#Remains #Nazi #war #victims #Poland
A mass grave containing human ashes of 8,000 people was discovered near a former Nazi concentration camp in Poland, Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance said on Wednesday.
The institute, which investigates crimes committed during Poland’s Nazi occupation and communist era, said the remains were unearthed near the Soldau concentration camp, now known as Dzialdowo, north of Warsaw.
Nazi Germany built the camp when it occupied Poland during World War II and used it as a transit, internment and extermination site for Jews, political opponents and members of Poland’s political elite.
It is estimated that 30,000 prisoners were killed at Soldau, but the true number has never been established.
The grim find of around 17.5 tons (15,800 kilograms) of human ashes suggests at least 8,000 people died there, according to investigator Tomasz Jankowski.
The estimate is based on the weight of the remains, with two kilograms roughly equaling one corpse.
The victims buried in the mass grave were “probably murdered around 1939 and mostly belonged to the Polish elite,” said Jankowski.
In 1944, Nazi authorities ordered Jewish prisoners to dig up and burn the bodies to destroy evidence of war crimes.
Andrzej Ossowski, a genetics researcher at the Pomeranian Medical University, told AFP samples were taken from the ashes and are being analyzed in a laboratory.
“We can do DNA analysis that will allow us to find out more about the victims’ identities,” he added, after conducting similar studies in former Nazi camps in Sobibor and Treblinka.
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