Cretan civilians executed by Nazis identified 83 years later thanks to their DNA

Eighteen civilians executed in Crete by the Nazis during World War II were identified 83 years later using DNA analysis by the Comparative Genomics Laboratory at the Research Foundation's Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology and technology – Hellas (FORTH).

The 18 male victims, aged 16 to 60, from the village of Adele, were executed on June 2, 1941 after the Battle of Crete by soldiers of the Third Reich on the orders of German paratrooper commander General Kurt Student.

The project's research director, Nikos Poulakakis, told Kathimerini that the Nazis gave the victims shovels and their families thought they were being taken to a concentration camp or forced labor, but instead they were taken in the Sarakina region and forced to dig their own mass grave.

Their relatives found their remains a few days later and transferred them to another grave. In 1960, the remains were exhumed but could not be individually identified.