Re-burial Services for Nazi Victims

Re-burial services were held Saturday near the Russian village of Uryce for more than 125 Jewish victims of Nazi mass murders there 36 years ago. The remains, including the bones of children and infants, were exhumed last week from a mass grave in connection with the war crimes trial here of Pieter Menten, charged with responsibility for the murders on August 27, 1941 when he was an officer in an SS unit in the Lemberg area of what was then Polish territory.

The services were attended by a four-member delegation from the Amsterdam Public Prosecutor’s office. But although the victims were Jews the re-burial was without Jewish content. It was held on Saturday which is contrary to Jewish religious law. No rabbi was present and in fact there are no longer any Jewish inhabitants in the region some 150 kilometers south of Lwow. Soviet officials spoke at the grave site but they dealt with political matters rather than the Jewish victims.

The remains of nearly 100 adults were buried in 24 coffins and those of some 25 children believed by pathologists to have been under two years of age when they were killed were contained in six coffins. An infant’s feeding bottle found in the mass grave was re-buried as a symbol of the enormity of the crime.