Remains from suspected Jewish mass grave in Germany to be reburied

09 November 2005

November 09, 2005

German authorities have issued an order for the re-burial of human bones found at a site near Stuttgart Airport, following protests by Jewish groups against the exhumation of the remains of presumed victims of the Holocaust. Prosecutors, who have opened a murder inquiry, were told to dispense with DNA tests on the 34 sets of bones, which they had hoped would identify the dead and confirm the Holocaust link. Independent evidence suggests the remains were those of Jewish slave laborers who died of starvation and typhoid while forced to work in a Gestapo camp between November 1944 and February 1945, when the site was a Luftwaffe air strip during World War II.

Jewish scholars said the exhumation and the tests violated the requirement to leave the dead in peace. The mass grave was accidentally discovered during airport construction work in September. Ulrich Goll, justice minister of the state of Baden-Württemberg and the prosecutors' superior, ordered a reburial. "At the present time, a forensic identification is not necessary," Goll said in Stuttgart. He ordered the remains to be reburied in a way that they could be examined at a later time if necessary.