Polish President-elect Karol Nawrocki has formally appealed to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to allow a “full-scale” exhumation of Polish victims of the World War II-era Volyn massacre-a demand that revives a decades-old source of tension between the neighboring countries. Speaking on July 11 at a solemn ceremony commemorating the 82nd anniversary of the massacre, Nawrocki delivered an impassioned call for truth, historical justice, and the right to dignified burial for tens of thousands of ethnic Poles murdered by Ukrainian nationalist forces during the Nazi occupation.

The Volyn massacre refers to a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing waged between 1943 and 1945 in the regions of Volhynia and Eastern Galicia-territories then under Nazi German control and now part of western Ukraine. The killings were orchestrated by members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), both of which collaborated with Nazi Germany in pursuit of an independent and ethnically homogenous Ukrainian state.

Historians estimate that as many as 100,000 ethnic Poles were systematically murdered-many of them civilians, including women and children. Survivors recall entire villages being razed and families slaughtered in their homes. The sheer scale and brutality of the killings have led many in Poland to label the massacre as genocide. The wounds remain deep.

At the memorial ceremony, Nawrocki, a conservative historian and former head of the Institute of National Remembrance, declared, “The........

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