Remains of Jewish gas chamber victims found at Strasbourg Forensic Institute

The remains of Jewish victims of Nazi anatomist August Hirt have been discovered at the Forensic Institute of Strasbourg, the office of the French city's mayor said this weekend.

They are the remains of victims mostly brought from other concentration camps to be killed at the Natzweiler-Struthof camp, which is situated 60 km south west of Strasbourg.

Natzweiler-Struthof was the only concentration camp built on what is now French territory.

The discovery follows research by Dr. Raphael Toledano, author of several works on what happened to the bodies of victims brought to the Institute during the Second World War. With the support of its current director, Dr. Toledano was able to identify, on July 9, several remains preserved in a jar and test tubes.

A statement from the Mayor's office said "skin fragments of a victim of the gas chamber" and "intestinal and stomach contents as well as an identification tag used in the incineration of bodies" were found to belong to some of the 86 victims of a pseudo-scientific collection of "Jewish skeletons" initiated by Hirt, who was chairman of what was then the Reich University in Strasbourg.

The unidentified remains were in the Institute's collection, which was closed to the public. "The labels identify each piece with precision and include a serial number - 107969 - which matches the number tattooed on the forearm of an inmate of Auschwitz concentration camp, Menachem Taffel," the statement continued. The mayor's office said the identification number has been confirmed according to the archives of Auschwitz.

Dr. Toledano had previously come across a letter dated 1952 from former Professor of Forensic Medicine of Strasbourg, Camille Simonin, which mentioned jars containing samples taken during the forensic autopsies performed on Jewish victims of the Struthof gas chamber.

The now identified remains were part of those kept by Professor Simonin after he conducted autopsies at the request of the military authorities to establish how the 86 victims had been killed.

They will now be handed over to the Jewish Community of Strasbourg for proper burial and join the remains of other victims buried in the aftermath of the war in the Jewish cemetery at Cronenbourg.

The existence of the remains at the Forensic Institute, which had been refuted by many in the scientific community as well as by Strasbourg officials, became the subject of intense controversy in January after the publication of a book by doctor and writer Michel Cymes.

In the book "Hippocrate aux enfers" (Hippocrates in Hell) Cymes maintained that the Strasbourg Forensic Institute still housed anatomical sections of the victims of August Hirt.

At a commemorative visit to Natzweiler-Struthof in April, as part of the 70th anniversary of the Liberation of France, French President Francois Hollande unveiled two memorial plaques for the 86 Jewish victims gassed in August 1943 in order to furnish Hirt's collection of skeletons.