Soviet-era mass grave unearthed in western Ukraine (07/28/02)

Soviet-era mass grave unearthed in western Ukraine

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - More than 230 skeletal remains - a third of them belonging to infants, children and at least one unborn - have been unearthed over the last two months in the basement of a monastery 25 kilometers outside of Lviv. And while experts from the Procurator General's Office of Ukraine have yet to officially explain how the deaths occurred, there is widespread belief in this area that the NKVD, the notorious Soviet secret police, committed the grisly deeds as it consolidated authority over the region in the post-World War II years.

Yet, few experts believe that the horrific details will ever come to light or the specific perpetrators will be identified, as has also been the case at Demianiv Laz outside Ivano-Frankivsk, the Bykivnia Forest outside Kyiv and in the town of Vinnytsia, other sites where the secret police is suspected of committing similar atrocities against the Ukrainian populace to pacify it against resistance to Soviet rule.

The first bones in the latest discovery were found in early May in the town of Zhovkva, while monks of the Basilian Monastery remodeled a little-used cellar area of the residency and happened upon a door-like structure.

"We were preparing a basement meeting hall for the parishioners when we discovered a slab of concrete. When we broke up the concrete we found skulls and bones," explained the Rev. Marko Maksymiv, the monastery's hegumen, who was present when the first body parts came tumbling out of the niche in which they had been sealed.

By the time the area was fully excavated, three rooms had been uncovered containing the skeletal remains of 150 adults, 83 children from infants to about age 16 and one unborn child, a fetus about three months old. According to reports in The Washington Post and Interfax-Ukraine, many of the skulls seem to have been fractured by sharp instruments or crushed by blunt objects. Others were pierced by bullet holes. Many more, however, had no outward appearance of violent death. The last of the remains were uncovered on July 17. They have been turned over to law enforcement officials and are now undergoing forensic examination.

Photos and coins found in the crypt with the body parts suggest that the killings took place between 1946 and 1949. Also, bullet casings that have been recovered are of the type used by the Soviets in the immediate post-war years.

Mykhailo Pavlyshyn, assistant director of the oblast chapter of the Memorial civic group, an organization that has dedicated itself over the last 13 years to unveiling the horrors committed by Soviet authorities in Ukraine, said the building under which the bodies were discovered housed the county headquarters of the NKVD in the post-war years. The NKVD shared the monastery's territory with a medical school.

Mr. Pavlyshyn explained that the monks of the Basilian Order were removed to another monastery in Krekhiv in 1946 shortly after the Soviets outlawed the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church to which they belonged. He said that within a year the NKVD had occupied the building. The Memorial organization member rejected suggestions that someone other than NKVD officers might have been responsible for the atrocity.

"We have documents that prove that the NKVD worked there in those years," stated Mr. Pavlyshyn.

A former commander of the State Security Service of Ukraine who wished to remain unidentified told The Weekly that a subtle and practical nuance exists that also points to state involvement. "It is highly unlikely that anybody but official sources would have had access to cement in the immediate years after the war," said the now-retired intelligence service worker, who explained that building materials were scarce and difficult to obtain as the state strictly controlled the post-war rebuilding process.

The former intelligence officer also retold a story he had heard from his immediate supervisor, who had served in a special force of the NKVD division in Lviv Oblast after the war.

"He told me that every so often the group would be ordered to infiltrate a village when a dance or celebration was being held. They would dance with the girls and begin to cause problems with the aim of causing fights and eventually a melee," explained the retired intelligence official. "NKVD troops would then move in to make arrests, leaving mostly women and children behind. Many of the arrested were sent to Siberia on trumped-up charges. Others were simply never heard from again."

One of the more troubling aspects of the horrific discovery at Zhovkva, according to Mr. Pavlyshyn, is that so many children and infants were killed. Also puzzling is why the bodies were completely naked; there is no evidence of buttons or hair clasps that should not have yet decayed. These are questions that the procurator's office in Zhovkva will attempt to answer after it determines the manner in which the victims died, a process expected to take two months.

What is most vexing at this stage, however, is that there is almost no chance that anyone will fully understand what happened or be able to bring those responsible to justice. This is because NKVD archives either remain secret, were destroyed or were transferred to Moscow. For Mr. Pavlyshyn that is most frustrating of all.

"This was state terror, these are crimes against humanity," said Mr. Pavlyshyn, who explained that in the estimation of Memorial, some 10,000 people disappeared in the Lviv region in the years right after World War II. He said that he has turned to Ukraine's intelligence service, which holds the archives of the NKVD (and those of its successor, the KGB) and asked to review the files from those years, but has repeatedly been told that they remain secret and not accessible.

"They tell me, yes, there were cases such as these, but because they remain classified, the archives cannot be opened," explained the Memorial official.

Mr. Pavlyshyn blames Ukraine's Parliament for not opening the archives to the public. He explained that lawmakers have the authority to order the de-classification of secret materials, but suggested one reason they are reluctant to do so is because relatives and family members of those responsible for state killings, and even the perpetrators themselves, are still alive in many cases. Also, some of these people have positions of authority that allow them to block any such attempts.

He also admits that many of the records simply no longer exist, having been destroyed by officials who needed to hide evidence of the terror they committed.

Prof. Stanislav Kulchytskyi, director of the Institute of History at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, said that many more archives were removed to Moscow in the final years of the Soviet Union.

"This was done because of the unstable political situation that occurred after some republics began asserting their autonomy," explained Prof. Kulchytskyi. The respected academic stated that entire archival libraries were taken to Moscow, where much was simply destroyed.

He said that getting access to those materials now in Moscow is very difficult because Russia has no interest in allowing information on the murderous activity of Soviet intelligence services - especially the widespread terror the NKVD promulgated in western Ukraine after World War II - to become any more public than it already is.

"Russia has taken on accession to the Soviet Union, and holds the position that release of this type of information is not in its national interest," explained Prof. Kulchytski.

If official government sources and records will not explain what happened at Zhovkva, then the only hope remaining is that anecdotal evidence will suggest who did the killing and who were the victims. However, both Prof. Kulchytskyi and Mr. Pavlyshyn believe that very few townspeople either know today or ever knew what occurred in the dark cellar of the Basilian Monastery.

Mr. Kulchytskyi explained that a basic, self-evident reason was that those who may have been witnesses to murder were most likely killed as well.

Meanwhile, Mr. Pavlyshyn agreed that no hearsay is known to ever have existed about any sort of mass killings at the Basilian Monastery. He added that thus far no one has come forward with new information in light of the new discovery.

"People were so terrified that they did not want to know what was happening," explained Mr. Pavlyshyn. "Many believed that even knowing the rumors could give them problems."

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