From the mass grave to the Jewish cemetery: transfers of bodies after the Holocaust1

One characteristic of the Holocaust is the absence of the victims’ bodies. In fact, this very absence is communicated through the term ‘Holocaust’. However, their bodies – the number of which remains unknown – were not destroyed. Some bodies of Jewish victims, most of whom were killed at the very start or at the very end of the Holocaust, were not burned. Rather, they were buried in mass graves. The purpose of this article is to describe the efforts of survivors to locate, exhume and identify these bodies and to move them to a Jewish cemetery. To describe and analyse this phenomenon, we use a selection of Memorbikher, some of which have already been described by Gabriel Finder, and a few articles from secondary literature sources. In particular, we use many cases identified during our research, such as seventy examples of exhumations described in the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation’s testimonies. The article examines the conditions surrounding the exhumations, and in particular the chain of custody for human remains. It then discusses whether or not these exhumations can be considered unique and examines their ability to symbolically replace collective burials, which were impossible due to the absence of physical bodies.