Tens of thousands of dead Nazis still being repatriated

Tens of thousands of dead Nazi soldiers are still being repatriated from makeshift war graves on the Eastern Front, despite the war having ended more than six decades ago.

Three million Germans were killed on the Eastern Front, a crucial combat zone between the axis powers and the allies between 1941 and the end of the war Photo: Getty Images

More than 700,000 German fighters have been recovered and reburied since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1945, with around 40,000 being exhumed each year, Germany’s War Graves Commission said.

Three million Germans were killed on the Eastern Front, a crucial combat zone between the axis powers and the allies between 1941 and the end of the war. It is considered one of the largest military confrontations in recent history.

Most of the Eastern European burial sites are unmarked and some are mass graves.

Around 50 new German war cemeteries have been created since the work began in former Communist Europe in 1990.

“We have gathered a lot of records from the war and we use them to locate cemeteries. Then our staff travel there to try to pinpoint them,” Fritz Kirchmeier, a spokesman for the commission said. We rely on the help of local eyewitnesses, which is a further aspect putting us under time pressure because these people are of course very old and we will not be able to ask them in 10 years’ time. We often come too late. Sites have often been plundered by people who searched the graves looking for items they can sell.
“Some people are happy when the dead are taken away from their land but occasionally we still encounter massive resentment by local people. The memory of the occupation by the Germans and of the war crimes is still very alive.”
Excavations of battlefields, field hospitals and prisoner of war burial sites are expected to slow in the next few years as the charity, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, struggles with dwindling resources.

source

 

Posted in: Anti Zog Media,Europe,WW2