Poland and Ukraine organise exhumations of WWII-era victims

Polish and Ukrainian officials are busy organising the exhumations set to take place in the Volhynia region. It follows a decision made last month, in which both countries agreed to exhume the first bodies from the Volhynia massacres.

In 1943 the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a Ukrainian paramilitary force which collaborated with Nazi Germany, carried out a series of massacres in the Volhynia and Eastern Galicia regions in then German-occupied Poland. Taken altogether, this resulted in the deaths of an estimated 100,000 Polish civilians. People from other ethnicities were also massacred, including Armenians, Jews, Russians, Czechs, and Georgians, according to historians.  

The Ukranian ambassador in Poland, Vasyl Bodnar, confirmed on Saturday in an interview with the TVN broadcaster that “all permits have been issued” to begin the exhumation of one mass grave in Western Ukraine.  

On Tuesday, Polish minister of culture and national Heritage Hanna Wróblewska confirmed that the site will be exhumed by a team of Polish and Ukrainian experts.

“At this moment, we have received permission and are preparing to [exhume] one place,” Wróblewska said in an interview with the RMF FM broadcaster. She referred to the village of Puzhnyky, where a burial pit was discovered in 2023.

While Wróblewska stated the hope that several Polish organisations, including the NGO Freedom and Democracy Foundation, the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), and the Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, will be able to work together on the issue, she added it must be joint effort between Poland and Ukraine.  

“What is very important is that this will be done in collaboration with the Ukrainian side,” she said.  

Though the exact dates of the exhumations are yet to be confirmed, both sides said that they would take place in the springtime, with Wróblewska stating that she hoped they would take place in April.  

“When the teams go out together, and start digging, then the public will know and of course we will communicate about it through the ministers of culture,” said Bodnar. 

Aside from providing the victims with a proper burial and commemorating their deaths in a respectful manner, Poland and Ukraine plan to cooperate on scientific research, taking DNA samples of the victims, as well as determining their causes of death and whether or not they were the result of violence.  

The multinational effort has the potential to reduce long standing tensions that the massacres have caused between the two otherwise close allies. While Poland officially recognized the events in Volhynia as a genocide, Ukraine disputes this classification, viewing it as a multi-sided conflict with shared responsibility on both sides.  

Now, officials on both sides hope that the beginning of the exhumation process will improve Polish-Ukrainian relations, and lead to further close collaboration between the two countries.  

“We are negotiating with the Ukrainian side, and we are checking to see what we can change in the very complicated procedures, so that this process can now run more smoothly,” the Polish culture minister said in a statement on X.  

“I see good will on the Ukrainian side. Please be patient. Let's not look for sensations. Let's not give in to manipulation from any side.”