TILBURG, the Netherlands (BNO NEWS) — Dutch soldiers have possibly found a mass grave which may contain the bodies of up to fifteen people who were executed by German police during World War II, the government announced on Wednesday.
The Dutch Ministry of Defense said a group of soldiers discovered two suspected graves last week while searching the Loonse and Drunense Dunes, a national park located between the cities of Tilburg, Waalwijk and Den Bosch, with ground-penetrating radar. It is believed up to fifteen people may be buried there.
“After an afternoon of intensive research, soldiers from the 41st Armored Engineer Battalion discovered two disturbances on the radar,” the Ministry of Defense said in a statement on Wednesday. “This indicates the soil is different in composition in these locations. Around it they detected barbed wire and they found ammunition and a mortar.”
The search was part of an exercise but focused on the story of Rien Broeders who previously provided information to the War Aftercare Department of the Netherlands Red Cross. The area in the Loonse and Drunense Dunes is known to have been used as a shooting range by German forces during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
Broeders, who was at the time a young boy and lived in the area, would regularly visit the shooting range to collect shells after German soldiers had left. He knew the German soldiers had dug two pits, surrounded by barbed wire, where they could take shelter in the event of a threat.
But when Broeders returned after the war, he discovered the pits had been closed.
According to information from the Foundation for Information World War Two (STIWOT), most of the victims are likely resistance fighters who were executed by the Nazi’s Order Police in May 1944. Fourteen men, between the ages of 22 and 34, were taken from their cells at Haaren prison and brought to the dunes where they were executed.
According to STIWOT, at least 28 shots were heard in the area before the men were buried at an unknown location in the dunes. Two searches in July 1946 and January 1974 failed to find the graves, and the search has been hampered by the dunes which continuously change in shape.
Local broadcaster Omroep Brabant said five of those executed had been accused of direct and indirect involvement in connection with the robbery of a distribution center in Bergen op Zoom in March 1944. They were also accused of setting a German storage facility on fire in January 1944 and possessing weapons and ammunition.
21 March 2012
http://earththreats.com/2012/03/dutch-soldiers-find-suspected-wwii-mass-grave-in-dunes/
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