Workmen building a housing complex at San Remo have discovered a large common grave believed to contain the remains of Nazi victims in this Italian Riviera city. The grave came to light when workmen were excavating foundations on a piece of land adjacent to the villa used by the Gestapo during their wartime occupation of Italy.
Since the bones discovered were mixed up and appear to have been dissolved by quicklime, police said it was impossible to say how many persons were buried there. Police first worked on the assumption that the bones resulted from an ordinary crime, but then said the grave probably was the work of the Nazis. A search is now being conducted for other graves in the immediate area. Local associations of ex-partisans and former prisoners of war have asked to take custody of the remains in order to place them in a shrine.
Karl-Heinz Bigell, a 65-year-old pensioner, was jailed for life by a West Berlin court for the murder of a Jewish prisoner at the Krakow-Plaszow labor camp in Poland in 1945. Bigell, who was head of the camp’s economic administration between March-Dec. 1943, set a dog onto a prisoner named Olmer and then shot the injured man.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
