Jan Grudziński „Płomień”, Wojciech Stypuła „Bartek” and Roman Szczur vel Szumski pseud. Halina are among 24 other victims of the crimes of communism and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) identified by the Institute of National Remembrance. The ceremony of presenting identification notes to the family members of the victims took place in the Presidential Palace.

I am very happy that for the fifth time already, the Presidential Palace announces information about the discovery of the mortal remains of the victims of totalitarianism (…) Starting from the first meeting three years ago, the total number of found and identified is already 96. Among them are the cursed - steadfast soldiers of the anti-communist uprising, from whose search this great work began, conducted by Professor Krzysztof Szwagrzyk together with his co-workers

— was written by President Andrzej Duda in a letter addressed to the participants of Monday’s ceremony.

As he pointed out, among the identified victims there are also the participants of the independence underground during the war and occupation.

Tortured by the Germans – finding them in the same place, where the communist security forces killed people of the second underground movement, highlights the continuity of Poles’ resistance to both totalitarianisms, as well as the twin cruelty and ruthlessness of our Homeland’s enemies from under the brown and red banners. Finally, among the victims whose memory we honour today, there are also Polish soldiers taken prisoner by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and murdered

—stressed the president.

Polish experts have been searching for the graves of the victims of Soviet, communist and German crimes for years; they were to be sentenced to oblivion even after their death - as a result of secret executions, tortured during interrogations, murdered in a silent way. Their bodies are identified through the use of state-of-the-art genetic techniques and the creation of a special database.

Jarosław Szarek, the President of the Institute of National Remembrance, stressed that after so many years, for the first time - apart from the names of the victims of totalitarian communist, Soviet and German totalitarianism - we are getting to know four names of the victims of Ukrainian nationalists. As he pointed out, „about 130 thousand of our compatriots were murdered on the eastern lands of the Republic of Poland, in Wołyń.

About 4 thousand villages disappeared from the surface of the earth. Those murdered in such a cruel way were buried, in - as we estimate - about 10,000 burial cavities

— he said.

Here are some of the recently identified heroes: