Cretan civilians executed by Nazis identified 83 years later using DNA
Eighteen civilians who were executed on Crete by the Nazis during World War II have been identified 83 years later via DNA analysis by the Comparative Genomics Lab at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology of the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH).
The 18 male victims, aged 16-60 from the village of Adele, were executed on June 2, 1941 after the Battle of Crete by soldiers of the Third Reich on the orders of the German paratrooper commander General Kurt Student.
The research director of the project, Nikos Poulakakis, told Kathimerini that the Nazis gave the victims shovels, and their families believed they were being taken to a concentration camp or forced labor, but they were taken to the area of Sarakina and forced to dig their own mass grave.
Their relatives found their remains several days later and moved them to another grave. In 1960 the remains were exhumed but they could not be individually identified.
