Two mass graves containing 19 tons of ashes from at least 8,000 people were discovered outside the former Nazi concentration camp at Soldau Poland.
The estimate is based on the weight of the remains, with four pounds roughly equaling one body.
Researchers said the victims were murdered and buried at one point, but then dug up and burned by members of the Nazi Party to cover up the killings.
At the place where the graves were dug, there is now a stone monument with the inscription “Nieznani meczennicy Polegli za polskosc. 1939-1944” in Polish and reads: “Unknown martyrs who fell for Polishness. 1939-1944′ in English.
Officials unveiled the memorial on Wednesday, noting that war crimes committed in the country will not be forgotten.
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Today a stone monument covers the grave with the inscription “Nieznani meczennicy Polegli za polskosc. 1939-1944” in Polish with the caption “Unknown martyrs fell for Polishness. 1939-1944′
Karol Nawrocki, President of the Institute of National Remembrance in Poland (IPN), said in a expression: ‘The Germans decided to evade responsibility for the crimes they committed.’
He further stated that the approximately 8,000 victims were probably taken outside the camp and executed by a shot in the head in 1939.
The mass grave was discovered last month, but the official memorial service was held on Wednesday in front of the destroyed Soldau concentration camp.
One of the tombs discovered measures 91 feet and the other 39 feet.
Two mass graves containing 19 tons of ashes of at least 8,000 people have been discovered outside the former Soldau Nazi concentration camp in Poland. The picture shows the remains of the camp
Officials unveiled the memorial on Wednesday, noting that war crimes committed in the country will not be forgotten
IPN’s Tomasz Jankowski said during the conference: “The people whose ashes are buried here were murdered and robbed.”
The bodies were then thrown into a large grave, but when the Soviets invaded Poland, Nazi soldiers desperately dug up the victims, burned them and dumped the ashes in a single grave – this is said to have happened in 1944.
“The cover-up failed because the IPN is determined to search for the victims and heroes of World War II and will never allow any of them to be forgotten,” Nawrocki said.
The Soldau camp was set up in autumn 1939 and initially served as a prison camp for Poland’s Jewish elite. The warehouse is pictured when it was in operation
IPN is an institute investigating crimes committed during the Nazi occupation of Poland and the communist era.
The Soldau camp was set up in autumn 1939 and initially served as a prison camp for Poland’s Jewish elite.
It was located in Działdowo, a town in northeastern Poland.
This program included gassing experiments on people with intellectual disabilities.
In May 1940, the SS camp was converted into a labor education camp, which was used by all state police stations in East Prussia until it was taken over by Soviet soldiers in January 1945.
Shown is the area where the mass graves were discovered
Construction work continues at the former German Nazi concentration camp Soldau in Dzialdowo, Poland, on July 13, 2022, near the site of the mass graves
In the spring of 1944, Nazi soldiers were ordered to an exhumation operation called Aktion 1005 near Soldau to cover the tracks of the mass murders of 1940 and 1941.
“In the spring of 1944, the remains of people were dug up and burned at this point so that this crime would not come to light and no one would be held accountable,” IPN said on Twitter.
In the wooded surroundings of the former camp are several memorials erected in honor of the concentration camp’s 13,000 to 20,000 victims.
Andrzej Ossowski, a genetics researcher at the Pomeranian Medical University, told AFP samples from the ashes of the mass grave had been taken and were 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.
