03-08-2003, 02:27 AM
I have to mention something here about the 'grave robbers' as some consider them. I was a regular at Izmailova market in Moscow for each weekend that I lived there the last time. As such, I got invited into a lot of the 'cliques' of the various collectors on the market.
Some of these guys were 'diggers' (as I called them). They would go out on the weekends and dig in the forest for graves, etc... They would routinely dig up German dogtags, German awards, helmets, etc etc etc... You name it, they found it! (Of course, strangely, I never saw any dug Soviet awards) Many times, they'd bring their photoalbums to the market and I'd take a look at what their current projects were. (I have some of the pictures that I was given, including some of mass graves, but I don't know if all the board members would be comfortable with me posting them!)
Anyway, the interesting thing abou these guys was that they were actually subsidized by the German government to dig up the mass graves, in order to return the German bodies to the German government. The bones (normally just the skull, as the remainder were normally jumbled with other solider's bones) were returned to the Germans, and the rest they were allowed to keep as 'profit'.
Some people thought it was rather creepy, but I saw that it was more of an effort to return the foreign soldiers 50+ years after they fell in combat in a foreign land. For that, I had a great respect for them.
--Dave
Some of these guys were 'diggers' (as I called them). They would go out on the weekends and dig in the forest for graves, etc... They would routinely dig up German dogtags, German awards, helmets, etc etc etc... You name it, they found it! (Of course, strangely, I never saw any dug Soviet awards) Many times, they'd bring their photoalbums to the market and I'd take a look at what their current projects were. (I have some of the pictures that I was given, including some of mass graves, but I don't know if all the board members would be comfortable with me posting them!)
Anyway, the interesting thing abou these guys was that they were actually subsidized by the German government to dig up the mass graves, in order to return the German bodies to the German government. The bones (normally just the skull, as the remainder were normally jumbled with other solider's bones) were returned to the Germans, and the rest they were allowed to keep as 'profit'.
Some people thought it was rather creepy, but I saw that it was more of an effort to return the foreign soldiers 50+ years after they fell in combat in a foreign land. For that, I had a great respect for them.
--Dave
