The Search for WWII Mass Graves
The search for mass graves to support WWII extermination numbers is taking a surprising turn.
First published January 2010 - copyright Carolyn Yeager
Introduction: Questions about the official World War Two deathfigures increasingly mount. Where are the proofs for these numbers? Where are the bodies? Did people just vaporize into thin air--as some believe, going up in smoke through tall chimneys?
Two responsible figures have recently and publicly added their voices to the question of six million Poles murdered (ostensibly by Nazis) from 1939 to 1945.
One is the last communist head of state for Poland from 1985-90, Wojciech Jaruzelski. Speaking to a journalist for Izvestia (Russian daily newspaper), he said, rather tongue-in-cheek, that he cannot understand how the Polish population exploded between 1946 and 1970, and then leveled off to become stagnant from 1990 till today.(http://polskaweb.eu/polens-mysterioese-bevoelkerungsexplosion-nach-dem-zweiten-weltkrieg-65373111118.html) He humorously remarked that there had to have been "a strong aphrodisiac" to lead to the birth of millions of new Poles because "in the grocery stores there had been only vinegar and millions had died even after the war."
The other is Dr. Otwald Mueller, a well-known German researcher, whose remarkable letter appeared on October 17, 2009 in two American German-language newspapers, the New Yorker Staatszeitung and the California Staatszeitung.
In his letter, Dr. Mueller discusses the six million figure that was widely reported during the September 1st, 2009 conference, held at Gdansk (Danzig), Poland, marking the 70th Anniversary of the beginning of what was to become World War Two.
A translation of his letter appears below, followed by a survey of actual mass graves that have been found and excavated to date that physically reveal flesh-and-bone victims of WWII.
Dr. Mueller writes:
On the occasion of Poland's victory celebration at Danzig/Gdansk, September 1, 2009, you could read in the press the following statements:
1) Die Welt (German newspaper "The World"), September 2, 2009:"…beginning of WW II, 6 million victims in Poland, half of them Jews…...."2) Daily Gazette (Schenectady, N.Y.), September 2, 2009: "....Poland alone lost 6 million citizens, half of them Jews…"[The Associated Press (AP) supplies news to nearly all newspapers in the US. That means those news stories were published in nearly all US newspapers.]3) Catalyst, Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Number 6, July-August 2009: "Six million Polish citizens were killed in the Holocaust - three million of them were Catholics".An important chart
There exists an important Polish population chart. It marks a pre-war Polish population of 29.89 million people, and for the year 1946 a population of 23.6 million. The difference is of approximately 6 million, or 21% of the total population. The chart seems to prove the statement of "6 million" … but, on the contrary, it contradicts it.On page 413 of the book "Poland: It's People, It's Society, It's Culture" by Clifford Barnett, HRAF Press, New Haven, CT 1958, the following figures are marked at chart #1: For the year 1950, a population of 24,533,000; for the year 1955, a population of 27,544,000.Where are the losses? They turned into gains, because -For the years 1946 to1950: a gain of 5.5%. For the years 1950 to 1955: a gain of 15.5%.
That shows in a significant way how Polish history - better Polish fairy tales - works.
Caption: (by author) Between 1931 and 1946 there is a large loss of population, which neatly adds up to six million Polish citizens, or 21%. We must keep in mind that 31% of Poland's population was of non-Polish origin – one million were German, as you can see from names of cities like Stettin, Gruenberg and Breslau. It also included 7 millionUkrainians, Belarusians, Lithuanians, and 3 million Jews. Even so, between the postwar years of 1946 to 1955, the lost population is gained back again - minus 2 million. By 1950, there is a gain of 908,000 in 4 years. And by 1955, an additional gain of 3,011,000 in 5 years! Can these be new births over deaths? No. They are more likely an "adjustment"- a more accurate accounting than was done before. This increase cannot be from Germans, Ukrainians or Lithuanians who returned to Poland, because Poland today is one of the most ethnically homogenous nations in the world. Are they not Poles, who either returned from the East, where they had fled, or never left?Truth in regard to history
The declaration by the chairman of the German-Polish Bishop's Conference on the occasion of the 70th Anniversary of the beginning of WW II states: "The church will definitely take steps against such inadequate handling of historical truth. We recommend and encourage an intensive dialog which always includes being ready to listen to the other side."The German Bishop's conference unfortunately did not comply, so far, with its own directives. They did indeed "listen carefully" to their Polish partners and accepted all Polish historical interpretations without ever questioning or correcting.It is an outrageous way to violate historical truth when the author of that chart names the cities of Allenstein, Danzig, Koeslin, Stettin, Gruenberg, Breslau, Oppeln - in the provinces of East Prussia, Pommerania and Silesia - as "Polish cities."The declaration of the bishop's conferences reads: "Seventy years ago, on September 1, 1939, German forces started their attack against Poland." (Tagespost, 27 August 2009, page 5) Thus the second world-war began. How truthful is that declaration? In reality, Stalin also started his attack against Poland with his Soviet Red Army on September 17, 1939. Hitler and Stalin together started a local war which ended after 6 weeks. Well, Stalin might have just said "Nyet" and Hitler would have stayed home. Stalin was not forced to sign a pact with Hitler. Stalin gained 51% of pre-war Poland.One violates the truth in dealing with history when one identifies the Germans expelled from the German East provinces as "Polish victims."The German Bishop's conference should consider it their task to urge the Polish Bishops to see that those Polish historical distortions are corrected.In pre-war Poland, millions of Ukrainians, White Russians, Lithuanians, Ruthenians and others were living. How did they become Poles? No newspaper report tells the story.April, 1920 - 22 years before Hitler - the Polish Army under Pilsudski started the victorious campaign against the Soviet Union.On May 7, 1920, General Rydz-Smigly occupied Kiev.At the peace treaty of Riga, March 21, 1921, Poland gained vast Ukrainian and White Russian territories with a population of about 11 million.Did anyone have any doubts that the Soviet Union would sooner or later retake those regions? That happened in August 1939 with the Hitler-Stalin pact. Why did the bishops not mention that? Why did the German newspapers, so eagerly interested in historical truth, not report it? All the guilt is loaded on one side; the others carry no guilt at all.Bush's America attacked Iraq on March 20, 2003. No Third World War started because no one wanted one.KatynUp to June 7, 1943, the Wehrmacht excavated and identified, as well as possible, 4143 Polish officers murdered by the NKVD. (Louis Fitzgibbon: Katyn - A Crime without Parallel, Scribner's Sons, New York 1971)
If it were correct that 3 million Polish Catholics were murdered, as the Catalyst journal states, one must have found in Poland about 750 mass gravesites of the same size during the past 65 years (3,000,000 divided by 4000=750), each with circa 4000 dead. Or 1500 mass gravesites, each with 2000 corpses. It is not known if even one of those mass gravesites has been found. If they would have found only one, journalists from all over the world would have been invited to come and visit. All newspapers would have published terrible pictures and stories for weeks. But did we not indeed find one such gravesite - at Marienburg in East Prussia, now called Malbork by the Poles? Yes, but they were German deaths, and not Poles. Now, one can convincingly say that argument also contradicts the thesis of the 6 million.A ray of hope on that topicMaybe the search for historical truth progresses slowly. In the Maerkische Allgemeine Zeitung (German newspaper), August 28, 2009, one can read the following headline: "The numbers-to-date of victims are incorrect - 70 years after the start of the war, scientists are searching for facts." Warsaw: "The numbers of victims of WWII are to a great extent wrong. That is known among specialists and expert historians. Most of the figures are too high: 20 million deaths in the Soviet Union, 6 million deaths in Poland, 2 million among the German expellees. For political reasons, the numbers were increased after the war. Reparation negotiations were already carried on during the war. High loss numbers justified high reparations requests from the Germans--"today we know most of the figures entered into that game then are wrong..." and: "...the historian Mateusz Gniastowski came to the conclusion that the losses of ethnic Poles had to be corrected from 3 million to 1.5 million...."Bartoszewski talks
With the headline, "No restitution for Jewish property," the Junge Freiheit (German magazine) of 28 August, 2009, reports the following: "Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, ex-Polish secretary for foreign affairs, vehemently denied any restitution payments for Jewish properties by Poland."Bartoszewski: "Of the 3.5 million Polish Jews, nearly 2 million lived in the Ukraine and White Russia of today." A very interesting statement - naturally, they became, in October 1939, Soviet citizens and were never again Polish citizens.The consequence? Regardless what did happen to those people between 1939 and 1945 - whether they survived or were killed - they could not be counted as "Polish victims" but belong to the victim chart of the Soviet Union. Otherwise they are counted twice.Final conclusion: According to the statement of Bartoszewski alone, the number of the
alleged 6 million Polish losses must be reduced already by 3.5 million (1.5+2). The Poles have no right to count German, Jewish, Ukrainian losses as their own. The 6 million number of WW II Polish deaths do not comply with serious historiography. ~1) Clifford Barnett: "Poland - its people - its society - its culture" HRAF Press. New Haven, Conn. Survey of World Cultures,19582) German-Polish declaration of the chairman of the Bishops Conference on occasion of the 70th anniversary of the beginning of WWII. "The reconciliation between our nations is a gift." (Die Versoehnung zwischen unseren Nationen ist ein Geschenk). Die Tagespost, 27.6.2009. Page 53) Gerhard Frey: Antwort an Warschau (response toWarsaw} FZ - Verlag (publisher) 20094) Louis FitzGibbon: Katyn-A Crime without Parallel. Scribner's Sons, New York.19715) Maerkische Allgemeine ( a German newspaper w 29.8.2009; "Geschichte:Die bisherigen Opferzahlen sind falsch" (History: The present loss figures are wrong)6) Junge Freiheit (Young Freedom): Keine Entschaedigung fuer juedisches vermoegen (No redemption for Jewish property) 28.8 2009~End of translated letter ~
How many survivors are counted as both survivors and victims because of the chaotic movement of peoples, boundaries and rulership - giving inflated numbers of victims? This is a common error, which seems to be purposely overlooked.
We have a right to ask where are the remains of the three million Catholics murdered by the German Nazis? The only known mass grave of Poles was the work of the Soviet Red Army, led by the NKVD, in the Katyn Forest in Soviet Russia. Long blamed on Germany, the responsibility for this genocidal act is now placed where it belongs. Ironically, the only mass gravesites found on Polish territory have been of German civilians. There are not even any mass graves of Poles - Catholic or Jewish - on the grounds of the famous concentration camps. No buried ashes either.
Let's take a look at what mass gravesites have been found, and what they contain.
MASS GRAVES IN MARIENBURG CONTAIN GERMAN CIVILIANS
In the previously German city of Marienburg, now named Malbork, Polish workers digging a foundation for a future hotel across from the Marienburg Castle, in October 2008, came upon a mass of human bones and skeletons. By December, about 470 individuals had been found, none of whom could be identified. A German organization dedicated to caring for German war graves sent a representative to attend the digging. By April 2009, the number of dead had climbed to 2000. When further discoveries were ruled out, the dead totaled 2116: 1001 women, 381 men, 377 children and 357 not identified.
At Marienburg, a pit full of human bones, but "We aren't finding any personal objects, no glasses, no gold teeth and above all, no clothing," said Zbigniew Sawicki, Malbork archaeologist.
Other mass graves stemming from World War II have been found around Malbork. In 1996, 178 corpses were discovered on the grounds of Marienberg/Malbork Castle. In 2005, specialists exhumed the bones of 123 more, including five women and six children, from a trench. All are believed to be Germans.
In the case of this latest and largest mass grave, no clothing, eye glasses or gold teeth were found. It thus appears that they were completely stripped before they were killed. The skeletons that were laying on top had bullet holes in their heads, indicating they may have dug the grave and put the dead in it before they themselves were added.
The Germans who did survive were forced to leave the city. "The relevant authorities" in the newly established Polish district announced proudly on November 3, 1947, that the Marienburg area was "almost 100 percent purged of Germans." Spiegel, Jan. 23, 2009, "Death in Marienburg: Mystery Surrounds Mass Graves in Polish City."
On August 17, 2009, 108 coffins with the remains of the 2116 victims of war atrocities which took place in Marienburg in early 1945, were buried elsewhere, at the Volksbund War Memorial Cemetery near the village of Neumarkt, close to the old Hansa city of Stettin, in former Pommerania. The highest dignitaries attending were the German ambassador to Poland and bishops from both nations.
NO CZECHS IN MASS GRAVES
Czechs have not claimed massacres from the war - other than the 173 men of the village of Lidice, who were executed for harboring the murderers of Reichs Protector for Bohemia-Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich, as an example to those who would cooperate with the Czech underground (considered by the Germans as an illegal terrorist organization).
Still, there was great desire to retaliate following the retreat of the German Wehrmacht and the arrival of the Soviet Red Army and NKVD. Postelberg/Polstoloprty and Saav/Zatec, two towns northwest of Prague, saw brutal massacres of at least 2,000 Sudeten Germans in the space of a few days in June 1945.
The largest mass grave contained 500 bodies and had been known since an inquiry into it in 1947. After that, in August 1947, other mass graves were secretly dug up and 763 bodies were removed and cremated. But there still remained more.
Meanwhile, documents in Postoloprty were classified as confidential and disappeared into Interior Ministry archives. Today, a majority of Czech residents in these towns admit the massacre, but do not want to talk about the case and oppose building any memorial structures at the gravesites. (Der Spiegel, "Czech Town Divided over How to Commemorate 1945 Massacre," Hans Ulrich Stoldt, Nov. 4, 2009)
There was also the Bruenn/Brno Death March, which began late on the night of May 30, and the Aussig/Usti nad Labem Massacre on July 31, 1945--both majority German towns in the same area of Northwestern Bohemia. Basing their decision on the Potsdam Agreement, the Czech "National Committee of Brno" announced the expulsion of 20,000 ethnic Germans, mostly women, children and elderly (the adult men were all POW's), and forced them to march 56 kilometers south to the border of Austria. Once there, however, the Soviet authorities refused to allow them to cross, so they were marched back into internment. Many died and are buried along the way; up to 8000 perished in the terrible conditions before the survivors were released.
The Usti massacre was triggered by an explosion at an ammunition dump. Though the cause of the explosion had not been determined, ethnic Germans were beaten, bayonetted, shot or drowned in the Elbe River, where most still remain in their watery grave.
No mass graves of Jews have ever been found on Czech soil.
SLOVENIA: THE KILLING FIELD OF EUROPE
Over 100,000 people fell victim to summary executions on Slovenian soil immediately after the end of the second world war. These were suspected Nazi collaborators and opponents of communism - murdered by Tito's Yugoslav federal army or by Slovenian civil authorities and the Communist secret police, OZNA.
"The killings that took place here have no comparison in Europe. In two months after the war, more people were killed here than in the four years of war," said Joze Dezman, a historian who heads the government Commission for Concealed Mass Graves.
A task force of the police and state's prosecutor's office has exhumed 12 mass graves and filed two criminal complaints, with no indictments so far, according to the Slovenian Press Agency, March 20, 2008.
A particularly gruesome discovery was the mummified remains of approximately 300 pro-Nazi soldiers from Croatia and Slovenia in a mining shaft in Huda Jama.
"Gassed to death: 300 lime-covered victims of Yugoslavia's communist regime found in mass grave," by Graham Gurrin, 3-11-09, Mail Online, UK.
They are thought to have been killed with gas because there are no visible signs of wounds. Piles of military shoes were found at the entrance. "It seems that the victims had to undress and take off their shoes before they were killed," said Joze Balazic, of the Institute for Forensic Medicine in Ljubljana. The bodies were found in an underground passage some 400 meters from the cave entrance, in good condition because they had been covered in lime and the cave had been hermetically sealed with several walls of concrete separated by layers of barren soil. (Javno, 3-4-09, Translation: Karmen Horvat)
Photos: Unclothed skeletons wearing shoes appear to have died in agony in a mass grave in Huda Jama, Slovenia. Positions indicate there was movement before the victims expired. (photos athttp://www.javno.com/en/foto.php?id=19&rbr=12471&idrf=541779)
THIS IS WHERE THE WAR WAS ENDING
Slovenia was part of the former Yugoslavia. Dezman said, "These killings took place in Slovenia because this is where the war was ending: this is where the iron curtain was anticipated, this is where refugees found themselves at the end of the war."
He also says that "due to the short time frame, the number of victims, the method of execution and their sheer extent, the reprisal killings of suspected Nazi collaborators and other opponents by Communist authorities in Slovenia could be compared to the biggest crimes of Communism, as well as Nazism, anywhere." (Slovenian Press Agency, March 20, 2008)
Another historian, university professor Mitja Ferenc, has unearthed more than 570 hidden grave sites from World War II. His digs have cracked a psychological barrier in Slovenia and sparked new political debate about the sins of that war, wherein thousands of Germans, Croatians and others on the losing side were killed.
In 1999 he found 1,179 skeletons in a trench near the city of Maribor, where a road by-pass was being constructed. [The department of highways pressed to continue the road works, and the (left-wing) government in Ljubljana …had no objections, although very likely, thousands of corpses were still hidden in the trench. Present investigations revealed that there are at least 15,000, possibly more than 20,000 corpses. The tank trench was suitable for mass killings, it was big enough to line up pow’s and civilians, shoot them with machine guns and cover the corpses with earth. Frankfurter Allgemaine, "Slovenia: Massacres after the War," by Karl-Peter Schwarz, 10-16-06. ]
Slovenian forensic experts investigate the site discovered in 1999 by Slovenian highway workers near Maribor, where 1,179 skeletons were found in a World War II-era trench. It's believed up to 20,000 are actually buried along this stretch of roadway.
In 2007 a new dig began nearby in the Tezno Forest - it's believed as many as 15,000 dead lie in this spot of timberland. Military gear indicates they were Croatians and Germans.
"My point is to find out what's out there. Without excavation, there is no way to know," said Ferenc.
BRITISH DECEIT; STILL NO OFFER OF REGRET
The Queen pictured with Yugoslavian president Josip Tito, front left, in 1978 after hosting him at Buckingham Palace. Behind are Prime Minister Lord Cardiff and Prince Philip. Tito was supported by the British in the war, and its representatives turned thousands of fleeing German, Croat, Slovene and Cossack forces back to Tito's partisans in 1945, knowing they would be killed.
In May 1945, German troops and Croatians were trying to reach Austria in order to surrender to the British rather than Tito's brutal fighters. Tens of thousands of Slovenes, Serbs, Cossacks, Romanians and others joined the frantic flight.
Tamara Griesser-Pecar writes in A people divided. Slovenia 1941-1946. Occupation, Collaboration, Civil War, Revolution(Publisher: Boehlau Verlag, Wien 2003) that all Yugoslavs of German ethnic background were declared outlawed by the "Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia" (AVNOJ). Those who survived the horror of the labor camps were expelled from the country.
She speaks of the 60,000 Croatian soldiers and civilians who were massacred on Slovenian soil. Thousands vanished, to be found in recent times as skeletons bound at the wrist with wires. Not all were German sympathizers, but Catholics and other anti-communists fighting what they considered a civil war.
There were also the 25,000 Cossacks and 2000 Domobranci Slovenians who were part of the German army retreating in early May to the valleys of Kaernten in southern Austria, where they surrendered to the British who, promising they were being sent to Italy, forced them into locked railroad cars that instead went directly to the waiting Soviets in Styria and the Tito partisans at the Austrian border--certain death at the hands of their enemies.
In the Gottschee Horn (Kocevski Rog), 12,000 Slovenians were murdered. In another pit near Ljubljana, Croatians and Cossacks had been murdered - German prisoners were forced to clean out this pit with a "horrible cadaverous smell" and thereafter were murdered themselves.
Mitja Ferenc said Yugoslavia's communist authorities persistently refused to acknowledge the executions had taken place and refused to tell relatives where the bodies were buried. For almost 50 years, people were not allowed to visit the graves. Many of them were destroyed by deliberate explosions or covered by waste. In some places, such as Celje, about 60 km (35 miles) east of Ljubljana, parts of towns were built on them.
"The evidence is being gathered but the fact is that most evidence has been systematically destroyed in the past," Joze Dezman said.
Typifying the ongoing attitude of the communists is 85-year-old Janez Stanovnik, a partisan fighter as a teenager who held high government positions under communism.
"I'm not proud of what happened in May and June 1945, but I am proud of what the partisans did during the war," he said. "Is this really something another generation has to pay for - or see used for political capital?" (Chicago Tribune, "Wartime heroes, sinful secrets," Christine Spolar, Jan. 29, 2008)
IN UKRAINE, JEWS HUNT FOR BODIES
Sparked by all these discoveries, Jewish groups have undertaken to discover their own mass graves in the Ukraine and Russia, which they claim to be the "killing fields" of World War II.
But for all the hundreds of thousands of Jews who are claimed to have been murdered here by the Nazi Einsatzgruppen, no remains have shown up in any large numbers. [TheEinsatzgruppen were special SS task forces whose job was to protect the German fighting forces from behind-the-front attacks by the local population and communist partisan fighters.]
But it is suspicious that little to no excavation is taking place to verify the number of bodies or to identify whether they are Jews or not, or how they were killed. The search parties and excavation teams are made up entirely of Jews, without government or neutral parties involved.
For instance, according to an article at Y-Net News, an Israel-based internet site, published Sept. 8, 2006, a secret private mission called "Kaddish for Ukraine's Jews," chaired by Yehuda Meshi Zahav, began looking for mass graves of Jews massacred during the Second World War. This mission was initiated by the Jewish Congress and French historian/priest Patrick DuBois (author of Holocaust by Bullets), with the help and funding of the national holocaust museums in Paris and Washington D.C.
Around Sept. 1, 2006, this mission uncovered what they say are hundreds of Jewish skeletons in a Ukrainian forest next to the city of Lvov.
They say they used metal detectors to detect bullets. When the metal detectors went off, they began digging and, at two meters down, sculls and skeletons began to surface. They say they counted hundreds and most were children. They say they recovered German-manufactured bullets marked with the years 1939 and 1941.
This "find" has been widely publicized in world media as a "holocaust" mass grave, yet no tests have proven the remains to be Jewish, or the perpetrators to be Germans. It is assumed.
We know the Soviets killed thousands of Ukrainian and Polish anti-communist nationalists before retreating from this area in 1941. There were also terrible massacres of Poles by Ukrainians and Ukrainians by Poles before and especially during WWII (over the disputed region of Volhynia)1. After the war, there were fights between Ukrainians and Russians in the part of Ukraine that Russia got from Poland.
The Kaddish delegation has estimated that 1800 Jews were buried here--even though they did not excavate and count all the bones. The Ukrainian authorities have agreed to recognize the area as a Jewish burial site, which means the bones can stay where they are. The Kaddish delegation performed a religious ceremony and erected a memorial monument in a matter of two weeks after the announcement of the discovery was made! This kind of haste is usually the mark of a desire for non-investigation.
JEWS GET CONTROL OF ANOTHER GRAVESITE
Another site that has received a great deal of attention isGvozdavka, a village in southern Ukraine, near Odessa, where another group of rabbis insist thousands of Jews are buried. It was found by chance in the spring of 2007 when workers digging to lay gas pipelines discovered human bones.
As soon as the bones were discovered, the Jewish community in Odessa requested the authorities to cease construction work.
Israeli rabbis "help" to excavate a mass grave they claim to have discovered in Ukraine. (Reuters photo)
According to a story in Haaretz, June 6, 2007, "Mass WWII-era Jewish grave found near Odessa," Odessa,(http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/867388.html) Rabbi Abraham Wolf announced that the authorities had also agreed to give the Jewish community ownership of the land so it could build a monument commemorating the victims.
Odessa chief rabbi Shlomo Baksht revealed their plans to fence off the site and erect a monument to the victims that same year.
In a follow-up story 8 days later in Haaretz (June 14, 2007, "Israeli Rabbis help excavate Holocaust-era mass grave"http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/871101.html), it's reported that a dozen rabbis were on the scene - 3 of whom were Holocaust scholars from Israel, others from the U.S. - and "spent several hours hunting for bones, which they immediately shoveled back into the ground."
In the follow up article, it's reported that Vera Kryzhanivska, who heads the village council, said it would soon discuss a request to hand over control of the meadow to Jewish groups.
Some Jewish community leaders complained that villagers didn't show enough respect for the dead. "How could people just walk past the grave and do nothing?" said Ilia Levitas, the head of Ukraine's Jewish Council. "Where is their Christian mercy?"
* * *
Since these two finds in 2006 and 2007, there have been no more claims of mass graves of Jews. As we know, there are no substantial remains of either bodies or ashes discovered at the concentration camp sites of Treblinka, Belzec, Sorbibor, Chelmo or Auschwitz-Birkenau, all in Poland. The killing-by-bullets of Jews that supposedly took place in the Ukraine is not showing up in any new mass graves, even though Father Patrick DuBois continues to search. He finds a few bodies here and there.
What are we to think? When it comes to Germans and their allies massacred and thrown into pits, we have masses of evidence compiled by official government agencies, even when they are resistant to do so. When it comes to Poles, Ukrainians and other Slavic ethnics groups, we don't find them buried in mass graves by the Nazis. When it comes to Jews, we have only the word of Jewish delegations that thousands of Jews are buried in mass graves that they refuse to excavate.
As Mitja Ferenc, the Slovenian history professor, remarked of his own discoveries: "Without excavation, there is no way to know."~
1) "The Soviets, having enlarged Soviet Ukraine to the west, deported tens of thousands of the Volhynian elites, mostly Poles, to Siberia and Kazakhstan. These actions ceased only when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941." And "The 1943 decision of Ukrainian nationalists to cleanse (Volhynian Poles) was [...] based upon news of the Soviet victory at Stalingrad" (with the expectation of the end of German occupation). "Ukrainian partisans killed about fifty thousand Volhynian Poles and forced tens of thousands more to flee in 1943." Later the Poles turned the tables on the Ukrainians. (From "The Causes of Ukrainian-Polish Ethnic Cleansing 1943," Timothy Snyder, Yale University, 2003)
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