In western Ukraine, the remains of 55 victims of the 1943 killings were exhumed
In the former villages of Ostruvka and Volya Ostrovetska in western Ukraine, the remains of 55 people have been exhumed; the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) links them to the killings of the Polish population in 1943. According to Notes from Poland, the remains include 26 children, mostly under the age of 12—including a baby just a few months old—as well as 20 women.
According to the IPN, most of the graves lacked coffins and were haphazard in nature. The institute stated that this is consistent with accounts of people being killed in a barn and subsequently buried in a mass grave. Damage was found on many of the remains, particularly on skulls. The IPN attributes this damage to accounts of the use of agricultural tools, specifically hammers used for slaughtering livestock.
During the excavations, approximately 300 personal items were also found, including rosaries, crosses, and clothing. Bone tissue samples were collected for genetic testing. According to the publication, genetic testing has previously been used to identify victims exhumed at another site in Ukraine.
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Ostrivky and Volia Ostrovetska were neighboring villages that were part of Poland before the postwar border changes. Notes from Poland, citing the IPN, reports that on August 30, 1943, more than a thousand Poles were killed there, and the villages were destroyed. The Polish Institute of National Remembrance attributes responsibility for these events to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.
Exhumations were conducted at these sites in the 1990s, as well as in 2011 and 2015, when the remains of hundreds of victims were discovered. Mass graves on the territory of the former villages were discovered in April, and exhumation work began in July. The IPN believes that the remains of more than 300 additional victims may still be in unknown burial sites. A reburial ceremony for the newly discovered remains is scheduled for August 30 at the cemetery in Ostrówki.
