Janowa Dolina

The Janowa Dolina massacre took place around 23 April 1943 in the village of Janowa Dolina, (now Bazaltove, Ukraine). Janowa Dolina was a model settlement for workers of the Polish State Basalt Quarry, located in the Volhynian Voivodeship, in the Kostopol County of the Second Polish Republic. The name comes from Polish king Jan Kazimierz Waza, who reportedly hunted in the Volhynian forests, and after hunting — rested on the shore of the Horyn river. The village was destroyed during World War II by Ukrainian nationalists who murdered its Polish population including women and children.

The settlement was built in the late 1920s and early 1930s, during a period of Polish colonization of lands within the borders of Poland but having a Ukrainian majority population. It was built close to the newly created basalt quarry. Production of basalt in the quarry started in 1929, when the 18 km rail connection between Janowa Dolina and Kostopol was completed (Kostopol is located on the main rail route Wilno–Luniniec–Lwow). As the quarry employed in late 1930s some 3,000 workers (97% of them were Polish), lodgings were built for them and their families.

Thus, a town built from scratch was constructed, smack in the forests of central Volynia, by the Horyn River. The quarry and the town were brainchild of engineer Leonard Szutkowski (who kept his post until 1940) and his deputies, engineer J. Niwinski and engineer Urbanowicz. Most workers lived in the freshly built houses; some commuted from nearby villages.

Janowa Dolina was a very modern settlement: all houses had access to electricity and plumbing and its layout was based on a specially designed grid plan. Houses were placed in the beautiful pine forest. Streets bore no names; they were marked by letters — A, B, C, D… G (Glowna — main), until the last one, Z, placed closest to the Horyn River. Along them there were houses, each designed for 4 families. As inhabitants of Janowa Dolina later remembered, the settlement was full of flowers, plants and trees and neighbors competed with each other, trying to have the most beautiful flower garden. The settlement was separated from the nearby quarry by a strip of dense forest.

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Wikipedia