Grave of suspected Nazi victims found at US airfield
21/09/2005 - 13:33:48Workers at a US Army airfield have uncoverd a Second World War-era grave believed to contain the bodies of Jewish slave labourers used by the Nazis, German authorities said today.
The skeletal remains of an undetermined number of people were found on Monday during work on the airfield, next to Stuttgart’s airport, said Ulrich Heffner, a spokesman for police in the south-western city.
Preliminary examination of the remains indicate that they are of the right age to be the bodies of Jews used as forced labourers in the area, Heffner said in a statement.
Jewish inmates from a subcamp of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp were used as slave labourers at the air base between November 1944 and February 1945, Heffner said.
More than 100 are known to have died of hunger and typhus during that period, he said.
Nineteen bodies were cremated at the time, and another 66 corpses were found in October 1945, shortly after the war ended.
Authorities are now trying to determine the identities of the bodies and are looking for possible witnesses as they look into the case.
Building work on a new control point at the entrance to the airfield has been suspended as prosecutors investigate.
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