Remains Of 127 Polish And German Soldiers Exhumed At Holoskivskyi Cemetery In Lviv

(MENAFN- UkrinForm) Lubomyr Horbach, head of the“Pamiat” Society for the Search for War Victims, told Ukrinform in an exclusive interview.

“We are completing the work of locating and exhuming the remains buried in the first row. The work is already 90% complete. As of today, we have exhumed the remains of 110 Polish Army soldiers and 11 servicemen of the 1st Mountain Division of the German Wehrmacht,” Horbach said.

According to the searcher, the remains of six more German servicemen were discovered over the past few days. Two identification tags were found with them, which will help with their identification.

“The burial pits where we found the remains of the German soldiers had been partially destroyed because, during the Soviet era, water pipes were laid in this area and the site was dug up. As a result, the human skeletons were damaged. But generally speaking, the condition of the burials at Holoskivskyi Cemetery is good. Because the soil in this area has low acidity, even the smallest details, such as finger phalanges, have been preserved. When soil acidity is high, as I have encountered in the Carpathians, a significant portion of the remains can be lost,” Horbach added.

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Search and exhumation work at Holoskivskyi Cemetery is proceeding according to schedule.

“In the middle of the first row, a memorial cross was installed. Since there are also burials beneath it-approximately five or six graves-we are removing the concrete slab and the cross today in order to exhume the remains. After that, we will put the site in order. At the same time, the anthropologists will continue their work: they are cleaning the bones, collecting samples for DNA testing, and examining associated items,” Horbach said.

Over the past several days, the searchers also surveyed the cemetery grounds to determine whether there was a fourth row of graves.

“We dug five exploratory trenches parallel to the third row, but we did not find anything,” Horbach added.

As previously reported by Ukrinform, about 30 specialists from Ukraine and Poland, on August 25, began search and exhumation work at Holoskivskyi Cemetery in Lviv. The work will continue until October 2. The exhumation research is being conducted pursuant to agreements reached following the work of the Ukrainian-Polish Working Group on National Remembrance.

On the Ukrainian side, the search and exhumation work is being carried out by a team from the“Pamiat” Society for the Search for War Victims; on the Polish side, by employees of the Institute of National Remembrance of the Republic of Poland and Wroclaw Medical University.

According to the results of searches conducted in 2010 and 2019, 110–120 individual graves of Polish Army soldiers were found in the cemetery. They were killed in battles against German military formations that surrounded Lviv from the west and south in September 1939.

Photos provided by Lubomyr Horbach

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