Monday, April 13, 2015

LOWER SAXONY, GERMANY—A mass grave has been detected at Bergen-Belsen, a Nazi concentration camp located in northern Germany. Dutch researchers, including archaeologist Ivar Schute, used testimonies from ex-inmates of the camp and found an area of disturbed ground in a field at the end of the camp’s former main road. Measurements and initial tests suggest that a mass grave rests at the site. “We have consulted the Jewish community of Lower Saxony and according to religious laws no digging is allowed. That’s why there’s a decision not to start a dig. In any case, the whole camp has been declared a cemetery,” Jens-Christian Wagneer, director of the Bergen-Belsen memorial, told International Business Times. Some 70,000 people, including Jewish diarist Anne Frank, her sister Margot, and Dutch Resistance activist Jan Verschure, died at the camp between 1941 and April 15, 1945, when it was liberated. British troops burned the camp to prevent the further spread of disease. To read more about excavations at sites dating to this period, see "The Archaeology of World War II."