World

Poland Unearths Mass War Grave

by Barry Artiste | January 18, 2009 at 08:43 am

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Barry Artiste Op/Ed
Certainly disturbing when the past comes to haunt us, yet with ongoing conflicts around the world, clearly we have learned nothing from it.

Piotr Malecki / Reuters A worker looking at human remains recovered from a World War II mass grave in central Malbork, Poland.

MALBORK, Poland — Polish authorities have unearthed the remains of 1,800 bodies and expect to find even more in a mass grave first discovered three months ago and believed to date back to the final days of World War II.

The site is in a corner of northern Poland that was part of Germany until 1945, and the authorities suspect the remains are of ethnic German civilians, at least some of whom were probably killed by advancing Soviet forces.

"We are dealing with a mass grave of civilians, probably of German origin. The presence of children … suggests they were civilians," said Zbigniew Sawicki, a Polish archeologist supervising the exhumation.