Mateusz Morawiecki made the statement at a ceremony to mark Poland’s National Day of Remembrance of Victims of Genocide by Ukrainian nationalists against Poles during World War II, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
This year, the occasion also marked the 80th anniversary of the Volhynia Massacres, according to officials.
The prime minister laid flowers at the monument commemorating the victims of the Volhynia killings in Warsaw’s Volhynia Square, according to officials.
Earlier, he also laid a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the Polish capital, news outlets reported.
‘Volhynia Massacres were a horrific genocide - Genocidium Atrox’
Morawiecki addressed the gathering at the Volhynia Square, telling mourners: “The sarcophagus in front of the Volhynia Cross here contains the earth from thousands of Polish villages listed on these 18 plaques behind me. This earth is soaked in the blood of more than 100,000 of our compatriots from the period 1942-1947.”
He added: ”This earth witnessed an extraordinary crime, ‘a hell within hell’ created by Ukrainian nationalists for their neighbours.”
The prime minister stressed: “This crime wasn’t carried out by a heartless apparatus of the state, but by people, who had turned, in their hatred, on those with whom they had shared an existence for years, for decades, for centuries.”
Morawiecki stated: “This was genocide, this was extermination, but the way this genocide had been carried out, with Poles being killed with axes, pitchforks and saws… or burned alive, was so unimaginably cruel that it merits a special name, Genocidium Atrox, a horrific genocide, a cruel genocide.”
The prime minister told the audience: “I visited Volhynia four days ago… Those places that used to teem with life are now nothing but grey ashes and grey rubble.”
‘There won’t be full Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation until all remains have been found and honoured’
He stressed: “And that’s why we must strengthen our resolve all the more. We must not allow a man, a society, a whole community, to perish without trace, without remembrance, without truth being told.”
Morawiecki said: “And so I join the appeal to our Ukrainian neighbours, to our Ukrainian allies, who are going through a war today. Every day, Ukrainian soldiers are dying for their freedom, for their sovereignty, for their right to live, but they’re also dying for the security of Europe, for the security of Poland.”
The Polish prime minister added: “Practically not a day goes by without women and children being killed in barbaric artillery, rocket and bomb attacks on Ukraine. And so today our Ukrainian neighbours and allies definitely realise, realise better than before, how important it is for us to find every burial place, to find all the remains, to bury them in a Christian way, to plant a cross, to light a candle, to say a prayer.”
Morawiecki vowed: “We Polish people won’t rest until the last remains have been found and so it’s not only a matter for Poland, but also for Ukraine.”
The prime minister declared: “There won’t be full Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation until all the remains have been found, until they have been properly honoured.”
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, wpolityce.pl, 300polityka.pl
