Locals are planning a memorial site to commemorate the dead.Īfter the war, many never heard again from their sons, fathers or brothers, who had been sent to the Oderbruch region to stop the Red Army advance. Today, the site where the castle once stood is covered in grass and trees. In these tumultuous times, dead soldiers of both were left lying in trenches and ditches, on the freezing ground, some were haphazardly buried. Klessin Castle was reduced to rubble, and the village was flattened. ![]() Both professionals and amateurs have helped excavate the remains in Klessin Image: picture-alliance/dpa/P. To keep up the pressure, the Wehrmacht's high command insisted that "if Klessin is lost, Berlin is lost." Increasingly desperate German soldiers holed up in the local castle, but, eventually, surrendered to the Red Army. The village of Klessin saw the heaviest clashes. Read more: The German military and its troubled tradition The Wehrmacht, Nazi Germany's armed forces, put up fierce resistance and fighting raged for weeks. It was here, in the winter of 1945, that the Red Army crossed river Oder to begin its advance on the German capital, Berlin. Nobody knows how many fallen soldiers still lie buried in the soil in and around the village of Klessin. The volunteers recover not only the insignia of the deceased, but also their wedding bands and signet rings, which can help identify them later on. Not long after, the excavation team discovers the remains of four further soldiers nearby. WerkhäuserĪbove the pit, a drone hovers in the air, photographing the site. Schulz says "these are German soldiers, I can tell by their helmets and insignia." Jutta Höhn didn't expect to find human remains right next to her house Image: DW/N. He's one of the group's excavation experts and tasked with documenting the find. ![]() Inside the pit, dressed in orange overalls, Werner Schulz of the Association for the Recovery of the Fallen in Eastern Europe (VBGO) is leaning over the remains, carefully brushing soil from bones. "So many," she says, with a surprised look. Neither she nor her son was expecting such a find. Now, Höhn is peering down into a large pit on her property, with the skulls, bones and fragments of helmets and boots of eight soldiers clearly visible. But, as he removed one layer of soil after the next, he made an unexpected find: WWII-era ammunition, and human remains. Jutta Höhn's son only wanted to build a driveway for their house in the German village of Klessin, near the Polish border. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
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