Country Ukraine Raion Kozivskyi Raion Location Chodaczkow Wielki | Oblast Ternopil oblast Date 16 April 1944 | |
pidhorodne velykyi khodachkiv horodyshche ua 22 10 2014
Velykyi Khodachkiv (Ukrainian: Великий Ходачків, Polish: Chodaczków Wielki) is a selo in the Kozivskyi Raion, Ternopil oblast, Ukraine. It lies on the banks of the Rudka river, on the rail line from Ternopil to Rohatyn. The population is 1394 people (2003 census).
Contents
The fist mentions of the village date back to 1758. On April 16, 1944 the village was almost totally razed. Of the 710 houses in the village only 30 were left standing. From 1944-46, 210 ethnic Ukrainian families from prewar Poland were resettled there.
World War II
The village was the location of the Chodaczków Wielki massacre during World War II. Chodaczków Wielki was an ethnically Polish village before the Soviet invasion of Poland. According to Polish historian, Grzegorz Hryciuk on April 16, 1944, the village have been destroyed by the Ukrainian 4th SS Police Regiment. The estimates of victims range from 250 to 854. One former Polish resident of Chodaczków Wielki mentions that the Ukrainians told them to leave but did not mention any Poles being massacred or killed and did not mention the involvement of Ukrainian soldiers. Chodaczków Wielki massacre is alleged to have been one of the biggest massacres of Poles in the region of Eastern Galicia.
Poles who escaped the massacre buried the dead in a communal grave, in front of the local Roman Catholic church. After the World War II, Polish survivors were forced to leave the village, deported by the Soviet authorities to new communist Poland. They settled as a group around Gogolin and Niemodlin in the Opole Voivodeship.