Marcel Gascon Barbera
July 3, 2019
BUCHAREST -- The Romanian military prosecution office has opened a
criminal case after more human remains were discovered near a mass grave found
in 2010 close to the city of Iasi.
The remains were found on
June 29 by experts working for Romania’s Elie Wiesel National Institute for the
Study of the Holocaust near Popricani, a small municipality close to Iasi.
Prosecutors inspected the
area on June 30 and also found “a grenade and an 82-mm mortar shell”, the Iasi
branch of the military prosecution said.
Researchers believe the
discovery may lead to another mass grave containing the remains of dozens of
Jews killed by Romanian troops during World War II.
They believe it may have
been dug by the same perpetrators responsible for the mass grave discovered in
2010.
Experts estimate that about
15,000 Jews were killed in pogroms around Iasi during World War II, when
Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu joined forces with the Nazis and contributed to
Hitler’s “final solution”.
Between 280,000 and 380,000
Romanian and Ukrainian Jews were killed in total during the war in territories
under Romanian administration, according to the Elie Wiesel Institute.
Romania had a Jewish
population of around 800,000 before the war, one of the largest in the world.
The Holocaust and emigration to Israel and Western countries during the
Communist time decimated the community, which numbers less than 10,000 today.
Romania has struggled to
come to terms to this grim chapter of its past, as many in the country still
deny Romanian implication in the genocide.
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