Remains of 20 German Luftwaffe soldiers, killed in the WWII, have been excavated in the Baltic town of Rumia recently.
Halina Bykowska reports
The excavation has been taking place since last year. Specialists were checking thoroughly the area occupied by the former protestant church and the former nearby graveyard for many months. During the second WW ttens of German Luftwaffe soldiers stayed in Rumia. They assembled jet fighters and bombers there. Later the war planes attacked the Polish territory. Shortly before the end of the WW II some 80 Luftwaffe soldiers were killed after the allied air raid had taken place. Their bodies were buried in the graveyard, close to the protestant church.
A lot was changed after the WW II. A gym hall was organized in the protestant church and a new primary school was built nearby. A sports field was made on the area where the cemetery had existed before the war. A new pavement was also made there.
Nobody cared for the remains of the German invaders. The situation changed in 1994 when the Polish-German Foundation “Memory”, based in Warsaw, decided to look for the remains and to organize burials on German graveyards in Poland.
We dug the remains of 35 German soldiers out last year – says Maciej Milak, the boss of the company dealing with the excavation. – We also found pieces of military uniforms and metal identity tags with names of German soldiers on them – he pointed out.
The specialists are looking for more remains. According to the archives in Germany bodies of 25 other German soldiers had been buried in the Rumia cemetery.
All the remains of the German soldiers had to be buried on the graveyard at Glinna, on the outskirts of Szczecin, in Western Poland.
Reliable German sources believe that some half a million German soldiers lost their lives in Poland during the second WW.