The human remains were found in Ilovo Osada, in the Białuski Forest, near the former Soldau concentration camp
Almost 17.5 tonnes of human ashes were discovered near a former Nazi concentration camp in Polandannounced today the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), which is investigating the nazily and communist crimes.
The human remains were found in Iłów Osada, in the Białuski Forest, near the concentration camp of Dziadów (Soldau in German, 150 kilometers north of Warsaw), which was built during the Nazi occupation of Poland.
After the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Soldau camp was used as a transit center, but also as a place of burial and extermination of political opponents, members of the Polish elite and Jews. Some estimated that up to 30,000 prisoners were killed at Soldaubut until today there were not enough historical sources to confirm this number.
The discovery of ash at this site “allows us to state that at least 8,000 people died here,” said Thomas Jankowski, a prosecutor at the IPN. This number is derived from the weight of the ash: two kilograms corresponds to one body.
“The victims buried here were probably murdered around 1939 and belonged, in their majority, to the Polish elite”, according to Jankowski. In 1944 Jewish prisoners were ordered to exhume the bodies and burn them to erase the traces of Nazi war crimes.
“We took some samples, which will be studied in the laboratory”he explained to AFP Andrei Osovskya geneticist at the Pomeranian Medical School. “We can do DNA analysis, which will allow us to learn more about the identity of the victims”as has already been done in the recent past in the Nazi camps of Sobibor or Treblinka, he added.
RES-EMP
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