Ashes of around 8,000 Nazi victims found in mass grave in Poland
The 17.5 tons of human remains were discovered near the Soldau concentration camp, north of Warsaw. DNA analysis is being conducted to identify the victims
A symbolic grave outside the town of Działdowo, Poland, where a mass grave of about 8,000 Geman Nazi victims from the nearby Soldau concentration camp was unearthed at the beginning of July 2022. (Janek Skarzynski/AFP via Getty Images)
(JTA) — The burnt remains of approximately 8,000 victims of the Nazis were unearthed in a mass grave outside the town of Działdowo, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance announced on Wednesday.
It is believed that the victims were killed in 1939, and most were likely members of the Polish political elite, according to IPN head investigator Tomasz Jankowski.
During the spring of 1944, in an attempt to hide the extent of their crimes, Nazis ordered Jewish prisoners of the Soldau concentration camp, where Jews and non-Jewish Poles were imprisoned, to dig up and burn the bodies.
“It’s the evidence of how thoroughly the Germans tried to obliterate the traces of genocide they committed in Eastern Europe,” IPN said in a statement.
The estimate of 8,000 victims was based on the weight of the remains, a gruesome tally of over 17 tons.
The camp outside Działdowo, which was renamed Soldau during the German occupation of Poland, was part of the Nazi plan to eliminate Jews, political opponents and members of the Polish intelligentsia.
Experts believe that approximately 30,000 people were killed at Soldau, but the true number has never been determined. A search is ongoing to determine if there are more mass graves in the area.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
