Polish victims of WWII massacres by Ukrainian nationalists reburied in Ukraine

Sep 6, 2025 | History

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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.

A ceremony has been held in Ukraine to rebury victims of massacres carried out by Ukrainian nationalists during World War Two. Their remains were recently exhumed after a diplomatic breakthrough between Warsaw and Kyiv on an issue that regularly causes tension between the two countries.

“Today’s burial is a restoration of dignity to those who had it stripped from them in the most inhumane manner,” said Polish culture minister Marta Cienkowska during today’s ceremony, which was also attended by her Ukrainian counterpart, Tetyana Berezhna.

“The victims of the massacre rested in an unmarked grave for decades, but the memory of their loved ones and those who fought for that memory, truth, and act of basic justice endures,” added Cienkowska.

The reburial took place 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 as part of broader massacres between 1943 and 1945 that killed around 100,000 ethnic Poles, mostly women and children.

In Poland, the Volhynia massacres are widely regarded as a genocide, and have been recognised as such by parliament. But Ukraine rejects that description, and has continued to venerate some of the individuals and groups associated with the massacres.

In a diplomatic breakthrough, in January this year it was announced that Ukraine had lifted a ban on exhuming massacre victims on its territory, which had been in place since 2017. Soon after, Poland confirmed that the first exhumation woudl take place in Puzhnyky.

Work at the site, carried out by both Polish and Ukrainian specialists, began in April. The following month, the Polish culture ministry revealed that skeletal fragments of at least 42 people had been discovered.

It is those remains that have now been reburied, although Poland’s state Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) notes that further DNA testing is still needed to ascertain exactly how many people’s remains were found.

 

As well as relatives of victims, today’s ceremony was attended by the speaker of the Polish Senate, Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska, and President Karol Nawrocki’s chief foreign policy aide, Marcin Przydacz, who read a letter on behalf of the head of state.

“For us Poles, today’s ceremony is a momentous symbol, a symbol that will begin a lasting process – a process of sincere forgiveness and reconciliation,” wrote Nawrocki.

“I therefore express my hope and expectation that it will soon be followed by further funerals of the victims – in all the places where the genocidal crime against Poles was committed.”

Karol Polejowski, the deputy head of the IPN, said that “over 130,000 of our compatriots are still awaiting exhumation, identification and burial”.

Berezhna, the Ukrainian culture minister, also spoke at the ceremony, declaring that the “Volhynia tragedy”, as the events are generally referred to in Ukraine, saw both Poles and Ukrainians lose their lives.

She called for “a meeting of historians from both sides as soon as possible” to discuss and study the episode, because “the families of the victims of the tragedy on both sides have the right to know the truth”.

Ukrainian deputy foreign minister Olexandr Mischenko also expressed regret that “medieval acts occurred in our community” and declared that “today we are putting down a full stop and saying it’s over”.

There have been regular calls from Poland for Ukraine to formally apologise for the massacres. However, while leading Ukrainian officials have made expressions of sympathy or regret, no apology has been issued.

In a breakthrough moment, in 2023 the presidents of the two countries, Andrzej Duda and Volodymr Zelensky, jointly attended a ceremony to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the massacres.

But tensions flared again earlier this year when Ukraine criticised Poland’s plans to create a new national holiday commemorating the victims of Volhynia. Poland has in turn regularly protested over the continued veneration in Ukraine of wartime nationalist leaders associated with the massacres.


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: Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

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