Presidents Komorowski (left) and Yanukovich at cemetary opening, Friday: photo - PAP/Pawel Supernak
With audio report by Slawek Szefs.
“We had to wait a long time for this moment, fervently believing that it must come to pass,” Komorowski said during the ceremony on Friday morning.
“It is difficult to find words that express how we Poles feel at the moment,” he said.
The wooded site at Bykivnia is understood to be the final resting place of 3435 Polish citizens murdered in 1940 on Stalin's orders by the Soviet secret police (NKVD).
The executions were part of the broader Katyn Crime in which over 22,000 Poles – largely reserve officers – were killed in mass executions at various points across the Soviet Union, including the Katyn Forest near Smolensk.
Poland views the murders as symbolic of a broader Stalinist bid to destroy the pre-war Polish elite.
Russia officially acknowledged guilt for the Katyn murders in 1990.
This morning, Komorowski spoke of “the Soviet machinery of lies”, as well as “the deaf silence to the truth of Katyn by democratic politicians in the west,” referring to London and Washington's attempts to sweep the matter under the carpet, owing to the wartime alliance with Moscow.
The final resting place of the Poles on the so-called “Ukrainian Katyn List” had long remained a mystery.
In 2007, Polish archaeologists working at Bykivnia discovered the dog tags of Sergeant Jozef Naglik, as well as a comb with the names of four Poles inscribed on it.
The names tallied with the so-called Ukrainian List, which makes up about 15 percent of the Poles executed during the Katyn Crime.
However, identifying individual victims has proved largely impossible.
Estimates of the overall number of victims of Stalin buried at Bykivnia range from 16,000 to 100,000, with Poles representing just a portion of the death toll, with remains spread over a site of some 200 hectares.
Among those buried at Bykivnia are thousands of ethnic Ukrainians, as President Vikor Yanukovich reflected this morning.
He called the opening of the Polish war cemetery a “a moment of Solidarity between the two nations”, noting that many noted Ukrainian academics, artists, poets and writers were buried at Bykivnia as so-called “enemies of the people.”
President Komorowski completes his two-day official visit to Ukraine today. (nh)