Mass grave from Nazi period uncovered
From correspondents in Kiev

June 06, 2007 09:53am

GAS workers in Ukraine uncovered a mass grave dating from World War II that could contain up to 5000 Jewish victims of the Nazis.

The grave was discovered last month as workers were digging to lay a gas line in the village of Gvozdovka, about 300km from Kiev, said Roman Chvartsman, the head of the former ghetto prisoners association.

According to first estimates and based on accounts from several local people, it could contain up to 5000 bodies of Ukranian and Moldavian Jews executed by the Nazis in 1941, Mr Chvartsman said.

Ukraine has more than 300 common graves in the former ghettos and Nazi concentration camps, but Mr Chvartsman said the newly discovered grave does not feature on official records.

At the end of 2006 a mass grave containing 3500 people was discovered in the Mykolayev region in the south of the country, he said.

More than 800,000 Ukranian Jews were killed during World War II. The most notorious massacre was that carried out at Babi Yar, Kiev, when 34,000 Jews were machine-gunned over two days, on September 29 and 30, in 1941.

The killings there continued until 1943, where up to 100,000 victims - Jews, Roma, resistance fighters and Soviet prisoners of war - are thought to have perished.