February 9, 1943: The Parośla I Massacre

A victims' mass grave in Parośla

February 9, 1943: The Parośla I Massacre takes place in Poland. It began a series of killings known as the Volhynian Massacres. While it was not a strike against Jewish people, it was a part of the Holocaust, since the leaders of Nazi Germany considered the Slavic people, especially those of Poland, to be "an inferior race."

Volhynia stretches over southeastern Poland, southwestern Belarus, and northwestern Ukraine. In Ukraine, it is roughly equivalent to the Volyn and Rivne Oblasts. (Like Russia, Ukraine calls its sub-regions, what America would call "States," "Oblasts.")

Volhynia has changed hands numerous times throughout history, and been divided among competing powers. For centuries, it was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the Russian annexation during the 1772-1795 Partitions of Poland, all of Volhynia was made part of the Pale of Settlement on the southwestern border of the Russian Empire, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed, and beyond which Jewish residency, permanent or temporary, was mostly forbidden. (This is the source of the expression "Beyond the Pale.")

Between 1939 and 1943, the share of Polish population in Volhynia had dropped to about 8 percent, approximately 200,000 inhabitants. Volhynian Poles were dispersed across rural areas, Soviet deportations stripped them of their community leaders, and they had neither own local partisan army nor state power (with exception of the German occupants) to turn to for protection.

On February 9, 1943, a group of the UPA (Ukrainska Povstanska Armiia, or Ukrainian Insurgent Army), a Nazi collaborationist paramilitary group, commanded by Hryhory Perehyniak, pretended to be Soviet partisans, and assaulted the Parośla settlement. Estimates of the number of victims range from 149 to 173.

Throughout Volhynia, individuals, often with their families, began to be killed by the UPA. According to historian Timothy Snyder, in late March and early April 1943, the UPA forces killed 7,000 Polish civilians.

Perehyniak never made it out of Volhynia. On February 22, 1943, just 13 days after he launched the massacres, he was killed in combat.

*

February 9, 1943 was a Tuesday. Actor Joe Pesci was born. This was also the day the Allies won the Battle of Guadalcanal. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There was 1 game played in the NHL: The Boston Bruins beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-1 at the Boston Garden.