p. 28
On the second day—May 30—the Germans carried out a second raid on the forest. Four airplanes participated in the raid on both days, bombing the forest.
On the second day, they burned down Derman-Zaluzhzhia, which borders the forest, and shot 64 civilians of various ages and genders, including children. Many victims were shot near their homes, while most were herded into a ditch and shot over a lime pit, where lime was burned, and their bodies fell into the pit. The Polish Schutzmann officers were especially ruthless; their atrocities matched those of the Germans. (In 1944, the Derman-Zaluzhzhia case was investigated and found to be the work of NKVD agent Ilko-Sydorchuk Miliet, a native of the village who collaborated with the Gestapo. He was well-informed about the insurgent movement in Zaluzhzhia and reported everything to the Germans.)
At noon, the Germans moved toward the Hurbenskyi Forest, traveling only along the roads. On the road from Moshchanytsia to the village of Maidan, four mounted scouts from Chornomorets’s unit encountered the Germans. The Germans opened fire, seriously wounding the insurgent Lisovyi—a native of Derman-Zaluzhzhia—in the leg. After falling from his horse, Lisovyi shot himself with his revolver. This was the sole casualty among both UPA detachments during the raid, which ended at that point.
In retaliation against the Poles, who had acted so brazenly in Zaluzhzhia, both detachments burned down exclusively Polish settlements on their way back, including Hurby, Kudryn, Kamintsi, part of Zelenyi Dub, and the surrounding khutirs in the Mizoch district.
[…]
pp. 37–38
At that time, UPA commander Klym Savur was in the south. Following his orders, on the night of June 29–30—exactly two years after the proclamation of independence in Lviv—the UPA launched a large-scale operation against the remaining Polish settlements. Alongside UPA units, all local combat groups in the area participated. That night, commanders Savur and Eney were at the Bushchany khutirs, observing from a high mound as fires burned across the region—a sign of protest against all foreign invaders encroaching on Ukrainian freedom and land. Simultaneously, all watchtowers (outposts) in the area were set ablaze. The Germans, thoroughly frightened in all district centers and “Stützpunkte,” maintained a high state of alert and lit up the area around their positions with flares throughout the night.
In early July, Okhrim-Savur convened a meeting at the Bushchany khutir by Lake Providnyk. Attending were all commanders and organizational leaders up to the supra-district level, including those from the Military District UPA-South. The leadership included Okhrim-Savur, Horbenko, and Ivaniv. From the UPA-South regional territory were commander Eney, Kruk, Chernyk, Oleh, Orel, and Voronyi. The organizational staff consisted of Ptashka, the district leader, and sub-district leaders: Matros (Rivne), Shchur (Kremenets), Hrab (Dubno), and Klym (Zdolbuniv). Representing the political wing of the Military District were Tymko and the head of organizational communications, Slavko.
The agenda of the meeting was roughly as follows:
1) Leader Okhrim-Savur—discussion of the international political situation, tasks, and organizational matters;
2) Horbenko—overview of the Ukrainian people’s struggle for liberation throughout history, the conclusion of the uprising, and the UPA’s program;
3) Ivaniv—report on information from the eastern-Ukrainian territories and the course of events on the fronts, explained in detail with a map. The meeting concluded at this point.
The insurgent movement was taking shape, growing, and gaining strength. Meanwhile, in the cities, the Germans continued to carry out mass arrests and systematically executed Ukrainians every month. As a result, Ukrainians employed in city administrations or simply residing there began fleeing en masse to the villages and joining the insurgent movement.
[…]
pp. 41–42
A Bolshevik partisan unit—Mykhailov’s Detachment—numbered about 350 men, including up to 100 former Red Army soldiers, many of whom were noncommissioned and junior noncommissioned officers. The detachment remained at this base for three months. During that time, the detachment did not engage in any clashes with the Germans, but limited its actions to looting and terrorizing the populations of villages bordering the forest: Teremne, Andrushivka, Zelenyi Dub, Peremorivka, Navorochytsi, Viliya (Ostroh District), and Zakoty and Surazh (Shumsk District). The partisans exerted influence over these villages. Once the insurgent movement gained traction in these communities—where many young people had joined the UPA—the Bolshevik partisans began targeting the more politically conscious families who had actively participated in the insurgency or whose sons had joined the insurgents.
In reality, Mykhailov’s Detachment was conducting its own NKVD-style intelligence operations. To support these efforts, they maintained agents in the villages, who provided detailed reports on all activities. A communication line extended from the detachment eastward to the Slavuta forests.
[…]
pp. 56–57
In early November, a mobile boyivka [small combat unit—tr.note] from the Zdolbuniv district, commanded by Chornota (Boiko), negotiated with Azerbaijanis stationed in the village of Novomylsk, Zdolbuniv district, who were serving as guards for the “staatsgut” with a force of 135 men. All 135 armed Azerbaijanis defected to the UPA the very next day. When the Germans learned of this, they immediately sent German soldiers to take over the guard duty. Chornota then organized and successfully executed an attack on the “staatsgut.” The Germans fled, leaving behind a single light machine gun. The boyivka seized all the property from the “staatsgut,” including 300 head of livestock, which they distributed to the villagers.
At that time, a German unit of pilots was passing through on their way home from the front for rest. On the way, they stopped in the town of Ostroh, where the “Kreislandwehr” immediately used them to round up conscripts in the villages. They proceeded to the village of Tochyvyki, Ostroh district, which borders a forest. Three UPA sotnias, including a sotnia of Azerbaijanis who had defected to the UPA two days earlier, surrounded Tochyvyki. The Polish Schutzmann, numbering about 50 men, knew the terrain well and, recognizing the danger, fled in advance toward the village of Bilashiv. The front-line pilots, unfamiliar with the area and further confused by the Azerbaijani soldiers’ German uniforms, were caught off guard. A battle ensued, resulting in 20 Germans killed and 5 taken prisoner. The rest broke through the encirclement and fled. During the battle, 4 anti-aircraft machine guns were captured, along with rifles and submachine guns. On our side, only light wounds were sustained. Among the prisoners was one starshyna.
In response to this battle, four days later the Germans assembled a large force and surrounded nearly half of the Ostroh district, including the villages of Novomalyn, Liuchyn, Popivtsi, Derevianche, Tochyvyki, Bilashiv, Hroziv, Hremiache, Korchunok, Mykhailivka, and Shliakh (a khutir). All these villages, along with the adjacent khutirs, were completely burned to the ground. This hell lasted for two days. Throughout this time, the Germans continuously shelled the villages with mortars, setting the houses ablaze. Others went around igniting with matches whatever had not caught fire from the shelling—these were exclusively Poles. The Schutzmann units, numbering up to 50 men in the district at that time, were composed solely of Poles.
All contingents the Germans managed to gather were assembled exclusively with the help of Polish Schutzmen. The Poles performed their duties thoroughly and, in addition, looted eagerly. During major German operations in the villages, the Germans even gave weapons to Polish men who were not formally part of the Schutzmann units but merely lived in the town. These men also took an active part in killing Ukrainian civilians and in the burning and looting. In this operation, they distinguished themselves perhaps more than anyone else. All Polish men who happened to be in Ostroh at that time—regardless of age—participated actively. Those without weapons went around with sacks, looting whatever they could. Even after the raid, for a week or more, Poles traveled in carts, escorted by Schutzmann guards, to the ruins of the cellars, where they retrieved peasant property that had survived the fire and transported it to the city.
Residents of the villages near the forest managed to hide there. In the villages farther away, 430 peasants—of all ages and genders—were murdered, burned alive, or shot. This was primarily the work of Poles serving the Germans.
These memoirs, written by one of the organizers of the UPA in the Mizoch district, were first published in 2011 as part of the Chronicle of the UPA series. Rivne-based researcher Ihor Marchuk, who edited the series, discovered the typescript in the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine, where it was titled Notes of an Insurgent [1]. The author of the memoirs was born on December 8, 1913, in the village of Derman 1, Dubno powiat, Volhynia governorate. In the 1920s, after the village became part of Poland, it belonged to the Mizotch gmina in Zdolbuniv powiat, Volhynia voivodeship. In the 1930s, the Androshchuk family moved to the Ozery khutir in the village of Rozvazh, located in the neighboring Ostroh gmina of Zdolbuniv powiat.
As early as the 1930s, Mykola Androshchuk sympathized with the OUN. In 1938, the Polish political police detained him on suspicion of belonging to the organization. On March 20, 1939, the Rivne District Court sentenced Androshchuk to two years in prison and a fine of 80 zlotys. This was part of a broader campaign of arrests and trials targeting those suspected of OUN affiliation. Notably, dozens of others suspected of OUN membership were also imprisoned in Ostroh prison in 1938.
In 1940, after the Red Army captured Volhynia, Androshchuk illegally crossed into the General Government, one of the occupation zones established by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland. Little is known about his activities during this period, except that he underwent special training and was actively involved in the OUN(b). With the outbreak of the German-Soviet War in 1941, he returned to his native region as part of an OUN(b) mobile unit. His exact activities until October 1941 remain unclear. According to testimony from Petro Androshchuk, the first commandant of the Mizoch District Police [3] and also a native of Derman 1, Mykola Androshchuk joined the police around October 1941. Initially, he served as a clerk and later became deputy commander of the district police after Nykanor Pelenkevych was dismissed. By late November or early December 1941, when the Germans reorganized the police into a Schutzmannschaft unit for the Mizoch district (within the Zdolbuniv gebiet), Androshchuk became its commandant [4]. Despite the German occupation administration’s increasing repression of OUN(b) members in local administrations and police—most notably, the execution of OUN member and Zdolbuniv district’s first police commander Yevhen Radzyvil in late August or early September 1941 [5]—Androshchuk was appointed commandant. This is evident from the fact that, at the end of 1941, OUN(b) members still held lower-level positions within the structures of the German occupation administration.
Mykola Androshchuk remained commandant until March 1943. His unit was directly subordinate to three German gendarmes in Mizoch and carried out their orders.
In March 1943, Mykola Androshchuk, together with an OUN leadership representative known as “Stalevyi,” transferred most of the police officers to serve in the UPA. Androshchuk then served for a time as commander of the UPA’s field gendarmerie under the alias “Voronyi.” In place of the Schutzmannschaft unit, previously staffed by Ukrainians, the German occupation authorities established a police force in Mizoch district composed of Polish men in late March or early April 1943. For these men, joining the police was both a means of survival amid the escalating wave of Polish village burnings and an opportunity to take revenge on real and perceived supporters of the Ukrainian nationalist underground for wrongs they had suffered.
While serving in the UPA, Androshchuk was well aware of events in the Mizoch district, especially most of the acts of violence there. He recorded his memoirs while in the nationalist underground in 1947–1948 (he was never captured by the NKVD and died in the underground, likely in the spring of 1951). Rivne-based researcher Ihor Marchuk [6] writes that the OUN leadership in Volhynia decided to publish a local underground journal with memoirs about the activities of the OUN and the UPA, titled For the Freedom of the Nation. The first issue appeared in 1947. The memoirs cover the period from 1943 to May 1944. The excerpts presented here describe how Androshchuk recounted the burning of Polish villages in the Mizoch district—notably, the destruction of the Polish part of the village of Zelenyi Dub. He asserts that most of the villages were burned because the Polish Schutzmannschaft participated in violence against Ukrainian peasants in Derman in late May 1943. This perspective highlights the triggers that may have influenced the local dynamics of the violence but does not explain its root causes. After all, violence against the Polish population began much earlier and outside the Mizoch district. Nevertheless, these memoirs are important for understanding the Ukrainian nationalist underground’s perspective on the violence in 1943.
Furthermore, the value of this source lies in the fact that the author recorded his memoirs quite early—in 1947–1948, just a few years after the events he described had ended. This timing meant that, while he may have lacked the distance needed to create a fully coherent narrative, he clearly remembered many details from the recent past that had not yet faded. It is also important to consider the author’s self-censorship, shaped by his ideological loyalty to the organization whose activities he described. Through his writing, Androshchuk sought to present not only his personal story but also the history of the UPA and the Ukrainian nationalist underground, aiming to convey a positive image of the struggle to future generations.