Mateusz Morawiecki visited the site of the former Polish village of Ostrówki in today’s western Ukraine, which perished in the Volhynia Massacres, on Friday morning, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Accompanied by one of the descendants of the Polish villagers killed by Ukrainian nationalists, the Polish prime minister planted a wooden cross and said prayers at the Ostrówki site, according to officials.
Morawiecki later also lit a vigil light at the place of the former Ostrówki Village Church, and visited the local cemetery, lighting candles at the graves of the killed Polish villagers.
He also laid a wreath at a memorial to the victims of the Volhynia Massacres, the PAP news agency reported.
The prime minister said in a tweet: “I paid tribute to the memory of the victims of the Volhynia Massacres, in the former village of Ostrówki, whose residents were killed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).”
On Thursday, Polish and Ukrainian youngsters joined forces to help clean up the cemetery, officials said.
The UPA attacked Ostrówki on August 30, 1943, surrounding the village and killing 475 Polish inhabitants in a murderous spree that lasted several hours, according to historians, the PAP news agency reported.
On July 11, Poland will mark its National Day of Remembrance of Victims of Genocide by Ukrainian nationalists against Poles during World War II.
Volhynia Massacres
The Volhynia Massacres were carried out between February 1943 and the spring of 1945 by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in Nazi German-occupied Poland, according to Poland’s National Institute of Remembrance (IPN).
Some 100,000 ethnic Poles in total were slaughtered in the 1940s by Ukrainian forces, according to some estimates.
On July 11, 1943, the day of the worst bloodshed, Ukrainian nationalists attacked 100 villages largely inhabited by Poles in what was then Nazi-occupied eastern Poland and is now western Ukraine.
The massacres were part of an operation carried out by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), whose plan was to have a sovereign and nationally homogenous Ukraine after the war.
The Volhynia region, which was within Poland's borders prior to World War II, was first occupied by the Soviets in 1939, and then by the Nazi Germans in 1941.
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Source: PAP, dorzeczy.pl