Grisly find may be Nazi mass grave

GERMANY - The remains of 22 children and 29 adults have been found in Germany in what officials believe may be a Nazi-era mass grave.

The remains were exhumed from the cemetery of a Catholic church in the village of Menden-Barge.

"We assume that these were victims of the Nazi regime," state prosecutor Ulrich Maass said.

Officials said the dead were possibly victims of Adolf Hitler's "euthanasia" programme, under which many disabled people were murdered.

More than 6 million Jews and other minorities across Europe were killed by Hitler's Nazi regime during World War II.

Maass said authorities would search for evidence about the suspected killings and witnesses to any atrocities.

At least one witness, a former church assistant, said he saw corpses taken to the grave by horse-drawn cart.

But he admitted that it could be difficult to find enough strong evidence to bring charges against any individual, 61 years after the end of the war.

The children's tiny bodies had been tossed into the grave without coffins and three of their skeletons showed signs of physical disability, Maass said.

Forensic investigators dressed in white anti-contamination suits used an excavator to dig out the bones at the cemetery. They took notes and photos of the scene, which was roped off.

It is believed poisons often used to kill victims would be hard to detect after so many years.

Maass said secrecy surrounded the grave until recent years.

The cemetery is near the site of a hospital once run by Hitler's personal doctor Karl Brandt, who headed the "euthanasia" programme, called Action T4. Victims were killed by lethal injection or carbon monoxide fumes piped into sheds from car exhausts.

- AGENCIES