Last month, like every month since Russia launched its all-out invasion in 2022, barely a day went by without another funeral for another soldier in the main cemetery of Lviv in western Ukraine.
But unusually, at the same time in another part of the city, the bones of men who fell fighting for other nations were being carefully lifted from the earth where they had lain for nearly 90 years.
The remains of 115 Polish and 18 German troops were removed in September from graves where they were buried in autumn 1939, when this city was Lwów in eastern Poland, and the armies of Hitler and Stalin attacked under their secret pact to carve up eastern Europe at the start of the second World War.
Samples of DNA will be taken from the Polish remains, belongings found in the graves will be examined and experts in Poland will try to identify all the dead and find living relatives. Then they will be reburied with dignity. The same will be done for the German soldiers by an organisation that looks after their country’s fallen soldiers.
Meanwhile, work moves on to other graves, on both sides of today’s border between Ukraine and Poland.
It involves quiet, meticulous effort and close co-operation, and it continues despite a recent bitter row over history that put the neighbours at odds, just when Kyiv needs its European allies more than ever amid growing hostility from the White House.
“I don’t feel any enmity between us. We work comfortably together,” Lyubomyr Horbach, head of the Lviv-based Pamyat (Memory) organisation that searches for victims of war, said of its work alongside experts from Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance.
“We are comfortable because there is no politics in what we do. We are historians, archaeologists, scientists doing professional work. We are not politicians.”
Yet disputes over historical crimes, and vandalism of graves and monuments in both countries, delayed and disrupted such work for decades, and can still poison relations – even as Ukraine fights for its survival, and Poland hosts a million Ukrainian refugees and provides Kyiv with crucial military aid and diplomatic support.
The latest row erupted five months ago, when Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy bestowed the title “Heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army” on a unit of his military, to honour its service in the war with Russia and help “restore the historical traditions of the national army”.
The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) is best remembered in its homeland for waging guerrilla war against Soviet troops in western Ukraine through the 1940s. Its defiance of Kremlin power against huge odds provides inspiration for today’s struggle, and its red-and-black flag is again a symbol of the fight with Moscow.
By contrast, Poles know the UPA for killing about 100,000 Polish citizens in what is now western Ukraine, in a campaign of ethnic cleansing that peaked in 1943. Ten years ago, Poland’s parliament declared the massacres to be genocide.
Kyiv acknowledges that UPA units committed atrocities but rejects the allegation of genocide, and urges Poles to admit that their own forces killed at least 10,000 Ukrainian civilians at the time, following severe interwar repression of the large Ukrainian minority in what was then eastern Poland.
In a video address, Polish president Karol Nawrocki denounced Zelenskiy’s decision “to glorify the UPA” as “outrageous…incomprehensible and deeply disappointing”.
He announced he was stripping Zelenskiy of the Order of the White Eagle, calling it “a symbol of [Poland’s] highest trust”, and then delivered a warning to Kyiv.
“Ukraine’s path toward European structures also requires a willingness to honestly confront the difficult chapters of its own history,” he said.
“A united Europe was built on the rejection of totalitarianism and the cult of violence. These principles must apply to everyone. For those who do not understand this, there can be no place in the European Union, and Poland will certainly not allow it.”
If the nationalist Nawrocki, an admirer of US president Donald Trump, expected contrition from Kyiv, then he was badly mistaken.
Instead, Zelenskiy noted that Warsaw had never seen fit remove the Order of the White Eagle from Russia’s expansionist empress Catherine the Great, Italian fascist Benito Mussolini or former German chancellor turned Kremlin ally Gerhard Schröder.
[ Gerhard Schröder stirs up ‘uncritical and romantic’ ideas about RussiaOpens in new window ]
“Ukraine will remain open to all meaningful formats of engagement with Poland in order to try to avoid conflicting interpretations of the difficult and painful chapters of our shared past and to ensure proper respect for all innocent victims of the 20th century,” Zelenskiy wrote on social media.
“And Ukrainians are doing everything in our power to ensure that Europe does not suffer defeat in this century … We believed that the Order of the White Eagle, awarded in 2023, was meant for the Ukrainian people and our army. That is what was said at the time. Today, I sent the order back to the president of Poland.”
Kyiv felt Nawrocki was trying to humiliate it, having won last year’s presidential election by tapping into growing hostility towards Ukrainian refugees, which has led to several people being attacked in Polish cities.
In a rare show of support for Zelenskiy, three former Ukrainian presidents also sent state awards back to Poland, as did Kyrylo Budanov, the former chief of the country’s military intelligence who now heads the presidential administration.
“Undoubtedly, this is a gift to the Moscow aggressor, who will certainly use it against both of our countries,” Budanov said, calling for “deep reflection” rather than “crude political speculation”.
“Our peoples have long-standing relations and varied pages of history – both heroic and tragic … Ukraine does not dictate to any other people how to teach its history. Therefore, we too reserve the fair right to our own national memory and dignity.”
Poles have also suffered at Russia’s hands for centuries, but Myroslav Marynovych, a Ukrainian former dissident who was jailed and exiled by the Soviet authorities, says the elites of both countries “presume they have a mission to help, rule and raise up Ukrainians to a higher level”.
“In Polish minds, Ukraine must be thankful for that ... And Ukrainians’ gratitude will mean they accept the Polish vision of history. And if not, then they are not grateful enough.”
Marynovych, who founded the first chapter of Amnesty International in the Soviet Union and is now adviser to the rector of Lviv’s Ukrainian Catholic University, has signed public letters seeking Polish forgiveness for crimes committed by the UPA, but sees no willingness from Poland to examine its own historical mistreatment of Ukrainians.
Kyiv fears relations will face more strain during next year’s parliamentary election campaign in Poland, and will hope the liberals of current prime minister Donald Tusk can defeat Nawrocki’s nationalist and populist allies.
“We are not just neighbours,” Tusk said last week after meeting Zelenskiy. “We are friends who can count on each other in difficult times. And no one will ever change that.”
Meanwhile, exhumations of second World War graves continue. In the village of Laskow in eastern Poland, researchers said this week they had found the suspected remains of more than 40 Ukrainian men, women and children who were killed by Polish forces in 1944.
“I don’t think I’m responsible for what my ancestors did, but I can and should ask forgiveness for that. And the Polish side should do the same, even though they are not responsible for what their ancestors did,” says Horbach.
“Our work is about reconciliation. And reconciliation would come sooner if politicians didn’t meddle in this, and make it a political issue at every other election.”
Source: The Irish Times · Danielle Barron
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