Poland holds funeral Mass for more than 700 victims of Nazi Germany's World War II massacres

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland held a state burial Monday for more than 700 victims of Nazi Germany’s World War II mass executions, whose remains were recently uncovered in the so-called Valley of Death in the country’s north, decades after their deaths.

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. The remains were contained in 188 small wooden coffins with ribbons in national white and red colors across them.

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Joining the events were relatives of the victims, an aide to President Andrzej Duda, local authorities and top officials of the state National Remembrance Institute, which carried out and documented the exhumations.

“We want to give back memory, we want to give back dignity to the victims of the crimes in Chojnice,” presiding Bishop Ryszard Kasyna said.

Duda said in a message that the only reason the victims were killed by the Nazis was because they were Polish and said they would always be held in the national memory.

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

Historians have established that the Nazis, shortly after invading Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, executed some of the civilians, in a drive to subdue the nation. The remains of another 500 victims are from the January 1945 execution, when the Germans were fleeing the area. Bullets and shells from handguns used by German forces were found in the graves.

Experts will continue to comb the area for more mass graves of the so-called Pomerania Crime.

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