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Communist terror victims unearthed

PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge 21.05.2013 13:45
The remains of twenty victims of communist repression have been unearthed at unmarked graves in Warsaw's Powazki military cemetery.
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Powazki
Powazki miltary cemetery: wikipedia

The excavations over the last week continue work carried out in the summer of 2012, and are aimed at locating the remains of former WWII Polish resistance leaders and anti-communist activists who were executed between 1948 and 1956.

Historians and archaeologists are cooperating as part of a team put together by the state-backed Institute of National Remembrance (IPN).

Professor Krzysztof Szwagrzyk, who is leading the project, told Polish Radio that on Monday alone, six skeletons were located in a mass grave.

The victims had been thrown haphazardly together.

Most of those found over the last week were discovered beneath a tarmacked path in the cemetery.

Last year, some 117 victims were unearthed.

Thanks to tests carried out using the DNA of the victims' relatives, it has been possible to identify some of the executed prisoners.

Historians are holding out hope that the current phase will locate a number of Poland's most hallowed wartime and post-war resistance figures.

These include Witold Pilecki, who volunteered to be incarcerated at the Auschwitz death camp so as to garner an intelligence report, as well as General Emil Fieldorf, former head of a crack division of Poland's underground Home Army (AK). (nh)

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