It was a Polish colony. In 1943, in the face of the threat from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a self-defence unit was formed in the colony, with the school headman Marcin Brzozowski "Lech" as its commander. On 16.07.1943, in the evening, there was a simultaneous attack by a large UPA force on the Hały colony and other villages in the area of Wyrka and Huta Stepańska. The colony was fired upon, self-defence tried to stop the attackers. It is assumed that around 60 people were killed in the Haly colony. The next day the surviving inhabitants of the colony erected a large oak cross and buried the slain Poles under this cross. According to witnesses to this burial, under the cross was buried in a bottle information about who was buried here and described the tragedy of the night of 16/17 July 1943.

In the 1990s the cross was no longer there. At an undetermined time it was removed by unknown perpetrators. It was rebuilt in 2015, but there is no certainty that it was placed exactly where the previous cross had stood. An inscription in Ukrainian is engraved on a stone plaque at the foot of the cross: "Tu były Hały", with the name of this village in Polish underneath.