Volhynia exhumations essential for reconciliation

Poland’s prime minister has said full Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation can only be achieved when all the victims of a WWII massacre of Poles have been laid to rest.

Between 1943-44, around 100,000 Poles were slaughtered by the ultra-nationalist Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in the Volhynia and Eastern Galicia regions of pre-war eastern Poland (today part of western Ukraine).

The killings still cast a shadow over Ukrainian-Polish relations despite the close bonds between the two countries forged by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The 80th anniversary of the massacre falls in July.

Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland’s prime minister, said on Tuesday: „We Poles will never rest until the last remains of the Volhynia Massacre have been found. There will be no final Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation without the recovery of all victims’ remains, without them finally being honoured.”

The prime minister was speaking at a wreath-laying ceremony at a Warsaw monument to Polish victims of genocide committed by Ukrainian nationalists.

He said a sarcophagus under the monument contained earth collected from thousands of Polish villages named on plaques at the site. „This is earth soaked in the blood of over a 100,000 of our countrymen, residents of the Second Polish Republic of 1942-1947,” Morawiecki said, adding that the murders were committed not by some soulless state apparatus but by normal people, often killing their neighbours.

Morawiecki went on to describe the massacre as genocide of a type for which there are no words, highlighting that the victims were killed „with axes, with pitchforks, with saws, with hoes, burned alive, it was something unimaginably cruel…”

But the prime minister drew attention to „our Ukrainian neighbours, our Ukrainian allies, who are experiencing war today.”

He said every day Ukrainian soldiers were dying for their freedom and sovereignty, but also for the security of Europe and of Poland.

„There is hardly a day when women and children are not also killed in Ukraine in barbaric artillery, missile, bomb attacks, that is why our Ukrainian neighbours and allies understand for sure today, understand better, how important it is for us to locate every site, find every remain, to give them a Christian burial, to put up a cross, light a candle, pray.”(PAP)

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