Monument to commemorate first victims of WWII

The fact that innocent victims were buried under the little mound on the side of the national highway Kyiv-Yahodyn was known in the village at all times by all residents. Raisa Novosad, who came to the village as a teacher back in 1967, heard this story from her mother-in-law. Later she saw how the teacher of the local elementary school Olha Klimchuk together with her students looked after that grave. The family of Haponiuks also took care of the grave. Irises bloomed here and husband of Olha Klimchuk even made a small fence. Big trees grew around the grave. Sometime in the early 1970s graves of the Red Army soldiers were moved from battle fields to the local cemetery. Klimchuk appealed to the district military registration to also move the remnants of those buried in the grave on the side of the road. As a response she heard an insistent request to forget about it at all.

No information about the people that were buried in there has been found in official achieves till now. As the head of Volyn State Administration Borys Klimchuk, son of Olha Klimchuk, said at the monument’s unveiling, the torturers have stood God’s trial already and there are no longer those states that existed back then and were enemies. Parents told very little about those events to their children, given the realities of life at that time. But still they did tell some and the witnesses of those events are still living. Volyn Oblast Commission for Commemoration of Victims of War and Political Repressions together with Kovel Raion State Administration and ethnographers gathered materials about victims, circumstances of death, and clarification of the victims’ identity. Raisa Novosad (according to her mother-in-law), Pavlo Hlusheiko, Mykola Varchyk, Hanna Melnychuk, Ivan Vovdiuk, and Maria Savishchuk testify now that those buried in the grave were prisoners, as they had prison clothes on them. All of them were Ukrainians because they were shot by Polish guards (cavalrymen), probably frightened by the war events. Perhaps, they were members of the Communist Party of western Ukraine, because when people brought their bodies on carts from the woods, where they suffered death, and buried on the side of the road, the local communist Stepan Viun spoke at the burial. The burial took place on September 20, 1939.

“Twenty-three Ukrainians, who died in September 1939, rest here. Never forget,” this is the inscription that can be read by those passing by this sad place. Shortly before this event a ceremony of reburial of victims of Polish-Ukrainian conflict in 1943 took place at the old Polish cemetery near the former village of Ostrivok, Liuboml raion. The monument on the mass grave of innocent victims will be soon unveiled by the presidents of Poland and Ukraine. However, it’s been three years of delay for unveiling the monument for the Ukrainian victims of the similar ethnic conflict in the village of Sahryn that is on the territory of modern Poland. Therefore, after the events in Ostrivok many people were surprised: is there a need for parity in such sensitive case? While in Volyn region there are already a few monuments to commemorate Polish victims, Ukrainian victims are yet to be honored. Poles attempted to destroy the village of Honchy Brid that neighbors on Volia Liubytivska twice. The first time they attacked at night, but burned only a few houses. But the next time they killed over 60 people, who worked in the field on haymaking at The Daylight. Borys Klimchuk said that there is no need now to try and find out what devil inspired the souls of people, who were good neighbors before. We now only have memory and monuments. Klimchuk’s grandfather died during the massacre in Honchy Brid. Polish man Leon Popyk, who led the excavations in Ostrivok, lost his relatives there too.

“We forgave one another those victims,” said Borys Klimchuk, informing that there will be a monument built to commemorate Ukrainian victims of interethnic fratricidal massacre in Honchy Brid.