|
Ludwigsburg, Germany (dpa) - A team of French researchers
has uncovered more than 2,500 sites in Ukraine where executions
were carried out under the German World War II occupation,
according to a report released Thursday.
The team has researched 700 sites where executions by shooting
took place, with the number of victims ranging from five
to 100,000.
The total killed - many of them Jews - remains unknown.
According to estimates, around 1.5 million Jews were murdered
in Ukraine during the German occupation.
Seven years ago, a research team under the French priest
Patrick Debois, whose grandfather died as a prisoner-of-war
in Ukraine, began probing the death sites.
They work by interviewing eyewitnesses, as well as by evaluating
archaeological and forensic evidence. The work is 60-per-cent
funded by the French Shoah Foundation.
At the beginning of the month, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre
criticized Germany for not doing enough to apprehend war
criminals.
Kurt Schrimm, who heads the special prosecutions office
in Ludwigsburg in south-western Germany, said the slowing
pace was related to the scarcity of legally acceptable
evidence 62 years after the end of World War II.
"That evidence exists only in cases that are few
and far between," he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur
dpa in an interview. Often important documents were missing
or witnesses had died of old age.
"We are doing as much as we can," said Schrimm,
adding that it was unfair to compare his work to that of
the US Office of Special Investigations which unmasks European
immigrants suspected of crimes during World War II.
The Wiesenthal centre, founded in 1977 and named after
the late "Nazi hunter" Simon Wiesenthal, is based
in Los Angeles.
expatica.com
|
