In 1939, ministered in the large village of Ilavche, c. 14 km east of the district town of Terebovlya, in the Ternopil Voivodeship. It had an estimated population of c. 3,500, including c. 23% Roman Catholic Poles, c. 76% Greek Catholic Ukrainians, and c. 50 Jews. However, the proportions in the entire district were slightly different, namely c. 47% were Roman Catholic Poles, c. 50% Greek Catholic Ukrainians, and c. 3% Jews.

After the German and Russian invasion of Poland in 09.1939 and the start of World War II, in accordance with the agreement between the two allies, approved by the genocidal Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 23.08.1939, the Ternopil Voivodeship fell to the Russians. The Russian occupation began.

Ukrainians and Jews „welcomed the Russian occupiers with flowers”, publicly expressing — as happened in many nearby towns and villages — joy at the fall of „lordly Poland”. Many Polish homes were robbed at that time: „The Ukrainians came at night, stole whatever they could, and demolished the house”. In the autumn of 1939, arrests of intelligentsia, teachers, doctors, landowners, government officials, and families of Polish military personnel began. In the years 1940‐1941, many other Poles became victims of four large waves of deportations „to Siberia”. One of the victims of the first one, on 10.02.1940, recalled that they were driven — in the middle of a frosty night — to the railway station in Terebovlya. There, they were packed into cattle wagons.

„There were bunks there, and on each bunk, one family. There was a hole in the floor that served as a toilet. There were also two iron stoves”. Among the victims were residents of Ilavche, including children — the Russians deported them, i.a. to the settlement of Korzha in the southern part of the Russian Komi Republic, where some died, while others returned to Poland only in 1946. Poles from Polish military colonies were particularly deported, including Zofiovka, c. 10 km away. Lists of those to be deported were mostly prepared by Ukrainians, who were then eagerly collaborating with the Russians.

During the second deportation in 04.1940, 241 people were to be transported in ten freight cars from the station in Terebovlya. For several weeks they traveled eastward, never to return to their family homes. And among those who remained, surveillance of priests and monks began. High taxes were imposed on the clergy.

On 22.06.1941, Germany attacked its erstwhile ally, the Russians, and the German occupation began. Ilavche then found itself in the Germ. Kreishauptmannschaft Tarnopol (Eng. Ternopil County), was part of the Germ. Distrikt Galizien (Eng. Galicia District), within the German‐occupied and run quasi‐state called the Germ. Generalgouvernement (Eng. General Governorate), i.e. GG.

The Germans started the new order with the Jews. In 06.1941, according to Jewish sources, there were prob. c. 1,700 Jews in Terebovlya. Some of them prob. escaped with the Russians. The ghetto was established a year later, in 09.1942, although the Jews had already been forbidden to leave the designated area of the town under pain of death. The Ukrainian Germ. Ukrainische Hilfspolizei (Ukrainian Auxiliary Police), collaborating with the Germans, in some regions operating as Germ. Schutzmannschaft (Eng. Protection Battalions), i.e. Schuma, was to be given a free hand in searching and robbing Jewish homes — in 10.1941 their role was taken over by the Jewish Germ. Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst (Eng. Jewish Order Service). A month after the establishment of the ghetto, in 10‐11.1942, hundreds of Jews from nearby villages and towns were driven to Terebovlya. Among them were prob. Jews from Ilavche — in Ilavche there was a prob. Germ. Ukrainian Police station, whose members took part in the expulsion of Jews from the village. On 05.11.1942, the Germans began to implement the German genocidal plan Germ. «Endlösung der Judenfrage» (Eng. Final Solution of the Jewish Question), which from 1942 in the GG was known under the German codename Germ. «Aktion Reinhardt» (Eng. Operation Reinhardt) — i.e. extermination of Jews. On that day, with the participation of the Germ. Ukrainian Hilfspolizei, they herded some of the Jews — mainly those who had recently been brought to the ghetto, e.g. from Ilavche — to the railway station. During the expulsion and at the station itself, 109 Jews were murdered. The rest — 1,091 Jews — were deported to the Germ. Vernichtungslager (Eng. Extermination Camp) VL Belzec, where they were murdered. Around 2,500 Jews still remained in the ghetto. Many of them died in the winter of 1942/1943 from hunger and disease (German sources state that on 01.03.1943, 8,280 people lived in Terebovlya). Then, on 07.04.1943, Germans and Ukrainians, in another Germ. Aktion (Eng. action), drove c. 1,100 Jews to the town square, where they were robbed and their outer clothes were taken. Afterwards, they were marched c. 4 km south, to the other side of the Hnizna River, near the village of Plebanivka, where they were all murdered in a previously dug pit. The remaining, c. 843, were murdered in the same place at the beginning of 06.1943. On 23.06.1943, the Germans from Terebovlya could proudly report that the town was Germ. „Judenrein” (Eng. „Jew‐free”).

Providing help was practically impossible. Any kind of help was punishable by death — from 25.10.1941, a decree issued by the Germ. Generalgouverneur (Eng. General Governor) of the GG, Hans Frank, was in force, according to which „Jews who leave their assigned district without authorization are subject to the death penalty. The same punishment applies to persons who knowingly provide such Jews with a hiding place”, and „Instigators and accomplices are subject to the same punishment as the perpetrator; an attempted act will be punished as a completed act. In less serious cases, heavy imprisonment or prison may be imposed”.

Nevertheless, help was provided to Jews whenever possible. And so, in 1939, the Jewish Weisselberg family from Będzin, where they ran a diagnostic laboratory, found themselves in Terebovlya. During the Russian occupation, they began working in the local hospital and received an apartment in a house belonging to Fr Leo Machalski, the local prefect who was prob. deported „to Siberia”. After the German occupation began, on 04.06.1943, during the last Germ. Aktion, they escaped from Terebovlya and took refuge in the village of Sady, c. 3 km away, on the other side of the Hnizna River, with Polish smallholders, John and Anne Ganczarski. In a statement from 1963, the Ganczarskis stated: „They managed to escape from the ghetto and begged us to hide them, because otherwise they risked death at the hands of the Germans. Moved by human feelings, both my wife and I gave shelter to this family in our house, where they stayed until April 20, 1944, that is, until the Russian army arrived in Terebovlya”. The Weisselbergs revealed after the war that the farmer who hid them had doubts whether he was allowed to endanger his family, but in the confessional he heard a sharp warning.

and did not betray them to the Germans. Confessions were heard by a young Roman Catholic priest, Fr Vaclav Szetelnicki, ordained in Lviv on 28.10.1939, at the beginning of the Russian occupation — later a historian, pastoralist, silesianist, expert on the eastern borderlands — who supposedly was convincing the faithful in the confessional that Jews should be saved.

At the same time, although a few months earlier, in 02.1943 — even before the final extermination of the Jews in Ternopil — that 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 and Schuma, 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.

Although Shukhevych's order was not formally addressed to units of the Germ. Ukrainische Hilfspolizei in the Germ. Distrikt Galizien — for there, in 1943, the genocidal OUN did not establish an armed wing under the name UPA, but formed armed units under a euphemistic name, to „confuse” the Germans, of Ukr. Українська Народна Самооборона (Eng. Ukrainian National Self–Defense), i.e. UNS — but de facto also there the Ukrainian genociders, „unemployed” after the end of the Germ. «Aktion Reinhardt», deserted and joined the UNS. The UNS commander at that time was a certain Alexander Lutsky, nom de guerre „Andriyenko”, and his orders in the Ternopil area were carried out by Emilian (Omelyan) Polowy, nom de guerre „Ostap”. Both of these degenerates followed a similar path as the aforementioned genocider, Roman Shukhevych — from the Germ. Sondergruppe Nachtigall, through the Germ. Schutzmannschaftsbataillon 201, where they gained experience in the extermination of Jews, to the UNS.

In Germ. Kreishauptmannschaft Tarnopol, the genocide of Jews continued until 06.1943, and then the UNS turned its attention to the Poles. The UNS had nothing else to do at that time, because — as even the Ukrainian Wikipedia confirms — „during the last months of 1943, the UNS units did not conduct military operations due to the introduction by the Germans on 02.10.1943, in Galicia of the system of [collective responsibility and] executing 10 hostages for the murder of every German soldier or official”. The Poles were not part of theses occupation authorities.

And it was in 10.1943, that the first attacks on Poles took place. E.g. in nearby Bavoriv, c. 15 km north, on the bank of the same Hnizna river, on 02.11.1943, Ukrainians murdered the local Roman Catholic priest, Fr Charles Procyk.

And in 12.1943 — when it became clear that the Germans were losing the war in the East — the UNS was formally transformed into a unit of the genocidal OUN/UPA, and in 01.1944, another of the Ukrainian „students” of the Germ. Sondergruppe Nachtigall and the Germ. Schutzmannschaftsbataillon 201, Vasyl Sydor, nom de guerre „Shelest”, became its commander and almost immediately ordered „to strike the Poles continuously until they are exterminated to the last one from these lands”. The «Genocidium Atrox» began in the Germ. Distrikt Galizien.

According to Ukrainian sources, was an „active nationalist”, which means clearly supported the genocidal Ukrainian organization OUN/UPA. His two sons were active members of the OUN/UPA. One of them — Ilavche, which on 01.03.1943 had only 2,884 inhabitants, was then subordinate to the UPA Military District WO‐3 „Lysonya”, commanded by the aforementioned Emilian Polowy, nome‐de‐guerre „Ostap” — was even the head of „propaganda” of one of the OUN/UPA regions (he later died in battles with the Russian NKVD). Polish sources are more blunt: „One of the main organizers of the genocidal murders was a local Greek Catholic priest named Raich. His two sons personally participated in many attacks and murders committed against Poles”.

When the Russian offensive — called the Dnieper–Carpathian Operation, launched on 24.12.1943, of which the Russian Proskuriv‐Chernivtsi Operation was a part — was approaching the Ternopil region, the genocidal OUN/UPA intensified their attacks on Poles. And so on 01‐02.03.1944, Ukrainians attacked Poles in his village of Ilavche — „The UPA murdered 33 Poles, a Ukrainian and a Ukrainian woman, Tecla Kałdus, the wife of a Pole, whose head they beheaded and impaled. They cut off both breasts and ears of a Polish woman, Antonine Kałdus”. On 12‐13.07.1944, they attacked Polish farms in neighboring villages: Hleshchava, c. 5 km to the south (with a similar ethnic structure to Ilavche, i.e. c. 30% Poles, c. 66% Ukrainians) — and Ivanivka (c. 60% Poles, c. 37% Ukrainians). In Hleshchava the murder was prob. organized by the Ukr. рейовий провідник (Eng. regional leader) of the OUN/UPA, a resident of this village, a certain Steven Sameć. C. 15 Poles were murdered. The Roman Catholic parish priest, Fr Casimir Białowąs, escaped wounded. In neighboring Ivanivka, 19 Poles were murdered — including seven hiding in a basement into which the perpetrators had thrown a grenade. On 19.03.1944, the „OUN/UPA militia from Ilavche” — perhaps commanded by the sons of the priest Rajch being described — murdered 13 Poles in the nearest village of Sorotske, located c. 3 km to the north (c. 28% Poles, c. 70% Ukrainians), according to Polish sources, „men known for their patriotic attitude”. At the same time, „Ukrainians murdered 5 Poles from one family” in the village of Borychivka, c. 5 km west of Ilavche (c. 98% Poles).

On 23.03.1944, the Russians captured Skalat and Terebovlya — as well as its Ilavche, located c. halfway between these towns — and headed north, beginning the siege of Ternopil, c. 25 km away, which the Germans declared Germ. „Festung Tarnopol” (Eng. „Ternopil Fortress”).

Fierce fighting continued until 15.04.1944, when the Russians entered the town. On 17.04.1944, the great Dnieper–Carpathian Operation ended and the Russian offensive was suspended for the spring period.

Another Russian occupation began in Ilavche. The village found itself in the immediate rear of the German–Russian front, particularly until 15.04.1944, during the siege of Ternopil. The area must have been swarming with Russian soldiers and the NKVD agents following them, clearing the occupied territories of „undesirable elements”.

And then was murdered, under mysterious circumstances.

According to some Ukrainian sources, was murdered by agents of the genocidal Russian NKVD organization (immediately afterward, his wife and three other children were deported deep into Russia, disappearing without a trace).

According to others, was the victim of a Polish attack, carried out, i.a. by a certain Dominic Gołoński and his brother, who were supposed to „collaborate with the NKVD”. Was supposedly detained after celebrating a service. Tortured and murdered (some sources say that they were supposed to „tie his hands with barbed wire and drag him behind a horse towards the village of Borychivka, c. 5 km away. There was beaten, his ears were cut off, his tongue was cut out, and his genitals were cut off. On the fourth day /sic erat scriptum!/ his hands were cut off, was tied to a horse and dragged to the cemetery”).

The same Ukrainian sources state that the event took place on „Palm Sunday”, while on 15.04.1944 was Greek Catholic Holy Saturday. Crowds of Ukrainians gathered for services at that time. How a Polish militia could have kidnapped a Greek Catholic priest in a village with a predominantly Ukrainian population remains a mystery.

Along with him, several other members of the genocidal OUN/UPA were allegedly murdered in Ilavche. According to Polish sources, this Dominic Gołoński was subsequently murdered by the UPA in 11.1944.

On 12.10.2007, the genocideer Roman Shukhevych was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine. 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). Much earlier, on 14.01.1945, during World War II, Emilian Polowy was to receive the Bronze Cross of Military Merit of the UPA. In several locations, monuments and commemorative plaques have been erected to these Lat. „hostis humani generis” — including to the génocidaireAlexander Lutsky — the schools and streets were named after them.

Lat. „O Tempora! O mores!”