page_title: Sochy massacre
section_title: Massacre
hierarchical_section_title: Sochy massacre / Massacre
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Zdjęcie wykonane po pacyfikacji wsi Sochy w powiecie zamojskim. 1 czerwca 1943 niemiecki Wehrmacht spalił wieś i zamordował 183 jej mieszkańców. English: Polish village Sochy in Zamość county, burned by German occupants. On 1st June 1943 Wehrmacht troops destroyed Sochy and murdered 183 of its inhabitants. This photo was taken after the massacre.
context_page_description: The Sochy massacre occurred on 1 June 1943 in the village of Sochy, Lublin Voivodeship in Zamość County, Lublin Voivodeship during German occupation of Poland when approximately 181–200 of its inhabitants, including women and children, were massacred by a German Ordnungspolizei, SS.
context_section_description: Early in the morning of June 1, 1943, German troops arrived in Sochy. The pacification expedition included mainly German Ordnungspolizei officers stationed in Zamość. They were also to be accompanied by SS members and Ukrainian or Russian-speaking collaborators. The village of Sochy is located in a valley. The Germans were on the slopes of this valley and then surrounded the village with a tight cordon. When the inhabitants saw the Germans, they began to take their belongings out of their homes because they expected that displacement action would start soon.
  But the Germans entered the village and began a systematic massacre. Women, children, men and old people were murdered. The buildings were set on fire together with the wounded left inside. There were also cases of throwing victims into burning buildings. Whole families were killed during the pacification.
  Around 8:00 am, the German police withdrew from Sochy. Then came from 7 to 10 Luftwaffe aircraft, which bombed and fired at machine guns both the village and nearby fields, where the inhabitants who hid the first phase of the massacre were hiding. A dozen or so other people were killed then. It was the first case in occupied Poland of the use of military aviation by the German occupiers during the pacification of the entire village.
  During the pacification, the German Luftwaffe also bombarded Polish villages: Sochy, Lublin Voivodeship, Momoty Dolne, Momoty Górne, Pawłów, Chełm County, Tokary, Lublin Voivodeship, and Klew.
  The number of victims of the massacre is estimated at 181, 182, 183 or about 200 people. Nearly half of the village inhabitants were killed. Some people were outside the village. According to Czesław Madajczyk, 106 men, 53 women and 24 children were among the victims, other sources say that 108 men and 54 women or 103 women and children were murdered. The Register of places and facts of crimes committed by the Nazi occupier in Poland in the years 1939–1945 contains the names of 159 identified victims of pacification. The rest were buried unidentified. The village was almost completely burned; only three residential houses and two barns survived.
caption: A boy, victim of the German Nazi massacre in Sochy
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