Over 600 German WWII soldiers buried in Poland

Over 600 German WWII soldiers buried in Poland - The Local

 

May they rest in peace. I'm surprised they won't try to identify those without dogtags with DNA

 

Interesting read. Can someone explain why so many didn't have dogtags? Were they injured in a way that the dogtags were blown to bits or did many soldiers just not have them?

 

Agreed, I'm guessing the DNA tests might have to do with the monetary/time cost associated with performing them? It's unfortunate that families may lose their chance of closure as a result.

It's possible some might have been destroyed in battle but I wouldn't count out general decay over the years, some of the equipment I've seen dug up from the Eastern Front (including some dog tags from battles like Stalingrad) were in pretty bad shape, German dog tags were designed to be broken into two (one would stay on the body while the other would be given to an officer), if a tag was broken it's possible there could be so little of it left that it would be of little use. If the mass grave was dug by the Germans I assume they would probably have taken part of the tags with them, I'm not sure what procedure was for the locals or the Red Army if they were the ones that dug the graves.

Dog tags were issued to all German soldiers and mandatory for anyone going to the front or to an area with a certain degree of danger, perhaps towards the end of the war it's possible some couldn't be given dog tags simply due to logistical reasons but I doubt it would have been a common sight in the grand scheme of things.

 

a solution would be to keep dna sample of all 400 Mia and charge families who are volunteer to find out. it's not really correct to charge a familly in my opinion, but I'm sure some would be happy to pay a few euros to solve a 70 year old quest. A solution would be to allow these familly to deduce this amount from their taxes. As a tax payer I wouldn't mind paying a few extra cents for such a purpose, it's better than waste it buying Champagne for politician parties

 

I'm trying to find another source for this story that can hopefully clear this stuff up, keeping a record seems like the logical thing to do and perhaps they did, but so far the only news stories I can find regarding this event were AFP reposts.