The Institute’s experts will return to the places where they conducted works in previous years, but they will also start searching in completely new locations. – We will return to Skierdowska Street in Warsaw, to the place where last year we found the remains of 35 people, victims of German crimes. We are also going to return to the former prison Toledo and to Rakowiecka Street in order to complete our search work this year – says Szwagrzyk.

Regardless of this, the works will be also carried out in Białystok, Lublin, Katowice, Kraków and Wrocław – in the cemeteries, where independence activists murdered by communist criminals may have been buried, as well as in the places of former torture rooms and prisons of the Polish Secret Political Service.

In January, the Institute’s experts will take part in the exploration works in Batumi, Georgia, searching for and exhuming the remains of victims of Soviet crimes, on the former property of the head of the NKVD, Lavrenty Beria, where researchers are expecting to find remains of Poles. Works will also be continued in Lithuania and Latvia.

Polish experts may also take part in the exploration work in Ukraine. – First of all, we hope that our declaration from 2021 regarding our participation in the work on the 6th kilometer of the Ovidiopol road near Odessa, at the place of mass burials of the victims of the NKVD crime from 1937-1938, as well as in Kherson, will be accepted. We are counting on a positive reaction from Ukraine. It is difficult for me to imagine the possibility of continuation of the Ukrainian works in places where there may be remains of Poles after rejection of our offer – emphasizes Szwagrzyk.

So far, experts of the Institute of National Remembrance have found the remains of about 2,000 victims of totalitarianism. Over 200 of them have been identified by their first and last names.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński