About 17.5 tons of human remains from 8,000 victims of the Nazi occupation have been found near a former German concentration camp in Poland. The people were “probably killed around 1939” and belonged to the Polish elite, Tomasz Jankowski of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) said Wednesday.
The ashes of Nazi victims were found in a wooded area in Ilowo-Osada, 150 kilometers north of Warsaw and near the former Nazi concentration camp Soldau in former East Prussia. The Soldau camp was built during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It served as a transit camp, as well as a concentration and extermination camp for political opponents of National Socialism, members of the Polish elite and Jews.
At least 8,000 people died in Soldau
In 1944, Jewish prisoners had to exhume and burn the bodies of dead prisoners to cover up traces of German war crimes. “We identified 3000 victims by name, but we are sure there were many more. This site is a big step forward because we can say that at least 8,000 people died in the Soldau camp,” said Tomasz Jankowski of the Institute of National Remembrance.The number is calculated from the weight of the ashes found.Two kilograms of human ashes are approximately equal to one corpse.
Samples were taken from the remains, genetics researcher Andrzej Ossowski of Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin told AFP news agency. DNA analyzes could now be performed in the laboratory to find out more about the identity of the victims. Similar investigations had already been carried out on the victims of the Nazi death camps in Sobibor and Treblinka.
Source: Krone
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