The restoration of the destroyed memorials of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in southern Poland requires political decisions of the Polish authorities, as well as amendments to the regulations on military graves.
This was stated by the director of the department for honoring the struggle and martyrdom of the Polish Institute of National Memory (INP) Adam Sivek, reports Dzieje.pl.
According to Sivek, the involvement of the INP in the restoration of Ukrainian graves in Poland should be based on the development of a common position on this issue of the Institute, together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the country – bodies that are also responsible for the historical policy of the Republic of Poland. He added that in this matter the voice of the governor of the Subcarpathian and Lublin Voivodeships, on the territory of which these monuments are located, is also important.
The representative of the Polish INP said that this applies exclusively to burial sites, since the UPA’s symbolic monuments are “formations whose members are responsible for crimes against the Polish people in Poland are absolutely unacceptable”.
Civek informed that in Poland there are no regulations that would regulate the burial status of UPA fighters.
The representative of the INP also said that in Poland there are 70-80 Ukrainian graves, some of which belong to the UPA.
Sivek noted that the law on the IPA of Poland has been supplemented many times, but these amendments did not take into account the burial of the UPA.
As reported, during 2014-2017, in the south of Poland, about ten UPA monuments were destroyed or damaged by unknown persons. So far, not one of them has been restored. After the destruction of the monument at the cemetery in Grushovichi near Przemysl in 2017, Ukraine blocked the Polish side from conducting search and exhumation works.
At the same time, by the order of the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky in November last year, search and exhumation works were unblocked for the Polish side. At the same time, Kiev expressed the hope that Warsaw will resolve the issue of restoring the legal places of memory of Ukrainians in Poland that were destroyed or damaged several years ago.