The exhumation operation is expected to last around three weeks, Polish state news agency PAP has reported, citing Ukrainian officials.
According to accounts from local residents and historical documents, up to 79 people may have been buried at the site. However, archaeologists say the exact number of victims discovered may be lower.
A cemetery at Puzhnyky in Ukraine's western Ternopil region. Photo: PAP/Wojtek Jargiło
The remains will be examined by forensic anthropologists, who will assess the age, sex and injuries of the victims.
DNA tests will also be carried out and compared with samples collected from relatives in Poland.
The exhumation follows the lifting of a moratorium, in place since 2017, on the search and recovery of Polish victims of WWII atrocities in Ukraine.
The decision was announced in November during a joint press conference by Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski and his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha.
Poland's top diplomat Radosław Sikorski (right) and his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha (left) hold a joint news conference in Warsaw on November 27, 2024. Photo: PAP/Tomasz Gzell
At that time, Ukraine confirmed that Polish state and private institutions would be allowed to carry out such work in cooperation with Ukrainian authorities.
The site in Puzhnyky, known as Puźniki in Poland, is linked to a massacre committed overnight on February 12–13, 1945, when Ukrainian nationalists killed between 50 and 120 Polish villagers.
The forme Polish village of Puźniki in what is now western Ukraine. Photo: Krystian Maj/KPRM
The killings were carried out by members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
The OUN and UPA were responsible for a wave of ethnic violence between 1943 and 1945, which Polish historians describe as a genocide targeting around 100,000 Polish men, women and children.
While Poland views these events as a premeditated campaign of mass murder, many in Ukraine regard them as part of a broader, symmetrical conflict in which both sides bore responsibility.
In Ukraine, the OUN and UPA are often remembered primarily for their anti-Soviet resistance, rather than their anti-Polish actions.
The Ukrainian side of the project is being coordinated by Alina Kharlamova of the Volhynian Antiquities Foundation, which received official permission to conduct the search on January 8.
Seven members of the foundation will take part in the work. Polish participants include representatives of the Pomeranian branch of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) and the Freedom and Democracy Foundation.
Ukrainian archaeologist Oleksiy Zlatohorsky announced on April 11 that the press would not be allowed to observe the exhumation works.
Zlatohorsky said the worksite in Puzhnyky would be fenced off and no comments would be given by specialists during the operation, the PAP news agency reported.
A joint Polish-Ukrainian press conference will be held once the exhumation is completed.
He said that wartime conditions in Ukraine were behind the decision to restrict media access.
"I have always supported making archaeological research as accessible to the media as possible and never objected to journalists being present at excavations," Zlatohorsky said. "But the war has brought changes of its own."
Poland and Ukraine in November said they had reached a landmark agreement allowing the resumption of searches and exhumations of Polish victims of historical crimes in what is now western Ukraine.
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.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP