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Nazi-era skeletons show signs of violence

Vienna - Hundreds of skeletons have been exhumed from a Nazi-era graveyard suspected of holding mentally or physically disabled victims of mass killings and many had bones apparently broken by hospital personnel, an anthropologist said on Monday.

George McGlynn told reporters that about a third of the 221 skeletons have been examined and half of those - about 35 - had broken ribs. Others had broken noses or collarbones.

It had long been suspected that the remains - dug up over the past seven months from a disused hospital cemetery in the Tyrollean city of Hall, east of Innsbruck - were those of people killed by the Nazis because of physical or mental disabilities.

McGlynn said it could still not be confirmed whether they were killed, although the fractures were likely the result of violence they suffered while in the hospital. “I doubt they resulted directly in death,” he said....

Read entire article at IOL SciTech