A Holy Mass for the victims was celebrated at the Polish Army Cathedral, flowers were laid at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and memorial events were also organized at the Monument to Victims of Genocide.
Head of the Office for War Veterans and Victims of Oppression, Jan Józef Kasprzyk told Polish Radio: "As the families say, the victims are not calling for vengeance but memory. We must remember and appeal, and we do this almost every day to the Ukrainian side, to let us bury the victims of this terrible crime with dignity because many of them still lie in Volhynia in nameless graves".
The peak of the massacres took place in July and August 1943 in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, in what was then German-occupied Poland. They were spearheaded by the UPA - the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The total number of victims from the Polish minority living there has been calculated at 100,000.
In 2016 Poland's parliament passed a resolution recognizing the massacres as genocide.
Source: IAR/PAP