Remains Of Jewish Nazi Victims Found In France

Remains of Jewish victims of the Nazi holocaust have been found in test tubes and a jar in a medical research facility in France.

The tissue samples were discovered in a closed section of the Strasbourg Forensic Medical Institute after being tracked down by a researcher.

Raphael Toledano set out to locate the remains after uncovering a Second World War-era letter from the institute's director that mentioned wartime experiments.

The letter gave details of the storage of the samples taken from Jews killed in gas chambers specifically built for Nazi anatomist August Hirt.

The SS captain was chairman of the Reich University in Strasbourg during the war and worked with others to make detailed examinations of the corpses of inmates murdered in concentration camps.

It was part of an attempt by the Nazis to smear the Jews by 'proving' what the Nazis believed was their inferiority compared to other races.

Some of the victims were taken from Nazi death camps and transported to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in the Vosges mountains in France, about 20 miles (30km) outside of Strasbourg.

According to Le Monde, Mr Toledano worked with the institute's director Professor Jean-Sebastien Raul to identify several items including "a jar containing skin fragments of a victim of the gas chambers".

Also discovered, the newspaper said, was "two tubes containing the contents of an intestine and the stomach of a victim" and a registration list from the Natzweiler-Struthof camp.

Mr Toledano believes the remains are from some of the 86 victims Hirt used to make his comparisons.

The remains of most of the victims were found by the allies when Strasbourg was liberated in 1945, and quickly buried in a Jewish cemetery.

Le Monde reported that the researcher also believes that numbers on a label on one of the jars correspond to a known victim - former Auschwitz prisoner Menachem Taffel.

The Strasbourg mayor's office said it hopes to return the remains to the Jewish community so they can be buried in the city at some time in the future.