Beata Jagielska based on the memoirs of Maria Tyc, Janina Jasińska and Urszula Mazur. Material courtesy of Mr Konrad Zaleski

My grandfather, Józef Tyc, in 1945 a resident of the Polish village of Puźniki in Podolia, was a respected and very hard-working carpenter. He also worked on the railway in Chortkiv. With his wife Maria (born 1912), they raised three children Janina (Kazimiera, born 1932), Urszula (born 1936) and Antoni (born 1943). They were just in the process of building a new house.

In 1945, attacks by Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) bands on Polish villages in the Stanisławów and Buczacz area intensified. People were afraid, some thought about leaving. On 7.02.1945, my grandfather went to Zalesie, 4 km away. He was going to buy grain there and grind it into flour at the local mill. He did not feel any danger, because so far the bandits had not attacked during the day. Mrs Stefania Pasieka recounted that when they were driving with Franciszek Markowski, her uncle, to Zalesie, someone warned them that they might be attacked, but they drove on.

Unfortunately - bandits from Petro Chamchuk's "Bystry" band had encamped on all the surrounding roads, attacking the Poles. In the "Kresowa Księga Sprawiedliwych" (Borderlands Book of the Righteous), we read that "on 7 February 1945, the bandits, returning to their base from the pogrom of the Polish population in Barysh, stopped in the village of Zalesie, where they began to gather the Poles captured in the area. They then burned about 70 people in a tobacco drying room".

Grandfather was also caught. As Jozef Tyc's daughters recall, they were later told that in one of the houses, he and Franciszek Markowski were beaten after an hour by three Ukrainians for "walking on Ukrainian soil". They tried to extort information about the Polish self-defence in Puzniki by torture.

One of the Ukrainians present knew Franciszek Markowski well, as he had previously worked for him. He had been paid well for this work, so, not wanting to hurt him, he did not beat him as badly as the others. He then went with him behind the building "to shoot him there". Instead, he shot up the hill, threw the beaten man onto a sledge and rushed the horses. The horses, who knew the way home, made it to Puznik on their own.

Jozef Tyc, who could no longer walk on his own, was dragged to the tobacco drying room, where there were more Poles caught that day. There was to be some sort of funeral in Zalesie, to which a lot of people from Puźnik had gone. The drying room with a few dozen Poles was set on fire. Witnesses told of terrible scenes. All those captured were burned.

Grandfather had money with him prepared to buy grain for flour. When he was caught, he gave it to a Ukrainian woman, a stranger who was nearby, and asked her to give it to his wife Maria, for the children, because he "probably wouldn't come home again". A few days later, this woman gave the money, through another person, to Jozef Tyc's widow.

The grandfather's corpse was brought home by the family the next day. They were partially burnt. His daughters remembered that Dad was covering his face with his burned hand. He was buried with someone else (?) in the cemetery in Puzniki. The priest was no longer in the village by then. Life for the grandmother and her three orphaned, children became extremely difficult. Especially since a week later the Bandera deprived them of their home.

A few people survived the attack in Zalesie - the aforementioned Markowski and Franciszek Jasiński, a teenage boy who escaped to a nearby house and, hanging around the farmyard, pretended to be the son of one of the Ukrainian women. He then escaped across the fields to the house. My grandmother also told of a woman who, badly beaten, escaped and reached Puzniki on her own.

For many years, the cemetery in the village of Puźniki, which was pacified and burnt down a week later, was overgrown with weeds and trees. The remains of the houses and the church were razed to the ground by the Soviet authorities after the war. In fact, apart from the grotto of the Virgin Mary, a few gravestones and our memory, nothing remains of Puzniki.

In the 1990s, during a visit to his native land, my Dad, Szczepan Jasiński, placed a small plaque in this cemetery with the names of his parents, and my grandparents on my Father's side - Ludwika and Piotr Jasiński, and my brother Marian Jasiński. They were all bestially murdered by Ukrainians in Puzniki on 13 February 1945. They do not have a grave. On this plaque is also the name of my other grandfather Jozef Tyc. This monument still stands today.