Ukraine and Poland grant each other consent for exhumations

Poland and Ukraine have given the green light to one another to conduct new exhumations of historical war victims on both of their territories. The development continues recent progress in tackling what has long been a cause of tension between the two allies.

In a statement on Wednesday, Ukraine’s culture ministry announced that it had granted permission for Poland to exhume the remains of soldiers who died in 1939 defending the city of Lviv (which was at the time called Lwów and part of Poland) from the joint invasions by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, the ministry announced that it expects work to begin soon on exhumations conducted by Ukraine in the village of Jureczkowa, which sit on the Polish side of the current border between the two countries.

Before the war, Jureczkowa was also part of Poland but it had a predominantly ethnic Ukrainian population (like many parts of eastern Poland at the time). During the war, it was occupied by both German and Soviet forces at various stages.

Afterwards, in 1947, the ethnic Ukrainian population was removed as part of a larger forced resettlement programme, codenamed Operation Vistula, conducted by the communist authorities in an effort to suppress the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a partisan formation that fought against the Soviets.

A spokesman for Poland’s culture ministry, Piotr Jędrzejowski, confirmed to the Polish Press Agency that “the Ukrainian side has received preliminary consent to carry out [exhumation] work in Poland” from the Institute of National Rememberance (IPN), a state historical body.

He added that “administrative approvals” were still required and noted that the exhumation “work will be carried out with the participation of the Polish side”. IPN spokesman Rafał Leśkiewicz confirmed the the institute has now “begun efforts to obtain the necessary consents and administrative decisions”.

Neither the Polish nor Ukrainian statements clarified the specific aim or subject of the planned exhumations in Jureczkowa, though Leśkiewicz said that they would begin in autumn at the earliest.

Ukraine hailed the latest developments as a further “example of successful interaction” and “constructive work of Ukraine and Poland on historical issues”.

It noted that Polish researchers were recently granted permission to carry out exhumations in Puzhnyky in Ukraine (known as Puźniki in Polish), a formerly ethnic Polish village whose residents were killed by Ukrainian nationalists as part of the wartime Volhynia massacres in which around 100,000 Poles died.

That issue has proved a particularly thorny one between the two countries. Poland regards the massacres as a genocide but Ukraine rejects the use of that term and commemorates leaders of nationalist organisations, including the UPA and Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), that were responsible for the killings.

Earlier this month, Ukraine criticised plans, approved by Poland’s parliament, to create a new official day of remembrances for victims of genocide committed by the OUN-UPA”.

However, in its statement on Thursday, the Ukrainian culture ministry said that, following the latest positive developments, “we are convinced that shared memory and steps towards each other will unite our peoples in the name of our common European future”.

Main image credit: IPN (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)