Mass Grave of Massacred Poles Found in Ukraine
A Ukrainian government commission has concluded that thousands of people
buried in a mass grave outside Kiev were killed during Stalin's purges, not by
Nazi soldiers.
Halyna Pastushuk reports from Kyiv,
12.08.06
The commission's conclusion supports the testimony of
elderly witnesses in the nearby village
of Bykovnia, who said
they saw trucks dripping blood en route to the site in the 1930's, before the
Nazis occupied the area.
Unofficial estimates put the number of bodies in the grave at 200,000 to
300,000.
Villagers in Bykovnia broke five decades of silence to accuse Stalin's secret
police after the Ukrainian government erected a monument in May 1988 blaming
Nazi occupiers for the crime. The villagers in December forced Ukrainian
authorities to establish the commission, saying three previous investigations
had covered up the truth by blaming Nazi troops.
Dr. Sławomir Kalbarczyk, Chief Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes
against the Polish Nation, said during the international scientific conference
"Archeology and Terror" conference that took place in Tallin in Novembre 2005:
It is worth mentioning that the Bykovnia pits did not say their "last world"
and may provide still a lot of valuable information, since the Ukrainian
authorities plan to carry out further exhumations there. They were to be
conducted in August last year, however were postponed til this year. The
National Remembrance Institute's prosecutors have been invited in the capacity
of observers.
There were found in Bykovnia numerous objects, belonging undoubtedly to the
Polish citizens, among others, the uniforms, military caps, "knee-boots",
Polish coins (including their issue of 1939), and also the objects manufactured
in Poland or in the Western Europe. Unfortunately, all those things were
separated from the corpses, so they could not be attributed to any concrete
persons. One thing is however of a crucial value - it is a driving license
belonging to the person who appears on a partial list of the executed
civilians, drawn up by the NKVD (those who were murdered in Ukraine).
Besides, the Ukrainian soil conceals more secrets. In 1997, the Ukrainian
authorities carried out exhumations in the neighborhood of the former NKVD
prison in Vladimir
in Volhynien in order to check information disclosed by the local population on
burial of Stalin's regime victims at that place. From death-pits there were
excavated the remains of 100 persons, whose skulls had bullet holes in their
rear part. With the corpses there were many items of the Polish origin:
shoulder boards of the Polish military men and policemen, uniform buttons with
the image of the White Eagle, etc. Just recently, the Institute
of National Remembrance has been
informed that one of the investigations, conducted by the Military Prosecutor's
Office in Ukraine brought to
discovery in Kiev
of the remains of 270 unidentified Polish officers. In cooperation with the
Ukrainian party Poles will do their very best to explain this gloomy atrocity
which, supposedly, may have a certain link with the Katyn Crime. Such
assumptions are justified as a trace of the prisoners murdered in Ukraine breaks off, among others, in the Kiev prison.
