POLAND has held a state burial for the remains recently uncovered of over 700 victims of Nazi Germany’s World War II mass executions.

They were discovered in the so-called Valley of Death in the country’s north.

The observances in the town of Chojnice began with a funeral Mass at the basilica, leading to an interment with military honours at a local cemetery of the victims of the Nazi crimes. 

President Andrzej Duda, local authorities and top officials of the Institute of National Remembrance, which carried out and documented the exhumations, took part in the events.

The remains of Polish civilians, including some 218 asylum patients, were exhumed between 2021 and 2024 from a number of separate mass graves on the outskirts of Chojnice. 

Personal belongings and documents helped identify some of the victims.

Among them were teachers, priests, policemen, foresters, postal workers and landowners.

Poland lost six million citizens, or a sixth of its population, of which three million were Jewish, in the war.