Breakthrough on the Pieniacka Huta case

polska-zbrojna.pl 4 weeks ago

On February 28, 82 years after the pacification action of the Polish civilian population in Huta Pieniacka. The village is located in the current Ukraine, close Lviv. The Institute of National Memory for nearly 7 years sought approval from Ukrainian authorities to search for graves of victims of crimes. On February 18, the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine issued appropriate approval.

"The Ministry of Culture of Ukraine has given final approval for exploration work on the site former village Huta Pieniacka“ He said the Institute of National Memory. The Ukrainian ministry reported this on Wednesday 18 February on its website. The licence concerns the search and location of burial sites of residents of a no-existing village who died during planet War II.

The decision of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine was preceded by the acceptance by the Lviv Circuit State Administration presented to it in October 2025 of the search work programme. On the another hand, the request for consent was submitted by the Ukrainian partner of the IPN, which is the company “Volynian Antiquity”.

Second consent

RECLAMA

The IPN points out that the efforts of nearly 7 years to get approval to search for graves were undertaken in close cooperation with the families of the victims centered around the Huta Pieniacka Association, with the peculiar engagement of its president Małgorzata Gośniowska-Kola.

"Search work will carry out a joint Ukrainian-Polish expedition. Specialists will effort to find the exact burial site. If the remains are found, the work will proceed in exhumation format with a later re-burial," stressed the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture. In turn, the IPN indicated that it would inform about the date of the start of the search work in a separate communication.

The Institute of National Memory has been working for years to get approval from the Ukrainian authorities to begin exploration and exhumation work in Ukraine. The breakthrough on this issue was due to the findings made during the gathering of the Presidents of Poland and Ukraine: Karol Nawrocki and Volodymyr Zelenski on 19 December 2025 in Warsaw.

Thanks to them, at the end of last year the institute obtained permit to carry out search work in the village of Ostrówka and Wola Ostrowiecka in the Volyn region. The decision to search for graves of victims of the crimes in Pieniacka Huta is the second 1 taken by the Ukrainian authorities.

Crime 82 years old

The pacification action in Pieniacka Hut took place early in the morning of February 28, 1944. The village was surrounded by soldiers from the 4th Galician SS Volunteer Regiment under German command. According to the IPN findings, the regiment was assisted by a close Ukrainian Army Insurgency Branch (UPA) and a paramilitary branch consisting of Ukrainian nationalists. The Ukrainians went down to the village, burned the possessions and murdered the locals. About 850 people died.

The massacre lasted until 5 p.m. The victims of the crimes were civilians from the village, Poles from Volyn, who had previously escaped cultural cleansing and hiding in buildings Jews. For a fewer more days, members of Ukrainian militias shot people who returned to the village to bury their loved ones. Crime was 1 of many murders committed within the framework Volyn massacre.

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