The search took place in Huta Pieniacka, a Polish village that no longer exists, in what is now Ukraine’s Lviv region. It was the site of a 1944 massacre of Polish civilians.
Fr. Tomasz Trzaska, from the Search and Identification Office of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), said the team had examined more than 4,000 square meters and found human remains in about 25 places.
"The area we examined was more than 4,000 square meters. We found remains in a trench of about 200 square meters. The pit, or pits, because we do not yet know whether they are next to one another, covers more than 72 square meters," Trzaska said.
He added that the remains found across the 72-square-meter area showed signs of damage.
The remains have been secured ahead of planned exhumations. Under Ukrainian law, search work and exhumations require separate permits.
Trzaska said the newly identified burial pits may contain the remains of around 100 people, though the final number could be higher.
"There are estimates of around 100 people because we have uncovered only a small part, so it is difficult to say," he said. "Considering the accounts we know and the area where the remains were found, there will certainly be a very large number of people, rather hundreds than dozens. But it is definitely too early to say, because we do not know how deep the pit goes or how the remains are arranged.”
The next stage is expected to involve exhumations, possibly combined with further search work. Trzaska said that if the burial pit is as large as investigators suspect, exhumations alone could take six to 10 weeks.
He said the work is unlikely to begin before next year.
"Everything also depends on when we receive permission; even if we received it earlier, starting work in the fall would be difficult and quite risky,” he said. “The soil here is hard, and bad weather makes the work very difficult. That is why we are rather talking about next year."
Trzaska said the search was carried out without incidents. "There were no provocations, no incidents, no events of that kind," he said. "The whole trip was very calm, both on site and on the road and at the hotel. Thank God everything went well."
According to the Institute of National Remembrance, the massacre in Huta Pieniacka was carried out by soldiers of the German 4th SS Police Regiment, composed of Ukrainian volunteers from the SS Galizien division, with the participation of units of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and local Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary groups.
Historians say that on February 28, 1944, the village’s Polish inhabitants were murdered and the village was razed.
An investigation by the IPN's Branch Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation in Kraków found that around 850 people were killed.
Huta Pieniacka remains one of the most important symbols of Polish wartime suffering in the lands that are now part of Ukraine.
(rt/gs)
Source: dzieje.pl