Search for Holocaust victims

Investigators from the Institute of National Memory (IPN) have announced the discovery of another massgrave near the site of the Treblinka I extermination camp during World War II. Scientists from other institutions were also invited to participate in the research. It is not yet clear how many of the dead are in the pit, which measures roughly 3.4 by 4.5 metres.

Today there is a forest parking lot where the pit was found. The research is being carried out by a team of experts from Poland, Austria, Norway and the UK. They want to pinpoint as many mass burial sites of Holocaust victims as possible directly from the camp and mass executions.

The remains are only found under a fifteen centimetre thick layer of dirt. In addition to the bones, bullet casings from pistols and machine guns were found. There were also pieces of clothing and metal belt buckles. The research team has modern radar to examine the different soil layers. If there were other bodies or objects in the ground, they would have found them.

Prosecutor Andrzej Pozorski of the Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes Against the Polish Nation commented on the discovery to the media, "We have discovered a grave measuring 3.4 by 4.5 metres containing human remains. This is in the area where today there is a parking lot near the forest adjacent to the site where the Nazis set up the Treblinka I camp."

He went on to say that so far only individual bones have been found, not entire skeletons. The research, which began on 12 November, is part of a criminal investigation by the Szczecin-based Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation. The Chief Rabbi of Poland and the chairman of the Polish Roma Association have already been informed of the discovery.

The Treblinka I extermination camp occupied an area of about 17 hectares and is often overshadowed by the better-known Treblinka II camp, which was located just a short distance from where 900,000 Jews were killed during the Holocaust. In the beginning, men and women accused of crimes against Germans were placed there. About 20,000 people were imprisoned in the camp, of whom about 10,000 died of exhaustion, injuries or were executed. The Germans carried out executions until the last days of the camp's operation, at the end of July 1944. The village of Treblinka itself is located in Poland about 100 kilometres northeast of Warsaw on the banks of the West Bug River.

At this stage of the research, there are no plans to exhume the bodies. Investigators first want to determine the locations of the mass graves. It seems that there may indeed be quite a number of such sites. The research team consists of experts from the Medical University of Szczecin, Warsaw Polytechnic, the University of Science and Technology in Trodheim, Norway, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the UK's Staffordshire University.

Source: www.thefirstnews.com