Battle
1944 battle
The Attack of Maziarnia Wawrzkowa or Battle of Maziarnia Wawrzkowa took place between the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Home Army in the Lviv Oblast, in Maziarnia Wawrzkowa, It took place on March 24–25, 1944.
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Text from the Wikipedia article “Attack of Maziarnia Wawrzkowa”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The Attack of Maziarnia Wawrzkowa or Battle of Maziarnia Wawrzkowa took place between the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Home Army in the Lviv Oblast, in Maziarnia Wawrzkowa, It took place on March 24–25, 1944.
According to the memoirs of Franciszek Woronowski, on September 14, 1943, in Lviv, he received an order from the Command of the South-Eastern Area of the Home Army to organize the self-defense of Polish villages in the north-western part of the Tarnopol Voivodeship. The Area Command feared that the forces of the UPA, concentrated in Volhynia, might begin the massacre of the Polish population in Eastern Lesser Poland.
The operational base for the self-defense was established in a triangle marked by the villages of Maziarnia Wawrzkowa, Grabowa, and Huta Połoniecka. This area included a cluster of 17 villages that were either entirely Polish or had a majority Polish population.
The massive UPA attack on Maziarnia Wawrzkowa took place late in the evening of 24 March 1944. The village was attacked simultaneously from all sides. A Soviet partisan unit that appeared in Maziarnia around noon that day left the village after the first shots. Maziarnia was surrounded and fired at with incendiary ammunition, which caused a fire in the thatched houses, which made an organised defence impossible. The self-defence soldiers were forced to withdraw to the last line of defence, which was the church (where civilians had taken shelter) and the buildings surrounding it. They also defended themselves behind the Ukrainian attack in individual buildings with sheet metal roofs, which the UPA failed to set on fire. Several attempts by the UPA to capture the church failed, and the attackers ended their assault on the village around 4 a.m. As a result of the all-night fight, 28 people died, including 21 members of the self-defense. Among them was the commander of the AK platoon Jan Lewicki. At least 2 defenders of Maziarnia were seriously wounded. About 12 people died on the Ukrainian side. The entire village burned down, except for a few buildings.
After the battle, a German reconnaissance plane circled over Maziarnia Wawrzkowa, but it did not shell the village. Before noon on March 25, 1944, a UPA reconnaissance unit appeared in the area, which was forced to withdraw.
The destruction of the village forced the self-defense to evacuate the wounded and civilians to other villages. Dugouts were dug for the soldiers and a bunker was set up for the self-defense command.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Attack of Maziarnia Wawrzkowa”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.