Prosecutors in Poland are investigating what they believe to be a mass grave near the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz.
On the banks of the Sola River, a local homeowner uncovered a total of 12 human skulls as well as a handful of bones. The water level in the river that runs through Oswiecim was unusually low when the bones were discovered, according to Poland's Onet portal.
Prosecutors and police are investigating if the bones discovered are linked to the adjacent old extermination camp.
The Institute of National Remembrance in Poland, which probes crimes committed during the communist era as well as crimes committed during WWII, has also been informed.
The press office at the Auschwitz Museum appears to be aware of the find. The region where the burial site was discovered, however, is outside the museum's borders and administrative authority, they claimed.
More than 1.1 million people were slaughtered at Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp in then-German-occupied Poland, during WWII. It was one of the Nazi regimes with more than 40 camps and subcamps.
Although Jews made up the majority of the camp's victims, Poles, German political prisoners, Russian soldiers, Roma, and Sinti are also known to have perished there.
The announcement comes only days after the last remaining Soviet soldier who assisted in the camp's liberation died. When the Red Army conquered Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, David Dushman assisted in the flattening of one of the camp's barriers in order to free captives. He died on Saturday at the age of 98 in Munich.
