The atrocities involved the murder of about 800 inhabitants of the village of Huta Pieniacka in February 1944 by members of the 4th SS Galizien Volunteer Police Regiment and the suppression of the Warsaw uprising in the same year by an associated unit called the Ukrainian Self Defence Legion. Both units became part of the 14th SS Division, which formed in 1943, two years after the invading German army overran Galicia, the area formed by south-eastern Poland and western Ukraine.