The archaeologists have ended their search 75 years after the end of World War II. Between 1942 and 1949 armed groups of Ukrainian Nationalists dubbed the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) fought Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as well as neighbouring Poles and later Communist Poland. Historians agree Ukrainian nationalists stood behind the ethnic cleansing of Poles in German-occupied Poland and parts of Ukraine.

In June and July this year, Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) has combed through Hrubieszów County in southeast Poland for UPA victims.

IPN has now confirmed the skeletal remains of three people were uncovered in a field near the village of Liski.

The village sits close to the modern-day border between Poland and Ukraine.

IPN said: “In June and July 2020, the IPN Search and Identification team led field works in the Hrubieszów County, the purpose of which was to find the remains of Poles murdered by Ukrainian nationalists (UPA) in 1945.

Archaeology news: The bodies of three Poles murdered in 1945 were found in southeast Poland (Image: BPiI/IPN Lublin/A.Piekarz/fot. M. Siemiński, Ł. Pasztaleniec)

Archaeology news: Ukrainian nationalists took part in the ethnic cleansing of Poles (Image: BPiI/IPN Lublin/A.Piekarz/fot. M. Siemiński, Ł. Pasztaleniec)

Their bodies were buried at a shallow depth in singular graves.

The remains were found next to a dirt track running through a field.

IPN said: “Shallow pits formed after clay was extracted from the ground were used as their hiding place.”

The archaeologists did not find any personal effects alongside the buried dead.

The remains were transported to the Medical University of Lublin’s Office of Forensic Medicine, in Lublin, eastern Poland.

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Archaeology news: The excavations were led in a village near the modern-day border of Ukraine (Image: BPiI/IPN Lublin/A.Piekarz/fot. M. Siemiński, Ł. Pasztaleniec)

Archaeology news: Three bodies were recovered from shallow graves in a field (Image: BPiI/IPN Lublin/A.Piekarz/fot. M. Siemiński, Ł. Pasztaleniec)

The UPA and other factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) were responsible for the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in modern-day Ukraine.

As a result of the massacres between 1943 and 1945, up to 100,000 Poles were murdered, many of whom were women and children.

Many of the killings were linked to the Bandera faction of the OUN.

In 2016, the Polish Government officially recognised the massacres as genocide.