The Sejm (Parliament) recalled the bloody episode during World War II (1939-1945) and observed a minute’s silence in honor of the victims.

A resolution vindicating their memory and to erect a monument at the Powazki military cemetery in the capital is expected to be passed.

The chairman of the Peasant Party (PSL), Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, delivered a speech in Parliament in which he demanded “the exhumation of the corpses and their dignified burial, not for revenge, but for the memory claimed by the victims.”

The Volhynia massacre occurred on July 11-12, 1943, when Ukrainian nationalist guerrillas perpetrated several coordinated attacks on the more than 100 ethnic Polish majority populations in the region of eastern Galicia, today part of Ukraine.

The episode led the Polish government to demand a public apology from Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenski and caused numerous disagreements between Warsaw and Kiev.

During an official visit here on May 24, Ukrainian Parliament Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk delivered a speech at the Polish Congress of Deputies in which he said that “Ukrainians understand the pain and express their sympathy to the families and descendants of the Volhynia victims.”

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