Romania students suspected of buying bones from Holocaust-era mass grave

A prominent European Jewish organization has found evidence to suggest that Romanian medical students have been buying bones from a mass grave of Holocaust victims.

Each bone is believed to have been sold for $40.

The Rabbinical Center of Europe is investigating whether students from the University of Iasi had been purchasing parts of skeletons from a Jewish mass grave near the north-eastern Romanian university town.

The probe began this month following a complaint to the Center by an American Jew living in Iasi. According to his testimony, local medical students had been purchasing human bones and skulls for research purposes from a mass grave of Holocaust victims located in Podu Iloaiei, a nearby village.

The man said that Romanian medical students explained that the $40 fee was paid to the custodian of a commemorative cemetery built around the mass grave. For that price the bones came "cleaned up," the student reportedly said.

During the Holocaust two death trains left Isai. One of them stopped in Podu Iloaiei, where Nazi collaborators buried 1,194 Jews who had died along the way from thirst and heat exhaustion.

"From the evidence we have gathered so far, it is clear that something unbecoming and vile has been going on at Podu Iloaiei," Asher Gold, the Center's spokesperson told Haaretz on Tuesday. "These Jews were murdered by Nazis and their Romanian collaborators. I would have expected that at least their bones would be allowed to find some peace."

An Israeli medical student from Iasi who helped with the investigation told Haaretz that he had seen a skull being used as a learning aide by other students, but said he could not confirm that it came from the mass grave. "I believe bones are important for anatomy students and it seems they're willing to pay for them," he said.

To investigate whether Jewish bones were being sold, the Center used the services of Israeli medical students attending the University of Iasi. The institution's student body includes some 50 Jews, most of them from Israel.

On June 2, the Center sent two students to Podu Iloaiei to investigate. Upon reaching the cemetery, the foreign students posed as Romanians and asked the female caretaker of the cemetery whether they could purchase a number of bones.

In the ensuing discussion - which was recorded and later filed in the Center's offices - the woman reportedly referred the visitors to her husband to arrange the final details of the transaction.

A number of Jewish medical students at the Popa medical school in Iasi confirmed to the Center that notices concerning the sale of human bones and skulls have been circulating on campus. Most universities use plastic bone replicas.

The Rabbinical Center of Europe, a Brussels-based organization which functions as an umbrella group for European Jewry, said that it had no proof the alleged sale of bones was connected to the university's institutions.

Gold, the Center's spokesperson, said no criminal complaint has been filed yet on the matter, as the legal aspect is still being reviewed. The organization's EU representative plans to bring the subject up during a planned meeting on Thursday with Romania's ambassador to the Union.

"We were stunned to learn of these allegations," said Rabbi Arye Goldberg, the Center's deputy director. "We immediately set out to investigate before taking matters further. The results have left us deeply concerned and we will be aggressively pursuing this matter further. No human remains deserve to be used in such experimental manner. The memory of those who perished deserve to be preserved in a proper and dignified manner."