In connection with the interview given by Anton Drobovych, Head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, the Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation wishes to present its position on the issues raised by Mr Drobovych concerning Polish-Ukrainian relations in the area of commemoration, search for and exhumation of the victims of the Volhynia genocide.
First of all, we agree with Anton Drobovych’s statement that historical truth and honesty are the matters of fundamental importance for the cooperation between the Polish and Ukrainian institutions to be successful. Therefore, in the name of the truth and honesty invoked by Mr Drobovych, it is but necessary to correct the inaccuracies, manipulations and misstatements on the part of the Head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance.
At the outset, it should be clearly emphasized that the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), as an institution of the Polish state acting independently of the government’s administrative bodies, expects real actions on Ukraine’s part – in line with earlier declarations of the Ukrainian state and government authorities – to enable the commencement of search and exhumation work in the places where Poles were murdered during the genocide in Volhynia and Eastern Lesser Poland.
Cooperation on historical matters, including most of all efforts to commemorate places of execution of Poles murdered by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a criminal organization, as part of the genocidal ethnic cleansing in Volhynia and Eastern Lesser Poland in 1943-1945, are coordinated in Poland by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in close cooperation with the Institute of National Remembrance. Cooperation between the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Institute of National Remembrance is highly substantive. The government team is headed by Secretary of State at the Ministry of Culture Jarosław Sellin, and IPN President, Karol Nawrocki, Ph.D. is a member of this body.
The Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance is not a partner for discussion for the Polish IPN as far as commemoration, search and exhumation activities are concerned. The Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance’s activities are managed and coordinated by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine through the Ministry of Culture, and the position of the Head of the Ukrainian IPN in the structure of government administration is political. The Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, as well as the Interdepartmental Commission subordinate to the Ukrainian government, are responsible for decision-making on issues of key importance to Poland, including commemoration and search activities.
Regarding Anton Drobovych’s statement suggesting that Ukrainian graves in Poland are under threat, it must be firmly stated that this allegation is thoroughly false. Never has any institution of the Polish state, including the IPN, taken any steps that would result in the removal of Ukrainian graves. In the case of the Monastyrz Hill in Werchrata, it was the commemorative plaque, not the grave itself, that gave rise to concerns; and no one has ever attempted to remove it. Such false claims are intended to create the impression that the Polish side is to blame for the situation.
After the plaque with the names of 62 UPA members was destroyed in January 2020, the Polish side reconstructed the plaque with an inscription in the Polish and Ukrainian language.
The text it bears is objective and based on facts. However, the list of names has been omitted, as it gives rise to serious objections on the Polish side and requires verification. These objections have been communicated to the Ukrainian side.
It is worth noting that in June 1995 Andrzej Przewoźnik, Secretary of the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites, caused an agreement to be signed with the Union of Ukrainians in Poland, which became the basis for legalizing the monument, erected illegally in 1993.
Mr Drobovych’s statement that Ukraine makes the approval of exhumation work contingent on the end of the dispute over the Monastyrz Hill memorial does not relate to the facts and is a manipulation. In fact, it is not the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, headed by Anton Drobovych, that is granting approvals for search and exhumation work. Let us stress once more that the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, as well as the Interdepartmental Commission subordinate to the Ukrainian government, are the bodies competent to make binding decisions in this regard, and Poland has for several years been unsuccessfully demanding that such decisions be made.
The Polish authorities have fulfilled their obligation to restore the devastated memorial, a fact which the Ukrainian side is reluctant to accept. The Ukrainian authorities have so far not given their approval for Polish archaeologists from the Institute of National Remembrance to carry out either exploratory or exhumation work.
Requests addressed by the IPN to the Ukrainian side for permission to carry out exploratory work have so far gone unanswered or been refused. For the sake of illustration, it is worth recalling just a few of these cases relating to various historical events:
Huta Pieniacka (Lviv district). The purpose of the work undertaken was to find the burial sites of the victims of the 8 February 1944 pacification in which about 1,000 Polish civilians were killed. According to an investigation by the Polish IPN, the crime was committed by German soldiers of Ukrainian nationality from the 4th SS Police Regiment of the 14th SS Division “Galizien” , under the command of a German captain, together with a local unit of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and a paramilitary unit consisting of Ukrainian nationalists under the command of Włodzimierz Czerniawski. On 18 February 2020, a request for approval of exploratory work was submitted to the Architecture Department of the Lviv administration. On 15 April 2020, it sent the request to the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance for an opinion; no response has been received for more than three years.
Stanisłówka (Lviv district).Search for the remains of two Home Army soldiers (known by name, surname and rank) from the unit of Second Lieutenant Onufry Kuźniar “Popiel”, killed during the defense of the village in 1944. On 18 February 2020, a request for approval of exploratory work was submitted to the Architecture Department of the Lviv administration. On 15 April 2020, it sent the request to the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance for an opinion; no response has been received for more than three years.
Małe Hołoby (Volyn district). IPN’s search for the grave of Father Józef Szostak and Friar Piotr Mojsijonek, who were killed on 5 April 1943 in the forest near Małe Hołoby. On 21 January 2020, a request for exploratory work was submitted to the Lutsk Department of Culture.
The request was not approved. Following an appeal, the Department of Culture finally denied the approval on 12 May 2020.
Lviv. In November 2019, in cooperation with a Ukrainian partner, the IPN obtained approval for exploratory work and carried out probing surveys at two inactive parish cemeteries of the former villages of Zboiska and Hołosko, now within the administrative borders of Lviv. Fragments of graves containing the remains of Polish Army soldiers killed in the defense of Lviv in September 1939 were discovered at both sites. The estimated number of those buried is about 130. Based on the results of the investigations, “Acts of Establishment of Burial Sites” were drawn up for both locations, forming the basis – in accordance with the Ukrainian law – for requesting the exhumation of the discovered remains. The IPN obtained permission from the Council of the Town of Mostyska to bury the exhumed soldiers in the existing quarter of Polish Army soldiers in the Mostyska cemetery. In March 2020, an application for an exhumation permit was submitted to the State Interdepartmental Commission for the Commemoration of Participants in Anti-Terrorist Operations, Victims of War and Political Repression. In April 2020, the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture of Ukraine responded that no approval had yet been given due to a change in personnel at the Interdepartmental Commission and the quarantine caused by the epidemic. No response has been received to date despite the change of both legal and factual circumstances.
Tynne (Rivne district). Search for the burial place of soldiers of the Border Protection Corps – the follow-up of exploratory work undertaken in 2012 under the auspices of the former Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites. On 4 February 2020, a request for approval of exploratory work was submitted to the Rivne Department of Culture; the schedule of work was approved by the Rivne administration. On 2 March 2020, a request for approval of the work was submitted to the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports. No response has been received to date.
Similar requests have been submitted by the Polish side in connection with search for the victims of the NKVD Polish Operation 1937-1938, September 1939 or the Katyn Massacre. All of those requests have been either refused or no response has been received from the Ukrainian side.
Another inaccuracy in Anton Drobovych’s statement concerns the archaeological work undertaken by the Polish side in Przemyśl, outside the Ukrainian war cemetery. Mr Drobovych said that despite requests, the Ukrainian side had not received an answer to its questions about the results of the work carried out at the time. It is necessary at this point to clarify that the archaeological research undertaken at that site did not concern Ukrainian but Hungarian soldiers, thus there was no reason for sharing the detailed results of the archaeological work with Ukraine.
In August 2021, archaeological surveys were carried out in Przemyśl, at Kasztanowa Street, in the vicinity of the Ukrainian war cemetery, to verify the existence of a World War I war cemetery at the site. The work was carried out by the Union of Fortress Communities of the Fortress of Przemyśl in cooperation with representatives of the Hungarian Institute of History and the Army Museum in Budapest. The Polish IPN was not involved in any role in that work. The surveys confirmed that there is a cemetery of soldiers from the fortress crew at the site; amongst others, elements of tombstones of Hungarian officers were found. The site was levelled after 1945. The work performed did not in any way encroach upon the Ukrainian cemetery. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian side is unjustifiably claiming rights to the surveyed plot, even though it is aware that soldiers buried there are mostly of Hungarian nationality. The Ukrainian IPN and the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture have issued a statement that they do not recognize the results of the surveys performed – and so it appears that the results are after all known to the Ukrainian side. A bizarre argument has been raised that Ukrainians fought in both the Russian and Austro-Hungarian armies during World War I, so it is to be expected that some soldiers of Ukrainian nationality had to be buried in a such a large cemetery. A representative of the Union of Fortress Municipalities said that the Embassy of Ukraine in Warsaw had received notice of the work planned, as evidenced by a postal receipt dated 21 August 2021, a few days before the work was commenced.
Regarding Anton Drobovych’s statement about the initiative of the Polish-Ukrainian working group composed of representatives of the two Institutes of National Remembrance, tasked to consult on issues related to memorial sites, it should be stated that, apart from the inaugural meeting, this body has not become operational. This is due to the differences of opinion on the draft rules of procedure, the assumptions of which were agreed at the meeting. Subsequently, in the course of consultations by mail, the Ukrainian side introduced unacceptable changes, including changing the definition of the issues to be addressed by the working group and demanding that persons from outside the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance be added to the group in breach of the rule that permanent members can be recruited only from among the personnel of the both institutes.
Anton Drobovych claims that he sees no interest in historical dialogue or willingness to cooperate on the part of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance. His assessment of cooperation with Polish historians is astonishing on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the genocide in Volhynia and Eastern Lesser Poland – an ethnic massacre of more than 100,000 Poles perpetrated by nationalists under the banner of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). One gets the impression that Mr Drobovych’s words are intended to distract attention from the expectation that the Ukrainian authorities take concrete action – by agreeing to extensive exploratory and exhumation work – on the occasion of the round anniversary of the Volhynian Crime.
And as far as scientific activity is concerned, it is worth recalling that a Polish-Ukrainian working group, of which Ukrainian archivists and historians form part, has been in operation for more than 27 years, preparing source publications for “Poland and Ukraine in the 1930s and 1940s. Documents from the Archives of the Secret Services”, a publishing series coordinated by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance The group continues to meet periodically and work on bilingual publications is still carried out despite the full-scale war in Ukraine started by the Russian Federation. Over the past few years, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance has organized a number of scientific conferences and symposia devoted to the issue of Polish-Ukrainian relations, to which Ukrainian researchers have been invited. In 2018-2023 alone, the Institute has published 23 studies on Polish-Ukrainian relations, including those authored by Ukrainian scholars. These examples clearly show that the dialogue with the Ukrainian scientific community is ongoing, unfortunately without the participation of the representatives of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance.
Anton Drobovych claims that the Polish IPN is a politicized institution. This is patently untrue. The Institute of National Remembrance is independent of the Polish government, acting in the area of historical policy as an institution of the Polish state. The IPN President is appointed and dismissed by the Sejm of the Republic of Poland with the consent of the Senate, on the proposal of the IPN College. The IPN president has a ministerial rank. This is in contrast to the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, which is subordinate to the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture. Mr Drobovych is, therefore, an official fully dependent on the political decisions of his superiors.
In support of his view of cooperation with the institutions of the Polish state and the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, which bears no relation to reality, Anton Drobovych argues that the Polish side is reluctant or not ready to restore justice, obey its own laws and respect its international obligations. This claim is untrue and one that we regard as a sign of extreme ill-will and disregard for the facts.
Contrary to Mr Drobovych’s claims that the IPN’s offers of cooperation are limited to war-related assistance, let us recall the proposals presented by President Nawrocki during an online conversation in July 2022 between the heads of the two institutions concerning joint scientific and educational projects, as well as archival and exhibition cooperation, which have gone unanswered by the Ukrainian side. It should be noted that both during the implementation of the IPN’s flagship project “Trails of Hope. Odyssey of Freedom,” as well as during meetings within the framework of international platforms or conferences, across the globe, when speaking about the contribution of Poles to the victory over totalitarianisms, President Nawrocki always emphasizes his opposition to Russian aggression against Ukraine, pointing to the role of education of societies in the fight against criminal totalitarian regimes.
The upcoming 80th anniversary of the Volhynia genocide may become an opportunity for Ukraine to achieve closure and reckon once and for all with a past which is painful for both the Ukrainians and the Poles. Full of untrue claims that mislead the public as to the real state of affairs, Anton Drobovych’s interview certainly does not serve this purpose.
It is time to match gestures and declarations with actions that will enable the Polish Institute of National Remembrance to undertake search and exhumation work and commemorate the innocent victims of the genocide in Volhynia and Eastern Lesser Poland – a crime that weighs on our mutual relations.
Dr Rafał Leśkiewicz
Director
Office of the Spokesperson
Spokesperson
Institute of National Remembrance