Poland Holds State Burial for 700 Recently Discovered Nazi-Era Mass Grave Victims

WARSAW, Poland (AP) – Poland on Monday held a state burial of the remains of over 700 victims of Nazi Germany’s World War II mass executions that were recently uncovered in the so-called Valley of Death in the country’s north.

The observances in the town of Chojnice began with a funeral Mass at the basilica, leading to an interment with military honors at a local cemetery of the victims of the Nazi crimes. President Andrzej Duda, local authorities and top officials of the state National Remembrance Institute, which carried out and documented the exhumations, took part in the events.

The remains of Polish civilians, including some 218 asylum patients, were exhumed in 2021-2024 from a number of separate mass graves at the outskirts of Chojnice. Personal belongings and documents helped identify some 120 of the victims of an execution in early 1945. Among them were teachers, priests, policemen, foresters, postal workers and landowners.

Historians have established that the Nazis, shortly after invading Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, executed some of the civilians. The remains of another 500 victims are from the January 1945 execution, when the Germans were fleeing the area.

Poland lost 6 million citizens, or a sixth of its population, of which 3 million were Jewish, in the war. The country also suffered huge losses to its infrastructure, industry and agriculture.