Main image: Wooden crosses commemorating Poles murdered in Volhynia along the road to the Polish-Ukrainian border crossing in Medyka. / Darek Delmanowicz / PAP
Exhumation of the victims of the Volhynian tragedy will begin in April in the Ternopil region, reports Polish radio and media RMF 24.
The Freedom and Democracy Foundation, which discovered the burial site two years ago, has received permission from Ukrainian authorities to exhume the remains and conduct further research. The remains are located near Ternopil in Ukraine. Exhumations of Polish victims of the Volhynian massacre will begin in April.
The primary goal is to identify the individuals whose remains were found in layers in a pit near a former cemetery. As Maciej Dancewicz, the deputy head of the Freedom and Democracy Foundation, emphasized, the remains will be studied by Polish archaeologists and anthropologists after being exhumed.
Specialists are already collecting genetic material from descendants. At the site of the remains, the material will also be collected in a professional manner, says Maciej Dancewicz in an interview with RMF FM.
After the research, the victims will be reburied, and the site will be commemorated.
The massacre of the residents of the village of Puźniki took place in February 1945. Around 80 people were killed by Ukrainian nationalists at that time.
Last Friday, Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced a breakthrough regarding the exhumation of victims of the Volhynian massacre.
"There is a decision on the first exhumations of Polish victims of the UPA. I thank the Ministers of Culture of Poland and Ukraine for their good cooperation. We are waiting for further decisions," he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Since the spring of 2017, there has been a dispute between Warsaw and Kyiv over the ban on the search and exhumation of Polish war victims' remains on Ukrainian territory, imposed by the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (IPN). The ban was issued after the dismantling of the UPA monument in Hruszowice in April 2017.
The decision to lift the moratorium, in place since 2017, on the search and exhumation of Polish victims of the Volhynian massacre was announced at the end of November 2024 during a joint press conference by Poland's and Ukraine's foreign ministers, Radosław Sikorski and Andriy Sybiha.
Ukraine confirmed at that time that "there are no obstacles to conducting search and exhumation work on Ukrainian territory by Polish state institutions and private entities in cooperation with the relevant Ukrainian institutions, in accordance with Ukrainian legislation," and declared "readiness to positively consider applications in these matters."
