Poland begins WWII exhumation after row with Ukraine

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Warsaw, Poland | AFP

Polish researchers began a sensitive mission to Ukraine on Thursday to exhume the victims of World War II massacres -- an issue that has weighed on relations between the two allies.

The plan is to excavate a mass grave in the destroyed village of Puzniki, where around 80 Polish civilians are believed to have been killed by Ukrainian nationalists during one night in 1945.

"Everyone deserves a dignified burial," Andrzej Ossowski, an expert in forensic genetics who is taking part in the mission, told AFP in Warsaw earlier this month.

The researchers said they want to identify every victim of the massacre and bury them individually in the village's former cemetery at a ceremony later this year.

Poland's culture ministry released a statement on Thursday to mark "the beginning of the exhumation work in Puzniki".

It said the goal was "a dignified burial and restoring the identity of Polish civilians -- residents of the village Puzniki who were murdered by Ukrainian nationalists".

The massacre was allegedly carried out by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, known by its acronym as the UPA -- a guerrilla group that aligned itself with Nazi Germany.

The UPA is now considered by Ukraine as a patriotic organisation that fought for the country's independence.

Even though it has been one of Ukraine's closest allies since the Russian invasion began, Poland has at the same time repeatedly urged Kyiv to be more open about the actions of the UPA.

The group is estimated to have killed 100,000 ethnic Poles between 1943 and 1945.

The issue has led to major diplomatic tensions.

'A breakthrough'

The painful historical chapter -- and the tensions it has caused between Poland and Ukraine in the modern day -- have been used in Russian disinformation efforts aimed at portraying current Ukrainian authorities as "Nazi".

The topic is "vulnerable to Russian disinformation attacks", said Polish Deputy Culture Minister Maciej Wrobel, who is in charge of the exhumation project on the Polish side.

Maciej Dancewicz, a historian from the Liberty and Democracy Foundation, which is taking part in the project, told AFP that the exhumations had "historic" and "purely human" dimensions.

The attack on Puzniki took place in the night between February 12 and February 13, 1945.

It killed around 80 inhabitants of the village -- mainly women and children, according to survivors.

The bodies were buried together, and the forest has since swept away all evidence of the killings and the village itself.

Dancewicz's grandmother survived the massacre "by a miracle".

Fleeing the attackers, she bent down to find a shoe lost in the snow, and at that precise moment, an assault rifle fired passed just over her head.

"Eighty years later, the issue is still alive... We talked about it a lot at home," Dancewicz said.

He hopes the exhumations in Puzniki will be a "breakthrough" in Ukraine's approach to the issue.

Exhumations of Poles killed in what is now western Ukraine have been carried out in the past, but the last time one received authorisation from Ukraine was around a decade ago.

'Complicated mission'

Ossowski said the experts would bring several tonnes of equipment to the site in order to carry out their research.

"Every remaining one will be removed separately. Anthropological analysis will be carried out and material for genetic examination will be secured," he said.

The remains will then be preserved for individual burials with the name and surname of each person.

"It is a complicated mission," Wrobel said.

"The topic is very sensitive, apart from anything else, because the Ukrainian side is not currently able to describe clearly what happened that night in 1945."

"We would like to know more about the circumstances... so that the two sides recognise the massacre and know the story of the inhabitants of Puzniki," he said.

Several other Polish requests for exhumations in other parts of the region are awaiting a response from Kyiv.

Ossowski said it was "obvious that there is small, big or very big politics around this".

"We know that perfectly well.

"But our task is not to accuse or blame anyone -- simply to identify the people."