The Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) started work on unearthing the remains on Monday.
“There could be over 80 bodies of people who died or were murdered in the prison on Kurkowa street,” professor Krzysztof Szwagrzyk, who is supervising the work for IPN, said.
“We have confirmed that in the 14th sector of the cemetery there is a row of gravestones dating from 1946. We have also found the remains of over a dozen other people in mass shallow graves, probably the victims of an epidemic that occurred in Gdańsk in 1945-1946. We can’t imagine how it would have been possible to bury these people in this way otherwise,” Szwagrzyk said.
Archaeologists are searching for the remains of victims of the Stalinist terror in Poland. For several decades their place of burial had been kept secret.
IPN found remains in Gdańsk. Photo: PAP/Adam Warżawa
After 1948 and until at least Stalin's death in 1953, Poland's communist regime deployed many of the more doctrinaire and vicious aspects of the Stalinist terror then prevalent in the Soviet Union, including mass political arrests, show trials and executions.
Many from the Polish underground army, Home Army (AK), which fought alongside the Red Army in the Second World War, were victims of the terror.
"We are finding people buried here in crates. We found traces of clothing and in one case also shoes. On Wednesday we found a medal with a Polish inscription. Now we are starting work in more places. We expect these to be victims from the period 1948-1949. The work is hard," Szwagrzyk continued.
People who had died at the prison on Kurkowa street were buried in the Garnizonowy cemetery from mid-1946 until the start of the 1950s.
The first stage of the research into the period was finished in September 2014.
IPN staff discovered then, amongst other things, the skeleton of a young woman with a bullet hole in her skull. Genetic research confirmed these to be the remains of a nurse called Danuta Siedzikówna, aka "Inka", who records show had been sentenced to death and shot at the prison on Kurkowa street.
The IPN is also looking for the bodies of victims of communist crimes at the Bródno cemetery in Warsaw.
The IPN was set up in 1999 to conduct historical research into the crimes of the communist and Nazi periods in Poland. (jh)