Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance on Wednesday said that a mass grave containing human ashes equivalent to 8,000 people has been found near a former Nazi concentration camp.
The remains were discovered near the Soldau concentration camp, now known as Dzialdowo, north of Warsaw, said the Institute, which investigates crimes committed during the Nazi occupation of Poland and during the Communist rule later.
News 18 reported that Nazi Germany built the camp when it occupied Poland during World War II, using it as a place of transit, internment and extermination for Jews, political opponents and members of the Polish political elite.
Estimates have put the number of prisoners killed at Soldau at 30,000, but the actual death toll has never been established.
Investigator Tomasz Jankowski opines that finding around 17.5 ton (15,800 kilograms) of human ashes means it can be said that at least 8,000 people died there. Two kilos of ashes are roughly estimated to be one human body.
The victims buried in the mass grave “were probably assassinated around 1939 and mostly belonged to the Polish elites,” Jankowski said.
In 1944, Jewish prisoners were ordered by Nazis to dig up the bodies and burn them to wipe out any evidence of war crimes.
Andrzej Ossowski, a genetics researcher at the Pomeranian Medical University, told AFP samples from the ashes had been taken and would be studied in a laboratory.
“We can carry out DNA analysis, which will allow us to find out more about the identity of the victims,” he added, following similar studies at former Nazi camps at Sobibor and Treblinka.
