DRAINED OF LIFE
Chilling Nazi mass grave of 675 babies and children who were ‘drained of blood for injured troops’ is unearthed
A CHILLING Nazi mass grave containing the bodies of 675 babies and children thought to have been "drained of blood" to save injured troops has been unearthed in Russia.
The gruesome burial site, containing 1,362 bodies, was discovered near St Petersburg and close to the base of an invading Hitler SS unit during WWII, experts said.
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The victims - almost all without visible wounds - were found naked and without shoes on by search teams in Novaya Burya village, in the Lomonosovsky district of the Leningrad region.
They believe the children's remains were from a notorious concentration camp nearby, where hundreds of youngsters were brutally incarcerated solely to supply blood for wounded German officers and soldiers.
Children were harrowingly kept on standby to ensure a steady supply of blood for Nazi troops fighting near Leningrad - now St Petersburg.
Up to 50 sacks full of human remains were taken from the macabre site just this week, containing the skeletons of the latest 415 victims of which more than half of them were children.
From newborns to teenagers, hundreds perished at the site due to chronic blood loss.
Head of the mass grave search team Viktor Ionov said: "We are digging and digging, but there is no end to it at all.
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"And - morally - civilians are harder to dig out than military victims.
"The victims were not wearing clothes and shoes. Usually something decayed remains, for example, soles - but not here."
Most of the adult casualties were women, including at least three who were pregnant.
There were no gunshot wounds on the corpses, while only a handful of victims showed signs of receiving blows and the majority have no indication of their cause of death.
Search volunteer Sergei Beregovoi explained: "In total the bones of 1,362 people, 675 out of them children, have been dug up here.
"The remains were lying in piles. Some had their arms stretched. To be honest, I was utterly horrified, despite all my experience," he told 47news outlet.
Nazi soldiers were stationed just 300metres from the site between 1941 and 1943 during the Siege of Leningrad, while an SS unit was also based nearby.
Ionov said: "The most mysterious thing is that neither the elderly, nor local historians, remember anything about what happened here.
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"There is no evidence in the military archives. I do not understand why no one knows anything at all about what happened here."
One theory is that the victims died from famine during the harsh winters that gripped Russia throughout WWII.
But experts have suggested the children's remains are likely to be from the evil Vyritsa 'blood transfusion' concentration camp, near Gatchina.
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More than 300 "juvenile prisoners", aged from newborns to 14, were kept for one purpose: pumping out blood for the soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht.
The younger children were allowed to be accompanied by their mothers in the horrific camp, situated some 30 miles from the mass grave.
One survivor disturbingly recalled: "My sister, Elena, died there, in the infirmary.
The most mysterious thing is that neither the elderly, nor local historians, remember anything about what happened here.
Search team leader Viktor Ionov
"She was begging me, ‘Alexander, please take me away from here. I have no blood left, but they keep coming for more.’ She died the next day."
Around 100 graves were unearthed near the death camp, but thousands of the young victims from Vyritsa were never found.
Investigators now suspect the bodies were transported by trucks to the burial site and were dumped just a few feet below the surface.
It is feared hundreds of more victims will be exhumed when search teams resume the dig after the winter.
Experts discovered one tag numbered 1410 amongst the rubble, although its significance is so far unclear.
The first hint of a mass grave hiding beneath the surface came to light when the remains of two adults and a newborn child were discovered last year during a land survey.
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Another 20 skeletons were found soon afterwards, prompting the Russian Investigative Committee to open a criminal case for mass murder.
It is now likely to be recategorised as a genocide investigation, reports say.
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