had survived 25 years in Russian labor camps, upon his return was granted an apartment in Lviv along with financial support. In 2007, became also an honorary citizen of the town of Sheptytskyi, formerly Krystynopol. In several locations, monuments and commemorative plaques have been erected to these Lat. „hostis humani generis” — génocidaire Petro Fedoriv has i.a. such a monument in his home village of Kryve — the schools were named after them.

Lat. „O Tempora! O mores!”