Basil Martysz

Holy Hieromartyr Basil Martysz was a protopresbyter and Orthodox priest, born on 20 February 1874 in the village of Teratyn, Hrubieszów county, in the Chełm region, and killed on 4 May 1945, on Great Friday, also at Teratyn. The Ukrainian source calls him a hieromartyr of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, but his glorification took place at Chełm, on 7 and 8 June 2003.

He was born into the family of a judge. He graduated from the Chełm seminary. Soon afterward he married, and on 10 December 1900 he was ordained priest. Later he was sent on missionary work to Alaska. After returning to Europe he became in 1912 rector of an Orthodox parish in Silesia. During the First World War Father Martysz, with his family, found shelter in Moscow. In 1919 his family returned to their native lands, and he began to organize Orthodox chaplains in the Polish army, for which on 7 December 1925 he received the Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta and the military rank of colonel. He was at the head of the military priests and served in this post twenty-⁠five years.

He took an active part in the services for the soldiers of the Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic, who were in internment camps in Poland after the defeat of the Ukrainian state. On 8 July 1921 he celebrated the Liturgy in the Ukrainian language for more than five thousand interned soldiers. He was also engaged in organizing and training priests in these camps. He ended his service in 1936, at the age of sixty-⁠two, and returned to his native village, Teratyn.

On Great Friday, 4 May 1945, a Polish nationalist unit led by Zbigniew Gura, nicknamed Jacek, burst into Father Basil's house. The priest was tortured for four hours, then shot. His funeral was led by Father Ivan Levchuk at Chełm, and the burial took place at Teratyn. In October 1963 Father Basil was reburied in the Orthodox cemetery at Wola in Warsaw, where the veterans of the Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic are also buried. In 2003 his holy relics were moved to the church of Saint John Climacus beside the cemetery, and on 7 and 8 June of the same year he was numbered among the saints at Chełm.