Researchers in Poland have discovered new evidence of murders and executions by the Nazis in the country during World War II.
According to Gizmodo, the researchers set their sights upon a site located near the town of Chojnice and referred to as "Death Valley" due to the mass killings committed by the Nazis there.
"As one witness testified after the war, a column of approximately 600 Polish prisoners from Bydgoszcz, Toruń, Grudziądz and neighbouring villages, under the escort of the Gestapo, was taken to Death Valley during the second half of January 1945," the team says in a new paper published in Antiquity. "They were executed there, and the witness speculated that the bodies of the victims were burned to cover up the evidence."
However, only 168 bodies were found during exhumations conducted in the area in the autumn of 1945, with the researchers arguing that "it was evident from the exhumation reports that not all human remains were discovered and exhumed."
According to the media outlet, the team, led by Dawid Kobialka from Polish Academy of Sciences, employed LIDAR and metal detectors as they surveyed about 10 acres of territory. They then compared the data they unearthed with "historical aerial photographs," leading to the discovery of trenches dug by the Polish army before the war, which were apparently used by the Nazis to bury their victims.
"Executions took place at the trenches," the researchers wrote. "The victims fell into the trenches or their bodies were thrown there by the perpetrators. Later the trenches were backfilled with soil."
The team also found a number of artefacts, such as personal belongings of the victims, objects that were “lost by the Nazis together with various bullet and shell casings,” and cremated bones of the people killed there.
"We hope to be able to tell some of the families what happened to their relatives who, for decades, were assumed to have vanished without trace in Chojnice in January 1945," the researchers wrote.