New search for victims of UPA crimes. The witness indicated a possible burial place

The aim of the mission is to search for previously undiscovered burial places of Poles murdered in February 1945 - said RMF FM reporter Krzysztof Zasada. The remains of at least 42 people were found during previous expeditions.

As Maciej Dancewicz from the Freedom and Democracy Foundation told our journalist, new eyewitness accounts have appeared, including a 10-year-old resident of Puźniki, who saw the victims of the crime being buried.

The pit, she thinks, should be between the church and the cemetery. This is an area we haven't explored yet. She remembered carts or sleighs with people on them, which went somewhere and stopped between the church and the cemetery, Dancewicz said.

The teams also received permission from the military authorities to image the area with a special electronic device to aid in further searches. Researchers will be in Puźniki until November 10.

Crime against Poles from Puźniki

Puźniki is a former Polish village in the Ternopil Oblast in Ukraine.

On the night of February 12-13, 1945, Ukrainian nationalists murdered there - according to various sources - from 50 to 120 Poles. The main perpetrator of this crime was Petro Khamczuk, who headed the UPA Gray Wilki group.

The Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, informing on Wednesday about the start of new search works, said that in June 1945, the surviving inhabitants of Puźniki were resettled to Poland, to the towns of Niemysłowice and Ratowice. In 1949, the Soviet authorities liquidated the village. The area of ​​the former village of Puźniki remained uninhabited and gradually became overgrown with forest.

The remains of at least 42 people found in the old Polish cemetery in Puźniki last spring were buried in Puźniki on September 6, 2025.