The remains of over 700 people have been unearthed at the site of a former Jewish ghetto in Belarus.
Construction workers made the chance discovery when laying down foundations for a new apartment block in the southern city of Brest last month, which led locals to call for an end to building activities.
Soldiers took over the operation, uncovering 730 bodies so far, as well as items such as leather shoes.
One soldier said a nearby road may be cut open in the search for remains.
Unit leader Dmitry Kaminsky said some of the skulls had bullet holes, suggesting the people had been executed by a shot to the back of the head.
"We are transferring the remains that are dug up to local authorities for reburial," he told AFP.
The ghetto in Brest had been created by Nazi Germany in 1941 and had a population of over 18,000 people.
The remains are believed to be of Jewish people who were rounded up, had their valuable belongings confiscated and were later shot.
Read more: Children who fled Nazis to get compensation from Germany
Belarusian soldiers have sifted through the site to collect bones.
Local historian Irina Lavrovskaya said she has launched a petition to stop construction at the site.
"I don’t know how you can build a house on bones," one resident said.
"We need to build some kind of memorial in honor of the dead."
As of 2014, over a thousand mass graves have been found in the region.
Read more: Holocaust-denying bishop loses case against German conviction
nn/rg (AFP, Reuters)
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Jewish memorials in Berlin
The Holocaust Memorial
A huge field of stelae in the center of the German capital was designed by New York architect Peter Eisenmann. The almost 3,000 stone blocks commemorate the six million Jewish people from all over Europe who were murdered by the National Socialists.
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Jewish memorials in Berlin
The "Stumbling Stones"
Designed by German artist Gunther Demnig, these brass plates are very small — only 10 by 10 centimeters (3.9 x 3.9 inches). The stumbling stones mark the homes and offices from which people were deported by the Nazis. More than 7,000 of them have been placed across Berlin, 70,000 across Europe, and in 2017 the first stones were also laid in outside Europe, in Buenos Aires.
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Jewish memorials in Berlin
The Wannsee Conference House
Fifteen high-ranking Nazi officials met in this villa on the Wannsee Lake on January 20, 1942 to discuss the systematic murder of European Jews, which they termed the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". Today the house is a memorial that informs visitors about the unimaginable dimension of the genocide that was decided here.
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Jewish memorials in Berlin
Track 17 Memorial
White roses on track 17 at Grunewald station remember the more than 50,000 Berlin Jews who were sent to their deaths from here. 186 steel plates show the date, destination and number of deportees. The first train went to the Litzmannstadt ghetto (Lodz, Poland) on October 18, 1941; the last train to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on January 5, 1945.
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Jewish memorials in Berlin
Otto Weidt's Workshop for the Blind
Today, the Hackesche Höfe in Berlin Mitte are mentioned in every travel guide. They are a backyard labyrinth in which many Jewish people lived and worked — for example in the brush factory of the German entrepreneur Otto Weidt. During the Nazi era he employed many blind and deaf Jews and saved them from deportation and death. The workshop of the blind is now a museum.
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Jewish memorials in Berlin
Fashion Center Hausvogteiplatz
The heart of Berlin's fashion metropolis once beat here. A memorial sign made of high mirrors recalls the Jewish fashion designers and stylists who made clothes for the whole of Europe at Hausvogteiplatz. The National Socialists expropriated the Jewish owners and handed over the fashion stores to Aryan employees. Berlin's fashion center was irretrievably destroyed during the Second World War.
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Jewish memorials in Berlin
Memorial at Koppenplatz
Before the Holocaust, 173,000 Jews lived in Berlin; in 1945 there were only 9,000. The monument "Der verlassene Raum" (The Deserted Room) is located in the middle of the Koppenplatz residential area in Berlin's Mitte district. It is a reminder of the Jewish citizens who were taken from their homes without warning and never returned.
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Jewish memorials in Berlin
The Jewish Museum
Architect Daniel Libeskind chose a dramatic design: viewed from above, the building looks like a broken Star of David. The Jewish Museum is one of the most visited museums in Berlin, offering an overview of the turbulent centuries of German Jewish history.
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Jewish memorials in Berlin
Weissensee Jewish Cemetery
There are still eight remaining Jewish cemeteries in Berlin, the largest of them in the Weissensee district. With over 115,000 graves, it is the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe. Many persecuted Jews hid in the complex premises during the Nazi era. On May 11, 1945, only three days after the end of the Second World War, the first postwar Jewish funeral service was held here.
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Jewish memorials in Berlin
The New Synagogue
When the New Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse was first consecrated in 1866 it was considered the largest and most magnificent synagogue in Germany. The only one of Berlin's 13 synagogues to survive the Kristallnacht pogroms, it later burned down due to Allied bombs. It was reconstructed and opened again in 1995. Since then, the 50-meter-high golden dome once again dominates Berlin's cityscape.
Author: Kerstin Schmidt
