More names of victims found and identified by the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) were made public on 1 December 2023. The 20 identified individuals include soldiers of the National Armed Forces (NSZ) Grouping of Captain Henryk Flame, alias ‘Bartek’, and victims of communist terror buried at the Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw.

The newly identified persons include victims of communist terror who were murdered or died in the prisons in Kraków, Warsaw, Racibórz and Szczecin. The names of others whose remains were found during search work carried out in Lithuania and Ukraine were also announced.

Within the framework of the ‘We return for our fellows’ project, the Institute of National Remembrance conducts activities aimed at finding and identifying victims of totalitarian regimes and ethnic cleansing as part of the activities of the IPN’s Office of Search and Identification. In total, more than 260 people have been identified. As a result of the activities of the IPN, the remains of more than two thousand people have been found.

In order to more efficiently identify the remains found, the IPN has for several years been using the CODIS system, a tool provided by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The IPN’s Search and Identification Bureau conducts search activities throughout the country and abroad. A team of specialists has investigated dozens of sites in Poland, and has also carried out work in Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Georgia, Lithuania, Switzerland and Germany, among others.

In 2023, work was carried out at dozens of locations in Poland. They included the Powązki Military Cemetery, the Osobowicki Cemetery in Wrocław, the area of the military unit in Rembertów, and the area of the Czechowskie Mountains in Lublin. Several stages of search work were also carried out in Muczne in the Bieszczady Mountains, where the remains of Poles, victims of the 1944 crimes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (OUN/UPA), were sought.

Adrian Andrzejewski