Gaj massacre was a wartime massacre of the Polish population of Gaj , committed on 30 August 1943 by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army death squad aided by the Ukrainian peasants , in which 600 civilian Poles were killed including a large number of children . The mass murder operation in Gaj was carried out during the province-wide Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia . The ( exclusively Polish ) settlement ( consisting of Nowy and Stary Gaj ) founded in the 1920s was burned to the ground by OUN-UPA and no longer exists . When the Polish self-defence unit from nearby Rożyszcze arrived at the Gaj colony a few days later the bodies of victims were strewn everywhere . They identified and shot several Ukrainian collaborators and set their houses of fire in retaliation . The Gaj colony was located in the Kowel County ( '' powiat kowelski '' ) of the Wołyń Voivodeship in the Second Polish Republic ( now , part of the Kovel Raion , south-east of Kovel , Ukraine )
Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia
Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia
Gaj massacre