Are the locations of mass graves identified and still contain bodies of those murdered?
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While hundreds of mass graves have been identified there are likely many more that are still unidentified. The Germans were many things but one thing is they were meticulous with their documentation of mass graves which is how many have been found along with local knowledge.
It is also very likely most of the mass graves still contain those that were murdered. This is because most that were murdered would be unidentifiable due to lack of identification and that moving several hundred to several thousand bodies would be a difficult task at best and those grave sites are then documented and protected by that countries laws.
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Great question,
The problem is that the Germans actually tried to destroy the evidence of the massacres once they started losing the war. They had the bodies dug up, used bonecrushers and burned the bodies afterwards. They tried to murder everyone of the slavelabour who helped but some escaped and so we know.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/babi-yar
After the war the anti-semitic Soviets ignored the Shoa as well.
So like dearth pointed out there must be many unidentified graves and even in small places like Tarawa organizations like History Flight are still finding and recovering the Japanese and US dead. This is without people actively trying to hide bodies!
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Depends a lot on which events you would link the mass graves too. Sadly some are even used today for political purposes.
In recent years there was a big propaganda stunt by certain Russian state sponsored actors to present the mass graves found from Sandarmokh Sandarmokh - Wikipedia (victims of Stalin’s terror) as Finnish killings of Soviet POWs and civilians - for example some of the conclusions of the studies blaming the Finns were released before the examinations had even begun. It is a bit more difficult to say if that was done to make Finns look worse or just to try to make Stalin look a bit less worse and hide the memory of the terror - it is hard to say really.
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