The Huta Pieniacka massacre was a massacre of the Polish inhabitants of the village Huta Pieniacka, located in modern-day Ukraine, which took place on February 28, 1944. Estimates of the number of victims range from 500 to 1,200.
Polish and Ukrainian historians disagree over the responsibility for the Huta Pienacka massacre. According to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, the action was committed by the 14th subunit of the '1st Ukrainian' Grenadier Division of the Waffen-SS. Polish witnesses testified that the orders were given by German officers. According to Ukrainian sources, it was committed by the German police battalions. According to witness accounts and scholarly publications, SS Galizien were accompanied by Ukrainian nationalists (a paramilitary unit under Włodzimierz Czerniawski's command), including members of the UPA and inhabitants of local villages who intended to seize property found in the households of the murdered.
The Warsaw division of the "Commission for the punishment of crimes against the Polish people" launched an investigation in July 2001. The judicial case adheres to Polish law, attested by the fact that the crimes were perpetrated by ethnically Ukrainian citizens of Poland, residents of Eastern Galicia, which up until 1939 formally fell under Polish jurisdiction.
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“The bourgeoisie of the whole world, which looks complacently upon the wholesale massacre after the battle, is convulsed by horror at the desecration of brick and mortar.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)