Grave robbers targetting fallen of Second World War for memorabilia

No-one will ever know who the man who fell at the Seelow Heights outside of Berlin was. Denied an honourable burial as five million men of the Red Army marched on the Nazi capital in 1945, he was disinterred last month to be plundered of his papers and army insignia.

• A priest blesses the remains of 366 German soldiers who died fighting for the Poznan Citadel in the Second World War, during a mass burial in Poland Picture: Reuters

He fell victim the first time to a Soviet shell blast; the second to vultures who are at work plundering the graves of fallen warriors like him for money.

Thousands of German and Russian corpses recovered from the battlefields around Berlin have been stripped of medals, papers, rank badges, ID discs and other items to feed a worldwide multi-million pound military souvenir industry.

Increasingly, when the soldiers are discovered by German war grave registration searchers seeking to give them a proper burial, they bear the marks of violation.

Nazi-era insignia and papers are much sought after. Medals, particularly Iron Crosses, are torn off to fetch up to 500 a time.

Photos of loved ones, pay books and other personal items are stolen. Even boots are taken to feed the souvenir trade.

On average, one body a day is found in Germany of a Soviet or Nazi soldier - more than 10,000 in the past two decades since reunification.

Joachim Kozlowski works for the German Military Grave Registration Service, a private foundation which gets some government money but exists largely on donations. He knows he is locked in a race against grave robbers. "They destroy the identity and the dignity of these men," said Mr Kozlowski.

Recently he came across corpses of men, four among the 40,0000 who died in the desperate defence in the forests of Brandenburg outside Berlin.

"They were the victims of the Nazis who conscripted them and now victims of a crime perpetrated by grave robbers," he said.

The ransacking of wartime graves was first highlighted in Russia several years ago, with the mass burial pits of German soldiers dug-up to find relics for resale.

In Germany, Mr Kozlowski and his teams just try to give the dead as much dignity as they can when the bones are re-buried.

He was in the forests at the weekend. "These peaceful forest acres (are] nothing but a gigantic graveyard. Not only German soldiers lie here, but Soviets too."

Fritz Kirchmeier, the chief spokesman for the group, said poverty drives many of the graverobbers to their grim task.

He said: "It is an easy way of making money, but that shouldn't excuse them. They operate mostly in the east; we have had none of this in western German battle areas where the British and Americans fought.

"They are well organised and well equipped. They arm themselves with metal detectors and battlefield maps. They look for the undulations in the land that tell them trench lines or bunkers were once there, or where bodies might have been buried in a hurry."

He added: "They look for things that don't rot - say the SS flashes on a trooper's collar which have silver thread and are highly prized. And of course, medals like the Iron Cross."

The German Military Grave Registration Service last year discovered the remains of, and gave dignified burials to, the remains of 42,000 German servicemen, most of them found in Russia and Poland.