Karol Polejowski, deputy head of Poland's Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), told reporters at the excavation site on Tuesday that the remains of 49 victims had been recovered during the first two weeks of work in the former villages of Wola Ostrowiecka and Ostrówki in Ukraine's Volyn region.
He added that at least four more victims had since been found in another burial pit, bringing the total number of remains uncovered during the ongoing operation to more than 50.
The excavations are the latest stage of a decades-long effort to recover victims from the two villages, where previous searches in 1992, 2011 and 2015 uncovered, exhumed and reburied the remains of 674 people.
Polejowski said investigators believe nearly 300 victims from the two sites remain unaccounted for.
"We are still missing nearly 300 victims here, and we will continue searching for them," he said.
Funeral ceremony planned for late August
The IPN said it hopes to hold a funeral ceremony on August 30, the anniversary of the 1943 massacres in Wola Ostrowiecka and Ostrówki, at a nearby cemetery dedicated to victims of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
The ceremony will require authorization from the Ukrainian authorities.
Polejowski said forensic specialists are examining the recovered remains and collecting DNA samples to help identify the victims. He appealed to relatives of those killed in the massacres to provide genetic material to assist the identification process.
"Our goal is to identify the remains we recover," he said. "We want to restore their names and fulfill our obligation to those who were murdered here."
He added that Ukraine is still considering 14 Polish requests for additional search and exhumation permits.
Polejowski said Poland hoped Ukraine would expedite the process following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's pledge earlier this month to speed up approvals for searches and exhumations and to open archives linked to the Volhynia events.
He also said Poland hopes Ukraine will allow personal belongings recovered during the excavations, including religious medals and rosary beads, to be transferred to Poland so they can be returned to victims' families or placed in museums.
The excavation campaign is scheduled to run until August 7. The project is being carried out under agreements reached by the Polish-Ukrainian Working Group on Historical Memory.
The Volhynia massacres were a series of ethnic killings carried out during World War II, primarily in 1943 and 1944, in which tens of thousands of Polish civilians were killed by the UPA in areas that are now part of western Ukraine.
The former villages of Ostrówki and Wola Ostrowiecka, once part of Poland's eastern Volhynia region, are now in Ukraine's Volyn region near the city of Kovel, after borders shifted following World War II.
The events remain one of the most sensitive issues in Polish-Ukrainian relations.
The Volhynia region, then part of Poland, was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939 under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact before being seized by Nazi Germany in 1941.
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Source: IAR, PAP