Bortnytsia ( uk, Бортниця, pl, Bortnica) is a village in Rivne oblast, near the town of Dubno, in Dubno Raion, Ukraine. The village currently has a population of 365.

History

Before the Nazi German and Soviet invasions of Poland the village was located in the Wołyń Voivodeship of the

Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established on 6 November 1918, before the end of ...

. It was made up of 61 farms of different sizes.

World War II history

In World War II, following the Soviet invasion of Poland, dozens of ethnic Polish families were sent to Siberia by the NKVD in 1940. Bortnica was one of many sites of the massacres of Poles and Jews committed between 1942 and 1945 by the

death squad A death squad is an armed group whose primary activity is carrying out extrajudicial killings or forced disappearances as part of political repression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or revolutionary terror. Except in rare cases in which they are ...

s of

OUN-UPA The Ukrainian Insurgent Army ( uk, Українська повстанська армія, УПА, translit=Ukrayins'ka povstans'ka armiia, abbreviated UPA) was a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary and later partisan formation. During World ...

and the local Ukrainian peasants. The village was raided repeatedly in a process of ethnic cleansing. Farms were burned mostly at night. Jews kept a 24-hour vigil, because, unlike the Polish families who in the worst-case scenario could flee into the German–occupied cities, Jewish families had nowhere to run. Pitched battles with Ukrainian Insurgent Army were breaking out all the time. The bloodiest fighting broke out in Bortnica on Christmas Eve in 1943, six weeks before the arrival of the Red Army. Fifteen Poles and eight Jews defending themselves against the invading force of 400

Ukrainian nationalists Ukrainian nationalism refers to the promotion of the unity of Ukrainians as a people and it also refers to the promotion of the identity of Ukraine as a nation state. The nation building that arose as nationalism grew following the French Revol ...

. Devoid of ammunition, the defenders fell back a day later. Half were killed in battle. A few escaped into the forest. In the Dubno County, the Polish self-defence against ethnic cleansing by OUN-UPA was more successful only in Pańska Dolina.

References

{{coord, 50, 28, 48, N, 25, 46, 12, E, source:ukwiki_region:UA_scale:30000, display=title Villages in Dubno Raion Holocaust locations in Ukraine World War II sites in Ukraine Sites of World War II massacres of Poles