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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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Based on the character of the discovery, the case was taken over by the Institute of National Remembrance in Lublin at the end of 2013. Initially, two possible hypotheses were articulated as to whom those remains may belong. One connected the burials with the executions of the last prisoners from Treblinka, who came to Sobibór to liquidate the camp in 1943 (hypothesis rejected). The second hypothesis explained the rush of the execution and burying the bodies by connecting it to the activities of The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (abbreviated NKVD), which was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. There was a report on NKVD activity after the war in the area of the former camp. Residents of the villages in the area surrounding the extermination camp witnessed shots. The archaeological analyses of the burial sites suggested that the graves were rather connected to the crimes committed by NKVD between 1945 and 1956... These observations suggest that the execution of people, whose remains were discovered in grave 16, but also in graves 12–14, occurred after the end of the criminal activity of the German Nazi extermination camp.