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Gdańsk dig yields grim remains

PR dla Zagranicy
Jo Harper 29.07.2015 11:35
The remains of 35 people have been found during the first eight days of archaeological works at the Garnizonowy Cemetary in Gdańsk by the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN).
PAPPAP

Professor Krzysztof Szwagrzyk, who is supervising the work for IPN, believes there could be over 80 bodies of people who died or were murdered in the prison on Kurkowa street under Stalinist rule. Some of the bodies have a bullet hole in their heads, Szwagrzyk said.

The IPN started work on unearthing the remains on 20 July. Archaeologists are searching for the remains of victims of the Stalinist terror in Poland. For several decades their place of burial had been kept secret.

After 1948 and until at least Stalin's death in 1953, Poland's communist regime deployed many of the more doctrinaire and vicious aspects of the Stalinist terror then prevalent in the Soviet Union, including mass political arrests, show trials and executions.

Many from the Polish underground army, Home Army (AK), which fought alongside the Red Army in the Second World War, were victims of the terror.

People who had died at the prison on Kurkowa street were buried in the Garnizonowy cemetery from mid-1946 until the start of the 1950s.

The IPN was set up in 1999 to conduct historical research into the crimes of the communist and Nazi periods in Poland. (jh/rk)

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