Poland will finance the excavation of NKVD victims’ graves in Volyn

LUTSK— We previously reported that volynian archaeologists, searching for the remains of the Polish king Casimir’s medieval castle in the old part of Volodymyr-Volynsky, accidentally discovered a mass grave which presumably contains bodies of the NKVD victims who were executed in 1940-41 (“Searching for an Ancient Settlement, the Archaeologists Have Found a Mass Grave,” Den, June 1). Late last week, the excavation site was visited for a second time by Polish officials concerned with restoring truth and historical justice. The first time Sejm members had come. The more recent visitors were member of the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites (the organization dealing with Polish graves around the world) Adam Kaczynski and the renowned scholar, archaeologist, and professor at the Copernicus University (Torun) Andrzej Kola.

Some items that were found in the mass graves strongly suggest the victims’ Polish nationality (buttons, coins, and a police medallion). Thus, the Polish public, led by the press, has already started to call the excavation site in Volodymyr-Volynsky “a Volynian Katyn.” This name may be somewhat inaccurate, as the real Katyn is commonly known to be the place of Polish officers’ massacre, while the victims of the Volynian slaughter might turn up to be not necessarily Poles, but also Russians, Jews and Ukrainians, all these groups being citizens of the interwar Polish Republic. The excavations are conducted by the state enterprise Volynian Antiquities, headed by Oleksii Zlatohorsky. He says that the Poles, having reviewed the progress of the excavation work, decided to contribute funds as the project requires several hundred thousand hryvnias, a sum clearly beyond the means of the enterprise. Now, the excavation work in Volodymyr-Volynsky is to be put on hold, though it will resume in late summer. Then, it will be joined by the Polish archaeologists’ team, which is headed by professor Kola and is now conducting excavations in the Bykivnia forest near Kyiv. They plan to erect another monument to the Poles executed by the NKVD there. One can only envy Poland for always having enough money and manpower for such projects, even if it deals with finding Polish graves. The Polish press provides a lot of coverage of the Volynian excavations, with well-known TV reporter Pawel Bobolowicz from Lublin being particularly active. Deputy head of the Culture and Tourism Department of Volyn Regional State Administration Vasyl Voron, having hosted the Polish Sejm members delegation, says that the Polish martyrdom literature omits Volodymyr-Volynsky events. They know everything about developments of 1939-41 near Kharkiv and Kyiv, while the Volodymyr-Volynsky tragedy is only now being discovered. As we can see, they do it quite actively, and with the support of their own country.