# Malin Massacre

The Malin massacre consisted of mass killings and looting committed on 13 July 1943 by Germans and policemen from the collaborationist auxiliary police in the village of Malin, in the Dubien district of the pre-war Volhynia Voivodeship. The crimes resulted in the deaths of between 532 and 603 people – Czechs, Ukrainians and Poles.

## Genesis

Malin is a village located in the Dubien district, in the pre-war Volhynia voivodeship. It was first mentioned in written sources in 1545. The name of the village probably comes from an elderly settler named Malynsky, who lived in the vicinity of Lutsk about a hundred years earlier. Information on Malin in the 16th and 17th centuries is scarce, mainly limited to brief mentions in correspondence between feuding Polish landowners and representatives of the Orthodox Church. In the 1860s and 1870s, a wave of Czech immigrants arrived in Malin, causing the village to split into two ethnic enclaves.
Due to a shortage of land and economic problems in Bohemia, around fifteen thousand Czech peasants emigrated to Malin between 1868 and 1874. They were encouraged to settle in Volhynia, where land was cheap and agricultural conditions favourable. The Tsarist government facilitated the colonisation process to weaken the political power of the Polish landowners and promote the economic development of the region. Poles remained the largest class of landowners in Volhynia, despite the numerical superiority of the Ukrainian peasantry and attempts by the Tsarist authorities to deprive them of their privileges. The Czechs fitted well into the socio-economic order of the region, farming alongside Ukrainians and other minorities such as Germans. Their agricultural knowledge and capital to buy equipment allowed them to prosper until the Second World War. The Czechs maintained good relations with both their Ukrainian neighbours and Polish and Jewish business partners in the cities. At the beginning of the 1920s, more than 25,000 Czechs lived in Volhynia, which accounted for about 1.77% of the region's population. In 1871 twenty Czech families from the area of Rakovník, Žatec and Louna arrived in Malin and bought several plots of land west of the 'Ukrainian' Malin. By 1889, the Czech population had grown to 900 people. The Czechs fared better than their Ukrainian neighbours thanks to larger plots of land, better technology and farming methods. Despite the economic differences, there is no evidence of ethnic hostility between the two groups in the seven decades before the Second World War.
The First World War and the revolutionary period brought much unrest to Malin. The village was targeted by Austrian, Russian, Polish and Soviet troops. In 1915, many Czechs from Malyn were conscripted into a Czech regiment of the Austrian army and fought until 1918. After the war, Czech families returned to the destroyed and looted village.
After the end of the Polish-Bolshevik war in 1921, Volhynia and Malin became part of the Second Polish Republic. Although tensions between Poles and Ukrainians increased in the Second Republic, many Malin Czechs considered this period to be peaceful and productive. Czech Malin received cultural and financial support from the Czechoslovak government, which contributed to further economic development. Along with technology, new political ideas also came to Malyn. The Ukrainians in Malyn were heavily influenced by communist ideas, which introduced tensions in the region. After the start of the Second World War, the Soviet Union occupied Volhynia and Ukrainian nationalists attacked Polish officials in Malyna.

## Background of events

In 1943 Malin was located in German-occupied territory (Reich Commissariat Ukraine, General District Volhynia-Podolia, Commissariat Dubno). The nearest police station and the seat of the community were in Ostrowiec. In the face of the Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, the Czech population of Malin remained neutral.
A week before the massacre the Malin area was overrun by Soviet partisans under the command of Sydir Kovpak. During their 12-hour stay in Malina, the partisans organised a rally and proclaimed a resolution that these lands belonged to the USSR. According to Władysław and Ewa Siemaszek, the partisans' visit was the supposed reason for the pacification that followed. The version stating that the village was pacified in retaliation for supporting the Ukrainian nationalist underground, according to Jared McBride, is not supported by any evidence.

## Description of the Massacre

On the morning of 13 July 1943 the pacification squad arrived in Malin by car from Ołyki. A committee headed by Jaroslav Procházka estimated the size of the punitive expedition at 1,500 men. At the sight of the German soldiers, the inhabitants of Malin Russky, mainly Ukrainians, began to flee, and the attackers opened fire on the fleeing people. Later, during the pacification of Malin Russky, the attackers moved to Malin . In Malin, the Germans visited every farm, driving people out of their homes under the pretext of checking documents, not sparing children, the sick and the crippled. They explained that they were looking for partisans who were supposed to be hiding in the village. The Germans discovered and captured several partisans being treated in the local hospital. In the afternoon, the captured inhabitants of Malin Czech were led to Malin Russky and gathered together with the Ukrainians. There, documents were checked again, dividing people into groups according to sex, age and nationality. Most of the Czech women with children and old people were returned to Malin Czech and, after being locked in barns, mainly in Josef Dobry's farmyard, were burnt.
50 or 80 people, mostly Czech men, were locked up in a school building in Malin Russky, which was then burnt down with the people. About 155 people, mostly Ukrainian men, were imprisoned in an Orthodox church, which was pelted with grenades and fired at with machine guns. In addition, around 90 women, children and old people were burned in two nearby barns. Bedridden patients from the hospital in Czech Malin were dragged to Bedřich Činka's barn and also burnt. According to the report of the Procházka Commission, during the pacification, women with children begging on their knees for sparing their lives were killed; children were impaled on bayonets and thrown into the fire. Grenades were thrown into rooms where people were hiding, and shots were fired at those fleeing the flames. The screams of burning victims carried to the Polish colony of Zamczysko, 1 km away.
According to the Procházka commission's report, 532 people fell victim to the pacification: 374 Czechs, 132 Ukrainians and 26 Poles. According to the materials of the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission to Investigate the Crimes of the German-Fascist Invaders, 603 people died in Malin, including 194 men, 204 women and 205 children. There were 3 survivors from the massacre in Czech Malin, who managed to escape from the burning buildings, and 38–41 boys and men who were spared by the Germans and sent to Ołyka and Pyany with looted belongings. Also surviving were Olga Trichleb with several patients, hidden in the basement of the hospital, and Ludmila Činková, who escaped from a group turned back to the Czech part of Malina and hid in the garden.
After the looting (442 cows, 130 horses, 870 pigs and 170 sheep), most of the colony's buildings were burnt down; a total of 68 houses and 223 farm buildings were destroyed. The remains of the victims were buried in a mass grave.
A week after the massacre the Germans declared at a meeting of the chiefs of the Młyn municipality and their deputies that the pacification of Czech Malin was a "mistake", as the order concerned only Malin Russky. Siemaszko and Grzegorz Motyka agree that the original target of the punitive expedition was Malin Russky and its Ukrainian inhabitants. However, it is not clear why the executioners moved to Malin Ruski during the pacification. Siemaszek speculates that the Ukrainian policemen who participated in the crime, not wanting to kill their compatriots, directed the pacification to Czech Malin. Motyka, on the other hand, puts forward the hypothesis that the Germans, having realised on the spot the wealth of the Czechs, decided to include Czech Malin in the operation.

## Perpetrators

It is indisputable that the crime was directed by the Germans and they formed the core of the punitive expedition (SS unit). The fact of the crime was investigated by a Czechoslovak commission headed by Jaroslav Procházka on the orders of General Ludvík Svoboda. In a report drawn up on 3 April 1944, the commission established the responsibility of the Germans for the crime, without going into the national composition of the criminal expedition. Procházki's commission indicated that Germans were among those carrying out the pacification: kreislandwirtleutnant Friedrich Vogl, Martin Levandovský and a policeman named Málek.
Controversy surrounds the national composition of the collaborationist auxiliary police involved in the massacre. According to McBride, most Ukrainian sources accuse Poles of involvement in the crime, while most Polish sources accuse Ukrainians. The Siemaszeko state that the Germans were supported by the Ukrainian police and a small unit of so-called Vlasov soldiers. They exclude Polish policemen from the group of perpetrators, relying among others on the statement of Jarosław Mec, a representative of the Volhynian Czechs. Ukrainian authors, on the other hand, relying exclusively on Ukrainian sources, accuse only Poles (or Uzbeks as well) of aiding in the crime.
Grzegorz Motyka, taking into account Ukrainian accounts, expressed the assumption that the Polish unit taking part in the pacification of Malin may have been small and may have been operating only in Malin Ruski, and therefore the Czechs may not have noticed its presence at the scene of the crime. Both Motyka and Siemaszko considered that a final decision on whether Poles took part in the Malina crime depends on reaching German documents.
McBride offers a different explanation for the controversy that occurred. He notes that in testimony before the Procházka commission, Czech witnesses provided information about the nationality of the collaborators involved in the crime, but this was not included in the commission's report. Josef Martinovský, who was in the group of people sent with the looted property to Olyka, testified:
   There were several soldiers who spoke good Polish. One spoke Czech, but was in the black uniform of a Ukrainian policeman. Some of them also spoke Russian. Others were Poles in civilian clothes but with guns.... Some Poles from the German protective police (Schutzpolizei) from Ołyka were also involved in destroying houses and looting property.
Václav Kinšt testified that among the perpetrators there was "probably" a Pole from the village of Bozkiewicze named Paczkowski. Jan Činka recognised Russians ("White-Guardians") and Poles from Narutovka among the perpetrators. Antonín Žrout also remembered Ukrainians in black Schutzmannschaft uniforms. Martinovský wrote in his Chronicle of Českého Malina, published a year later, that the co-perpetrators of the crime were "renegades of both nations – Ukraine and Poland".
According to McBride both Polish and Ukrainian police officers were most likely involved in the crime, and the collaborationist police unit operating in Malina may even have had a multinational composition. The contradiction between the 'Polish version' and the 'Ukrainian version' of the tragedy is explained by Malina's tendency to suppress from memory the facts of crimes committed by people of his own nationality. However, like Motyka and Siemaszko, McBride believes that a definitive determination of which German unit carried out the crime and with whose help depends on reaching German documents.

## Commemorate

After the war 33,000 Volhynian Czechs were forcibly resettled in Czechoslovakia. The repatriates cultivated the memory of Malin, often referred to as the "Volyn Lidice" (a similar event took place there in 1942). The history of Malin was described by Josef Martinovský in his book Kronika Českého Malín, published in 1945. In 1946, a memorial to the crime was unveiled in the Czech town of Žatec. In 1947, as a tribute to Malín, the Czechoslovak authorities renamed the town of Frankštát as Nový Malín.
In the USSR the Malín tragedy became a symbol of the common suffering of "brotherly nations" used by Soviet propaganda. In 1972, the authorities erected a monument at the site of the crime.
Today (2013) there are several monuments in Malina. In the former Czech cemetery, there is a black marble monument whose plaque lists the names of only Czech victims. On the site where the burnt Orthodox church stood and where the mass grave of the victims is located, there is a steel sculpture in the shape of a flame with the date of the crime, and opposite it a cross with a plaque listing Ukrainian nationalists and Ukrainian victims of the massacre. A Soviet Great Patriotic War memorial also stands in the centre of Malin.

### Exploitation of crime by propaganda

The fact of the crime was first mentioned in UPA leaflets in September 1943. In 1945, the UPA again referred to the Malina crime in its leaflets, accusing "Polish imperialists" and Germans of perpetrating it. According to the document, 850 Ukrainians were to be killed; Czech victims were not mentioned.
In 1959 the Soviet authorities excavated 12 trenches in and around Malina, in which it was claimed that the remains of over 200 people had been found. The authorities gave the excavated remains a demonstrative funeral with the participation of the local population, and accused "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists" of the crime. The unfounded accusation of the OUN of the Malin crime was included in the Soviet pamphlet Judas's Breed distributed in the West in the 1970s. In the English-language collection History Teaches a Lesson, published in 1986, the Soviet publisher committed forgery by correcting the content of the document (Bishop Platon's letter) so that it identified "Ukrainian nationalists" as the perpetrators of the Malina crime.
In response to the joint commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Volhynian massacre by Aleksandr Kwasniewski and Leonid Kuchma in 2003, Ukrainian nationalist organisations distributed a leaflet accusing the 102nd and 107th battalions of the Schutzmannschaft, composed of Poles, of perpetrating the Malina crime.