Remains of 55 Volhynia Massacre Victims Exhumed

Polish and Ukrainian investigators have recovered the remains of 55 victims, predominantly women and children, killed during the 1943 Volhynia massacres. The remains were found at the sites of the former villages of Ostrówki and Wola Ostrowiecka, Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) said on Friday, following nearly four weeks of excavation work. JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. TVP World visited the exhumation sites, where Polish and Ukrainian experts have been examining the remains, documenting injuries and collecting DNA samples in an effort to identify the victims more than eight decades after the killings. Polish investigators also recovered more than 300 personal items, including crosses, rosaries and religious medallions bearing inscriptions in Polish. Ostrówki and Wola Ostrowiecka were among hundreds of Polish communities targeted during the Volhynia massacres, in which Ukrainian nationalists killed tens of thousands of Polish civilians in the 1940s. The killings are one of the most sensitive issues in Polish-Ukrainian relations, even as Warsaw continues to be one of Kyiv’s staunchest supporters in its war against Russia. Most child victims under 12 The largest discovery was made at a former farmstead in Wola Ostrowiecka, where investigators recovered the remains of 48 people, including 24 children, 17 women and three men. The sex of four other victims could not be determined because of the condition of the remains. Other Topics of Interest Ex-European Officials Met Unnamed Kremlin Veteran for Secret Ukraine Talks Former senior officials from Britain, France, and Germany reportedly met a former Kremlin official in Vienna to explore possible conditions for future peace negotiations. The IPN said most of the children were under the age of 12, while the youngest were only a few months old. The bodies had been buried in several layers and in random positions, which investigators said was consistent with witness accounts that victims were executed in a barn before their bodies were thrown into nearby pits. ‘This was her ancestral land’ For IPN historian Leon Popek, who spoke to TVP World at the site, the search is deeply personal. His mother came from Wola Ostrowiecka, where his grandfather, aunt and more than 20 other relatives were killed in 1943. “From childhood, I grew up hearing that the Poles had been murdered, expelled and their homes burned,” Popek said. “This was her ancestral land. Her family had lived here for more than four hundred years.” Tomasz Trzaska, a priest working with the IPN, told TVP World that injuries documented during the exhumations were consistent with accounts of how the victims were killed. “Many of the skulls show injuries caused by tools and repeated blows,” he said. “This corresponds with accounts that victims were forced face down and then struck in the back of the head. The fractured skulls document what happened.” At a separate mass grave near a former school in Ostrówki, investigators found the remains of six people, including two children and two women. The bodies had been buried face down and side by side. Investigators found evidence of gunshot wounds on several skulls and on one femur. The IPN said the number, ages and sex of the victims corresponded with historical testimony describing the killing of a forester’s family and several other people by Ukrainian nationalists. Family preserves information for decades The location of some of the victims had been preserved for decades by a local Ukrainian family. “My parents told me: if the time ever comes, show the Poles where their murdered people are buried,” local resident Oleksandra Vaseyko told TVP World. “When that time came, I showed them the place,” she added. DNA samples have been collected from the remains in an effort to identify the victims and may be compared with samples provided by victims’ relatives. The 55 victims will be buried on Aug. 30 in a section of the Ostrówki cemetery dedicated to victims of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). See the original here. TVP World is Poland's first English-language channel where you can find our guest interviews, world news from the Polish perspective and the latest news from the CEE region.