A conflict in World War II was placed between Ukraine and Poland to rest

After 80 years, they received the generous burial that was rejected in the last days of World War II, when their bodies tended to a mass grave.

The remains of the 42 people were reshaped outside the ethnic Polish village now in western Ukraine on Saturday in individual boxes, each of which is covered with blue-wild wild-this time with a prayer of priests and Polish government officials in the attendance.

For their grandchildren, the ceremony closed the family history. For Ukraine, it was supposed to put a long conflict with Poland, a decisive ally in the war with Russia, on the world history and sea.

After the Soviet secession, Poland accused Ukraine of assembling a record of war crimes before Ukrani in the mid -twentieth century under the carpet. In Ukraine, members of the Ukrainian National Movement were raised to the situation of the heroes who paved the way for the country eventually in 1991.

Ukraine and Poland have argued over the past decade due to the extraction of mass graves in western Poland. But Ukraine, which is now desperate to Western military aid that flows across Poland, agreed last year to allow this effort to move forward. Another site was extracted last week. Dozens of others were planned.

“The only country that will be happy with tensions between Ukraine and Poland is Russia,” Andrei Nadzos, the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Culture, said in an interview. “We do not want to give Russia this gift.”

Under the new policy related to collective graves, those in Ukraine will be extracted to hold ethnic columns. Riffs will be sent to Poland to determine identity, if possible, then return to Ukraine to recycle near the former deserted or Ukrainian villages now.

On Saturday, the fresh tombs were cut in an enlarged cemetery and extended a long time near the deserted Polish village of Bozniki, which was previously abandoned, in the Turnobel region in western Ukraine.

The descendants of the Polish who were killed decades ago stood in black clothes. The priests of the Catholic Catholic, Greek, Greek, and Ukrainian Orthodox churches conducted a joint funeral. The Polish Speaker, Małgorzata Kidawa-BłOńSKA, and Minister of Culture, Marta Citykowska.

Below the Bocolic scene of forests, the fields and hills in West Ukraine lies dozens of mass graves, and the history of collusion and killing during the days of World War II. Conflict erupted on this date for years between Ukraine and many of its Western neighbors, including Poland.

Historical conflicts are focused at the time of the end of World War II, in 1944 and 1945, when the Nazi army was declining across Western Ukraine. Both Polish and Ukrainian movements were underground – the Polish mother army, or Jeremiah Karajua, and the Ukrainian partisan army – were active at that time. Both wanted to carve independent countries after the war.

An alliance under the Ukrainian land sometimes with the retreating Nazi army, although the branches of the Ukrainian movement were earlier in the war fought the Nazis. The Polish alliance with the Soviet army, which turned into the Polish ethnic units to help eradicate Ukrainian land.

Ukraine calls on this brief, but the bloody Polish and Ukrainian war. Poland calls it the Volin massacre, after the Ukrainian massacres of the ethnic columns in the villages in the Fuli region and other places. Historians estimate that tens of thousands of Polish civilians were killed.

In Puzhnyky, regardless of a few ground graves in the cemetery, the only reminders of the previous village are fruit trees that grow in the forest, from the previous gardens.

Ukrainian historians say that this village in early 1945 was a center for a branch under the Polish ground that cooperates with the Soviet secret police, called NKVD at the time, which was looking for a prominent supporter of Ukrainian independence. The Ukrainian partisan army attacked the village on February 13, 1945.

Polish historians described what happened as a massacre of villagers. In the extraction of corpses, evidence of both interpretations appeared. The grave that carries the remains of adult men, adult women and 10 children, along with the buttons and medals from the military uniform.

After World War II, the Soviet Union settled the conflict in Western Ukraine and southeastern Poland by expelling ethnic columns from Ukraine and the ethnic Ukrainians from Poland, leaving deserted Bouzniki.

This historical period is a direct corps in the policy of both countries, even if they are allies in the Ukraine war with Russia.

Ukraine stopped directing in 2015, accusing Poland of failing to protect Ukrainian graves in Poland from sabotage. Grievances of collective graves of Polish in Ukraine are the main component of Polish national policy, which endangers aid to Ukraine.

“For Ukraine, it is very important,” said Mr. Nadzos, the Ukrainian cultural official. “We believe this is an important first step in the right direction.”