Pole Karolina Romanowska submits request to Zelenskyy on exhumation of Volyn tragedy victims

This is stated on the Onet website.

Romanowska appealed to President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance with a request to bury 18 people, including her family members, killed in the village of Uhly in the present-day Rivne region with dignity. 

‘The Polish Institute of National Remembrance has already requested the exhumation of the victims of the Volyn massacre nine times, but each time Ukraine's response has been negative. Resolving these issues once and for all would undoubtedly help not only build Polish-Ukrainian relations, but also deprive Russia of a propaganda tool that Moscow skillfully uses, occasionally adding fuel to the fire,’ said Ukrainian historian Anatoliy Kurnosov. 

‘We are applying for the exhumation together. Poles and Ukrainians, as part of our Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation society. We are trying to exhume not only the killed Poles, but also Ukrainians who also died at the hands of the UPA. They died along with the Poles,’ Romanowska explains. ’The Polish government and the Polish Institute of National Remembrance have repeatedly submitted such applications, tried and failed every time. As far as I know, this is one of the first applications of this type from a private individual. Will it work?’ Romanowska explained.

The Volyn Tragedy: reference

The Volyn Tragedy (in Polish historiography, Rzeź wołyńska, ‘Volyn Massacre’) is a mutual ethnic cleansing of the Polish and Ukrainian populations carried out by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Polish Home Army with the participation of Polish Schutzmannschaft battalions, Soviet partisans, and Ukrainian and Polish civilians in 1943 during World War II in Volyn. The number of victims is tens of thousands.

In 2016, the Polish Sejm adopted a resolution recognizing the events in Volyn as genocide. Officially, this day is called the National Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Genocide Committed by Ukrainian Nationalists Against the Citizens of the Second Polish Republic. The then President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, immediately said that he ‘regretted this decision of the Sejm’, saying that many would want to ‘use it for political speculation’. Since then, Ukrainian politicians and diplomats have emphasized that the tragic events in Volyn are ‘a common pain of both countries’ and that Poles should not be categorical in their judgements in order to politicize the issue.    

However, Polish politicians continue to say that ‘Ukraine will not join the EU with Bandera,’ as Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said in 2017, or that ‘Ukraine will be able to join the EU only after the exhumation of the victims of the Volyn tragedy,’ as Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Jablonski said in 2023. This means that this issue is highly politicized for the Poles.

In 2023, the Polish Sejm adopted a resolution commemorating the victims of the Volyn tragedy on its 80th anniversary, stating that Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation should include ‘acknowledgement of guilt and commemoration of the victims’.

So, the process of understanding continues. A striking example of this is the joint commemoration of the victims of the Volyn tragedy by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Polish President Andrzej Duda in 2023.