Naslov
Search for and exhumation of a World War 2 mass grave of German soldiers in Villeneuve-Loubet, France

Autori
Gassend, Jean-Loup

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Ocjenski radovi, diplomski rad, diplomski

Fakultet
Medicinski fakultet

Mjesto
Zagreb

Datum
29.06

Godina
2010

Stranica
31

Mentor
Petrovečki, Vedrana

Ključne riječi
World War II; German soldiers; identification tags; battlefield archaeology; mass grave; DNA

Sažetak
It is still comon to find remains of German soldiers dating from World War II (WWII) throughout Europe today. In most countries an organisation called the Volksbund Deutsches Kriegsgräberfürsorge (VDK) is responsible for the exhumation and reburial of such bodies when they are discovered. Usualy little is done to determine the circumstances of death and identifications rest almost entirely on the use of identifiation tags (ID tags) as there are no funds nor any database allowing for the use of DNA. When a mass grave containing the bodies of 14 German soldiers was located in 2006 in Villeneuve-Loubet, France, an agreement was reached with the VDK to allow a local team containing an archaeologist and medical students to handle the exhumation in a scientific manner. Although the bodies were fully skeletonizsed, a probable cause of death was found for approximately half of them. Six were identified thanks to their ID tags, while two more were tentatively identified after an investigation in the period German military files. For WWII German soldiers, identification tags can thus provide a more successful and cheaper means of identification than DNA normaly does for analogous historical cases. Next of kin were located for four of the soldiers, proving that such identifications are still useful in humanitarian terms, even after nearly 70 years. Although WWII era graves are usualy ignored by archaeologists, the information concerning the soldiers that was recovered during the exhumation and later from their families provided a large amount of previously unknown historical data about the German troops and the local military situation. Therefore, because of both the humanitarian and historical implications of WWII era graves, a multidisciplinary approach including forensic workers, archaeologists and historians should be encouraged. If not, unique information about this important part of our history will continue be destroyed and lost on a regular basis as is currently all too often the case.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Kliničke medicinske znanosti

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