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28.10.2022

The IPN President handed over the artifacts to the Gross-Rosen Museum

On 28 October 2022, a press conference was held with the participation of the President of the Institute of National Remembrance Karol Nawrocki, Ph.D., Director of the Chief Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation Prosecutor Andrzej Pozorski, and Gross-Rosen Museum Director Janusz Barszcz. During the conference at the Gross-Rosen Museum in Rogoznica the IPN President handed over to the Museum the artifacts found during the exhumation of the remains of the victims of the Gross-Rosen German concentration camp.

The Prosecutor of the IPN Branch in Wroclaw, in the course of the investigation of the crimes committed in the years 1940—1945 against the prisoners of the Gross-Rosen German concentration camp, while carrying out a verification of the information provided by the personnel of the Gross-Rosen Museum in Rogoznica, revealed an unknown mass grave of 92 victims of the camp. 

According to the findings of the investigation, in February 1945, before the evacuation of the camp, sick prisoners unable to evacuate, were thrown into the anti-aircraft slot located on the camp's grounds with the dimensions of 60 m x 2 m, 1.70 m deep. After the examinations, the experts concluded that the human remains discovered in the hole accounted for 92 men aged between 20 and 60 years.

 

All these 92 men had lives, which got forgotten, and all for nearly 80 years lay covered with soil as if they were trash. If you ask why we need the IPN, here's why: so that no victim of a totalitarian regime is forgotten or abandoned in a nameless grave,

said the IPN President during the press conference.

 

The mass grave revealed more than 700 items belonging to the prisoners of the camp and members of its staff, as well as furnishings from the offices, the canteen and the hospital. The items belonging to the camp's prisoners, mainly aluminum dishes, meniscuses and spoons, bore inscriptions intentionally scratched out by the prisoners and containing the initials of their names, and the names of the towns from which they most likely came.

These items were recognized as evidence material for the investigation. Their description and photographic documentation were on, and they underwent restoration work.

On 28 October 2022, the President of the IPN Karol Nawrocki, Ph.D. handed over the items secured in the investigation to the director of the Gross-Rosen Museum in Rogoznica Janusz Barszcz, so that they became part of the Museum's collection.

The Gross-Rosen camp was established in August 1940 as a branch of KL Sachsenhausen. The inmates were intended to work in a local granite quarry. The first transport arrived there on 2 August  1940. On 1 May  1941, Arbeitslager Gross-Rosen obtained the status of an independent concentration camp.  It was considered one of the heaviest concentration camps due to the working conditions of prisoners. The largest extension of the camp took place in 1944.  Nearly 100 branches were then established next to the main camp, located primarily in Lower Silesia, the Sudetes and Lubusz Land. It is estimated that about 125,000 prisoners passed through the mother camp and its branches. Jews from various European countries, Poles and citizens of the USSR belonged to the most numerous national groups. According to the latest findings, approximately 40,000 people died in KL Gross-Rosen. 

 


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