Exhumation of Poles massacred by Ukrainians in WWII begins in Ukraine

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Exhumation work has begun in a former Polish village in western Ukraine to locate, identify and rebury the remains of dozens of ethnic Poles who were among around 100,000 killed as part of the Volhynia massacres carried out by Ukrainian nationalists during World War Two.

The development marks a significant breakthrough on an issue that continues to cause tension between Poland and Ukraine, who are otherwise close allies. Previously, Kyiv had banned such exhumations from taking place since 2017.

In January this year, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk revealed that Ukraine had given permission for exhumations to resume. The following month, Hanna Wróblewska, the minister of culture and national heritage, confirmed details of when and where the first would take place.

It is happening in Puzhnyky (known as Puźniki in Polish), a depopulated former village in what is now western Ukraine but which, before the war, was part of Poland. Ukrainian nationalists are believed to have killed between 50 and 135 Poles there on the night of 12/13 February 1945.

Research there has been led by the Freedom and Democracy Foundation, a Polish NGO, which in 2023 discovered a mass burial pit at the site. It also involves experts from Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) and Pomeranian Medical University, as well as the Ukrainian Volhynia Antiquities Foundation.

The exhumation work, which involves a total of around 50 specialists, began on Thursday this week and is funded by Poland’s culture ministry, reports the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily.

Relatives of the victims are taking part in the process by providing genetic material to help identify the remains, which will then be reburied in marked graves.

The start of the exhumation work was welcomed by Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, who noted its significance after years of tension between Warsaw and Kyiv over the issue.

“We have found the right formula: that we will not bargain over the dead, but both sides will fulfil their Christian duty,” he said on Friday in an interview with radio station TOK FM.

The development even elicited rare praise for the government from Law and Justice (PiS), Poland’s main opposition party, which was in power from 2015 to 2023 and also pushed hard for exhumations to resume.

“Minister Wróblewska should be congratulated” for “conducting a positive dialogue” with her Ukrainian counterpart that has led to this breakthrough,  former PiS government minister Michał Dworczyk told broadcaster Polsat. He expressed hope that further exhumations will follow as promised.

The precise death toll of the Volhynia massacres, which took place between 1943 and 1945, is unknown, but estimates range up to 120,000. Most of the victims were women and children.

In Poland, the episode is widely regarded as a genocide, and has been recognised as such by parliament, but Ukraine rejects that description.

In 2022, the IPN estimated that the remains of around 55,000 ethnic Polish victims and 10,000 Jewish ones “still lie in death pits in Volhynia, waiting to be found, exhumed and buried”.

However, since 2017, exhumations have been banned by Ukraine, a decision that was made after a monument to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – a nationalist partisan formation that was responsible for massacres of Poles and Jews – was dismantled in Poland.

Recent years have seen moves towards conciliation between Poland and Ukraine regarding the Volhynia massacres. In 2023, Poland’s then prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had pledged that exhumations would take place.

In an important symbolic moment, 2023 also saw Zelensky and his Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda, jointly commemorate the 80th anniversary of the massacres. The speaker of Ukraine’s parliament “expressed sympathy” towards the victims and their families.

The issue of exhumations has also assumed broader geopolitical implications, with a deputy Polish prime minister last year indicating that Poland would not allow Ukraine to join the European Union until the legacy of the Volhynia massacres is “resolved”.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Patryk Ogorzalek / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.