Poland’s state Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) has discovered the ashes of over 8,000 victims – whose bodies were burned to hide evidence of their deaths – near a former Nazi-German camp used to hold Polish and Jewish prisoners.
“This was a terrible crime against the Polish nation,” said IPN president Karol Nowrocki yesterday, announcing the discovery of the ashes, which together weigh over 17 tonnes. The estimated number of victims was calculated based on the quantity of ash.
The Soldau concentration camp was established in the occupied Polish town of Działdowo in September 1939, shortly after the German invasion of Poland. Among those imprisoned there were members of the Polish resistance, Catholic clergy and Jews. Thousands were killed, often in mass shootings.
📢The IPN finds proof of #WW2 German crime – a grave of several thousand prisoners of the Soldau German concentration camp has been discovered and several tons of human ashes have been unearthed. Details will be revealed today at a press conference held near Działdowo at noon. pic.twitter.com/DInHxYugNo
— Institute of National Remembrance (@ipngovpl_eng) July 13, 2022
“The camp was established in order to discreetly, yet determinedly, murder representatives of the Polish resistance movement,” said Nawrocki. “Victims were killed as part of the German anti-Polish extermination action, which was to deprive Poland of state elites, diplomats and clergy.”
Nawrocki noted that, from March 1944, the Germans began to excavate human remains from mass graves and burn them, “so that the crimes would never see the light of day, so that no one would be held responsible for the crimes.
But “they failed”, he added, saying that the IPN “will never allow a single victim to be forgotten”. Established in 1998, the IPN’s role is to investigate and document Nazi and communist crimes. It also has prosecutorial powers.
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Its work to uncover the ashes took place this month, under the supervision of the IPN’s Gdańsk branch, which is near Działdowo in northern Poland. However, investigations had begun even earlier, in 2019, when the IPN was asked to verify the number of victims of the camp.
IPN prosecutor Tomasz Jankowski, who oversaw the work, said that they had uncovered two mass graves, one 28 metres and the other 12 metres long, and both 3 metres deep. They believe that there may be further mass graves in nearby forests, which will also be investigated.
Now “we are able to state that at least 8,000 people died in the Działdowo camp”, said Jankowski. He added that further analysis of the remains, carried out in conjunction with the Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, will help establish “irrefutable evidence…of the crimes committed by the Germans”.
During World War Two, around 17% of Poland’s population was killed, the highest proportion of any country in the war. Among those six million victims, around half were Polish Jews. But the German-Nazi occupiers also carried out mass extermination actions against the ethnic Polish population.
Main image credit: IPN/Twitter
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
