Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) has announced the completion of exhumation work carried out in Wola Ostrowiecka, in the Volhynia region of present-day Ukraine. The news was shared in a brief but symbolic social media post. “An empty grave. They are safe now…” wrote the IPN’s Office for Search and Identification, publishing a photograph of the emptied burial pit after the work had been completed. The exhumations were conducted at the site of one of the largest massacres of Poles during the Volhynia Massacre.
An empty grave
The IPN’s Office for Search and Identification posted a short statement on X announcing the completion of the work.
“An empty grave. They are safe now…” the post reads. It was accompanied by a photograph of the empty burial site taken after the exhumation had been completed.
The work was carried out in the former villages of Ostrówki and Wola Ostrowiecka, located in the former Luboml County in Volhynia. During the excavation, the remains of at least 38 people were recovered, the IPN reported earlier. According to the Office for Search and Identification, the remains bore evidence of severe blunt-force trauma, particularly visible on the skulls.
The victims’ bodies had been thrown into the death pit without any order or arrangement. Investigators found no traces of coffins or burial chests. Alongside the remains, archaeologists uncovered personal belongings of the victims, including medallions, crosses, fragments of clothing, buckles, buttons and pieces of jewellery.
Years of searching
This year’s work marks another stage in the long-running investigations at Ostrówki and Wola Ostrowiecka.
The first exhumations were carried out there in August 1992, when the remains of at least 323 people were recovered from two mass graves. Further work followed in 2011, uncovering the remains of no fewer than 317 Poles buried in five mass graves.
In September 2013, the remains of 81 victims were exhumed in Gaj. In 2015, a joint Polish-Ukrainian research team discovered another mass grave in Ostrówki containing the remains of 33 people, as well as the grave of a woman in Wola Ostrowiecka.
From 2017 onwards, the search for and exhumation of Polish victims in Ukraine was suspended following a decision by the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance. The moratorium was lifted at the end of November 2024, allowing search and exhumation work to resume.