The identified Poles died at the hands of Ukrainian nationalist forces during a series of atrocities known as the Volhynia massacres.
Culture Minister Marta Cienkowska told a ceremony in Warsaw that identification means "a name can finally be carved on a grave, that a family knows where to light a candle, and that a person stops being an anonymous victim of history."
"I am deeply grateful to the families who had agreed to provide genetic material for testing. I know that it was not always an easy decision," she stressed.
Cienkowska said the painful history does not rule out Polish-Ukrainian cooperation, and voiced hope that further victims could still be identified.
Senate Speaker Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska, who also attended the ceremony, said the identification work had only been possible thanks to relations with Kyiv – and that she was watching their deterioration "with concern," warning against "painful chapters of history being used for current political ends."
The victims were killed in February 1945, when a unit of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) murdered around 80 Poles in Puźniki (Puzhnyky), which at the time belonged to Poland's Tarnopol region.
They are the first identified remains of Polish adults and children recovered from unmarked mass graves linked to the massacre.
The recovery effort, carried out by the Freedom and Democracy Foundation, Poland's culture ministry, and the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), has so far exhumed the remains of more than 40 people.
Between 1943 and 1945, Ukrainian nationalists killed an estimated 100,000 Poles across Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.
Most victims still lie in unmarked graves.
(ał)
Source: IAR