The Volhynia Massacre: tongue and eyes carved out

 

Kazimiera Marciniak (born 1930), witness to the Volhynia Massacre. Her family lived in the village of Ołyka in Wołyń (now Olyka, Ukraine). Her father had fled in 1939, fearing repression at the hands of the Soviets. A Ukrainian acquaintance saved Kazimiera’s family from deportation to Siberia. When the Germans entered these lands in 1941, they carried out mass murders of Jews and established a ghetto in Ołyka. Kazimiera’s friend, a girl by the name of Ruchla, escaped from the ghetto and was hiding at Kazimiera’s house for several days. Eventually, Ruchla’s father came and took her back to the ghetto, where they most likely perished. Kazimiera Marciniak also witnessed a mass execution of Jews in Ołyka. When the Ukrainian Insurgent Army began attacks on Poles, a good Ukrainian told Kazimiera’s family to run from Jagiellonów and warn the other Polish families. Two individuals who decided to stay in the village were brutally murdered. Kazimiera Marciniak and her family hid in Ołyka, but the Ukrainian nationalists were organizing attacks there as well. Kazimiera witnessed horrific murders. On many occasions she was close to death, but luckily she managed to reach the village of Przebraże, where Poles organized defense against the Banderites.