Carolina Reb
2018-08-09 06:35:21 UTC
In 1990, the Special Investigations Unit
(SIU) of the Australian Attorney General’s
Department convened a team of forensic
archaeologists to unearth the site of a
mass grave. The grave was located in Serniki,
Ukraine, and the bodies were those of local
Jews who had been murdered in 1942. Three
Ukrainian individuals, alleged to have
participated in this act of genocide were,
in 1990, standing trial in Adelaide.
The chief archaeologist was Dr Richard Wright.
Together with some of the other prosecutors
and investigators, he went on to serve in the
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia (ICTY), where they excavated a
number of other mass graves, and compiled
forensic information that pertained to the
commission of genocide.
For an overview of their findings, you can
see: Richard Wright, “Where are the Bodies?
In the Ground”, The Public Historian 32:1,
(Feb 2010), 96–107.
Wright describes the evidence from Serniki,
and how the placement of the bodies aligns
with our understanding of how many of these
mass shootings took place. Victims were made
to descend into the pit and lie down, face
down, on the top row of corpses. They were
then shot in the back of the head.
(Wow! Kewel!)
The man who developed this particular technique
(dubbed “the sardine method”) was Obergruppenführer
Friedrich Jeckeln. Eyewitness testimony had
already provided the particulars, but the discovery
of the actual corpses ratified that information.
While it wasn’t the case in Serniki, some of the
corpses in other excavated killing pits still had
their house keys on them. These people expected
to be going home.
(Home = Grave pit! Kewel!)
Discovering the skeletons of little children
(sometimes as young as a few months) is fairly
par for the course at these types of excavations,
as is discovering corpses that still have all of
their hair. To my mind, this is all terribly
frightening, but the most horrifying to me is
Wright’s description (in the same article) of
an excavation that he conducted in Croatia,
in 2000.
At one particular site, the Croat army was alleged
to have been responsible for murdering Serb civilians
in 1993. Since these were crimes committed by the
sitting government, the archaeologists needed to be
supervised by local police, special forces and the
Croat secret service. The official line was that
the archaeologists were wasting their time, and
that they were only going to discover the bodies
of Serb soldiers.
Wright describes how they not only discovered the
bodies of women and children, but how some of these
skeletons still sported evening dresses or had long,
plaited hair. The representative of the Croat secret
service attempted to inform the archaeologists that
it was “well known” that this was the way that Serb
soldiers groomed themselves, but I don’t expect his
observation was taken particularly seriously.
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-c04f4234f274b40f66b400e0f78d5db5
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-ccf8936523e78aaa7fff7d4afed33e65
(SIU) of the Australian Attorney General’s
Department convened a team of forensic
archaeologists to unearth the site of a
mass grave. The grave was located in Serniki,
Ukraine, and the bodies were those of local
Jews who had been murdered in 1942. Three
Ukrainian individuals, alleged to have
participated in this act of genocide were,
in 1990, standing trial in Adelaide.
The chief archaeologist was Dr Richard Wright.
Together with some of the other prosecutors
and investigators, he went on to serve in the
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia (ICTY), where they excavated a
number of other mass graves, and compiled
forensic information that pertained to the
commission of genocide.
For an overview of their findings, you can
see: Richard Wright, “Where are the Bodies?
In the Ground”, The Public Historian 32:1,
(Feb 2010), 96–107.
Wright describes the evidence from Serniki,
and how the placement of the bodies aligns
with our understanding of how many of these
mass shootings took place. Victims were made
to descend into the pit and lie down, face
down, on the top row of corpses. They were
then shot in the back of the head.
(Wow! Kewel!)
The man who developed this particular technique
(dubbed “the sardine method”) was Obergruppenführer
Friedrich Jeckeln. Eyewitness testimony had
already provided the particulars, but the discovery
of the actual corpses ratified that information.
While it wasn’t the case in Serniki, some of the
corpses in other excavated killing pits still had
their house keys on them. These people expected
to be going home.
(Home = Grave pit! Kewel!)
Discovering the skeletons of little children
(sometimes as young as a few months) is fairly
par for the course at these types of excavations,
as is discovering corpses that still have all of
their hair. To my mind, this is all terribly
frightening, but the most horrifying to me is
Wright’s description (in the same article) of
an excavation that he conducted in Croatia,
in 2000.
At one particular site, the Croat army was alleged
to have been responsible for murdering Serb civilians
in 1993. Since these were crimes committed by the
sitting government, the archaeologists needed to be
supervised by local police, special forces and the
Croat secret service. The official line was that
the archaeologists were wasting their time, and
that they were only going to discover the bodies
of Serb soldiers.
Wright describes how they not only discovered the
bodies of women and children, but how some of these
skeletons still sported evening dresses or had long,
plaited hair. The representative of the Croat secret
service attempted to inform the archaeologists that
it was “well known” that this was the way that Serb
soldiers groomed themselves, but I don’t expect his
observation was taken particularly seriously.
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-c04f4234f274b40f66b400e0f78d5db5
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-ccf8936523e78aaa7fff7d4afed33e65
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/1024px-Church_Street_Toronto_Canada_IMG_5695-592b377c3df78cbe7e38ff6d.jpg)
