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Mass grave of 8,000 victims’ ashes found near Nazi concentration camp in Poland
Discovery of remains near Soldau offers clues into how the Nazis sought to cover up their crimes during Second World War
Researchers have uncovered a mass grave holding 17.5 tonnes of human ashes near a former Nazi concentration camp in Poland.
Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, which investigates crimes committed during the Nazi occupation, said that the grave was found near the Soldau concentration camp, about 90 miles north of Warsaw, where more than 30,000 people were believed to have been killed.
Tomas Jankowski, an investigator at the institute, said around 17.5 tonnes of human ashes were discovered, making up the remains of at least 8,000 people.
Samples of the ashes have been taken to the Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin for DNA testing, in the hope that some of the victims might be identified.
Soldau, now known as Dzialdowo, was built for the transit, internment and extermination of Jews, political opponents and members of the Polish political elite.
The victims buried in the mass grave were mostly Polish elites who “were probably assassinated around 1939” before being buried, Mr Jankowski said.
In 1944, Nazi authorities ordered Jewish prisoners to exhume the remains and burn them, according to Karol Nawrocki, the president of the Institute of National Remembrance.
The grim discovery is further evidence of Nazis seeking to cover up their crimes in Poland, where three million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.
Philip Blood, a Holocaust historian, said “the destruction of bodies by fire was common” and was usually carried out by the Leichenkommado, or corpse units – prisoners put in charge of disposing of bodies at the camps.
“8,000 [victims] is large, but sadly not the largest,” he told The Telegraph.
“Nazi efforts to keep the killings and the Holocaust secret were both extensive and inept. The most infamous cover-up was the Treblinka Extermination Camp, which was entirely flattened and landscaped. The camp recorded more than 750,000 Jews killed in about 2.5 years.”
In 1945, he said, “the SS destroyed the gas chambers and crematoriums in Auschwitz, but left behind all the planning and construction details”.
Discoveries of mass graves dating back to the Nazi occupation of Poland are common.
In 2021, archaeologists found a mass grave filled with the remains of 500 people in Pomerania, in northern Poland.
Investigators found that the Nazis had attempted to destroy evidence of the killing at the end of the war.
So many mass graves have been found in one part of Pomerania, near the town of Chojnice, that it is known locally as “Death Valley”.