RUSSIAN state investigators and volunteers are digging up a mass grave of Nazi victims where a feared 3,700 people including women and children were buried.
Many skeletons had gunshot wounds to their skulls and were civilians of different ethnic backgrounds, say reports.
Some were stabbed and others buried alive, it is reported.
The macabre site at a Second World War mass execution range has been called the Batetsky Auschwitz and is near Veliky Novgorod city, 360 miles northwest of Moscow.
Hitler’s forces carried out the killing between 1941 and 1943 it is believed.
Investigators have found “cartridges from foreign-produced automated weapons” at the Zhestyanaya Gorka village site.
The area was known as a site of mass execution by the Nazis but only now is a full-scale attempted being made to dig up the human remains and give the thousands of victims a proper burial.
A painstaking operation is underway to remove the bones and seek to establish the age, sex and causes of death.
Investigators are studying archives to establish all the circumstances of the Nazi executions.
Chilling pictures exist of firing squads shooting dead victims at the site.
The work involving Search Expedition group — which actively searches for the graves of victims of war and repression — will continue until all the bodies are exhumed, say reports in Russia.
At least 2,600 people were shot and buried at the site, say experts, but the likely total will to be at least 3,700.
Sergei Sevastyanov, head of Novgorodets volunteer search unit, said: “We are investigating and will set up a camp here for three weeks to work.
“The territory is rather big, 32 hectares.
“The main aim is to find six pits and then check the rest of the territory [for remains].”
When the search is completed, the area will be landscaped and a memorial set up.
Currently there are several memorials including a granite obelisk at a nearby military burial where nearly 800 Soviet soldiers and officers lie.
There is also an existing memorial — a cross — in the memory of executed civilians.
A memorial rock marks the site of Jews executed here.
Father Sergyi Vasilyevm of the nearby Orthodox Church of the Repose of Madonna, said: “Executioners were working non-stop.
“Victims were brought in trucks from Leningrad region….
“Partisans, paratroopers, captives, Jews, gypsies…
“Sometimes they saved bullets and stabbed helpless people with bayonets or buried them alive.”
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A German sub-division was responsible for the executions, but under their command were people of Russia, Estonian and Latvian nationality, say local sources.
The Russian Investigative Committee has launched an initial probe into the discovery of human remains.
A spokesman said: “During an initial inspection of the site, five skeletal corpses were removed.”
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