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