A man, whose body was found after the Second World War in a mass grave, next to one of the worst Nazi prisons in the Netherlands, has finally been identified, 77 years after his death.
After a long investigation, worthy of a detective novel, a DNA comparison of the remains of the victim with that of a living relative allowed this formal identification, according to a foundation dedicated to the search for the war disappeared. .
The man is a certain Cornelis Pieter "Kees" Kreukniet, aged fifty at the time of his death, a resistance fighter who participated in the printing of an underground newspaper distributed in The Hague, announced this Saturday the investigators.
He had been arrested in October 1944 by the Germans, following an error in the delivery of the paper necessary for the newspaper which had alerted their secret services.
A great-nephew found
The inquest established that he was shot by firing squad before being thrown into the mass grave outside Scheveningen prison in The Hague.
His body had been discovered in 1947 along with eight others and all had been buried as unknown.
But the foundation, chaired by Ronald Klomp, together with the army service responsible for identifying the bodies, followed the trail, starting from the remains of clothing to go up to a store near the place of residence of the victim, studying the prison registers - which reported that this prisoner had died of pneumonia.
Thanks to his clothes and dental records, the army ended up finding a relative, a great-nephew, and carrying out DNA tests.
"I'm happy to finally know what really happened to my great-uncle," said close friend Joop Kreukniet.
And to add: “This is not a positive story.
But it's still a relief to know what really happened.
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Second World War
Nazism
Nazi
Netherlands