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Soviet soldiers' botched re-burials 60 years ago 'monstrous', claims Russian TV

PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle 29.11.2012 16:11
Russian state television has reported that remains of WW II Soviet army soldiers had been dug up by Poles and re-buried in a “barbaric” manner in 1953.

photo
photo - Wikimedia Commons/Adrian Piekarski

The Vremya news magazine on Channel One in Russia reported on Wednesday evening that when Polish authorities decided to dig up the remains of Russian soldiers who died fighting Nazi German forces in Kostrzyn nad Odra western Poland, at the end of WW II, so as to re-bury them in large cemeteries around the country, they did so by only partially removing all the body parts.

A research dig in October this year found that 102 out of 110 bodies had been re-buried with their skulls or other parts missing.

“On the first day [of the dig] we found 30 bodies. In total, there were 110, of which only eight were complete,” Polish researcher Zbigniew Romanowski told Russian TV.

The Russian news programme claimed the “barbaric” exhumations showed a “monstrous lack of respect for the dead” and reported that Russian authorities had called on Poland to give a full explanation as to why the bodies of “soldiers who liberated Poland from Nazi Germany” were shown so little respect.

The case “relates to the process of exhumation in 1953, when standards differed significantly from those of today,” Adam Siwek from Poland's state-backed Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom told the PAP news agency. (pg)

tags: Russia, WW II
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