Exhumed Polish victims of WWII Volhynia massacre laid to rest
The exhumed remains of Polish victims of the World War II ethnic cleansing by Ukrainian nationalists have been buried in the former Polish village of Puzniki, now western Ukraine.
The ceremony took place on Saturday and was attended by Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage Marta Cienkowska.
"Today's burial returns the dignity to those who were robbed of it in the most inhumane way," she said at the event, adding that she believed that the remaining victims of the massacre could be found, identified and laid to rest by a combined effort of Polish and Ukrainian experts.
At a press conference held earlier in the week, Cienkowska praised good relations with Ukraine which made the completion of the first exhumation works possible.
In 1943-44, the ultra-nationalist Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) killed around 100,000 Poles in the Volhynia and Eastern Galicia regions of pre-war eastern Poland (today in western Ukraine).
During the exhumations carried out in Puzniki in the spring this year, the remains of at least 42 Polish men, women and children were discovered, murdered by Ukrainian nationalists on the night of February 12 and 13, 1945.
It was the first such undertaking since Ukraine lifted its ban on conducting search and exhumation of Polish war victims on its territory in November 2024.
Before the Polish and Ukrainian governments reached an agreement on resuming the exhumations, the research had been stalled for years due to a dispute between Warsaw and Kyiv over the role of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a World War II military organisation that Poland claims was responsible for the mass murder of Polish civilians, while Ukrainians often regard it as a liberation force.(PAP)wpb/jd
