As reported last month a Brest, Belarus, building site yielded bones of
1,214 Holocaust victims. Construction workers who had been working on
foundations for a new apartment building along with soldiers pulled human
skeletons >from the earth. Over the three months since this excavation of
bodies began the bones of 1,214 people, are thought to be Jews slaughtered
by the Nazis, when Hitler invaded Russia. At the time Belarus was part of
Russia.

On May 22, the victims were buried in Belarus. The site of the mass grave
was on the site of wartime ghetto, and therefore the victims were believed
to be Jews slaughtered by the Nazis. The remains were placed into 120
coffins, and the burial and ceremony was held at a cemetery outside of the
city. Authorities were in a rush to do the burial rather than do DNA testing
to discern who the victims were.

The city was criticized for not carefully examining the land before the
building permit was issued.

According to the World Jewish Congress before the war the city had a vibrant
Jewish population of which 90 percent was killed by the end of the Holocaust.

To read more see:
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/22/725728990/more-than-1-000-holocaust-victims-are-buried-in-belarus-after-mass-grave-discove
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Jan Meisels Allen
Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee