Bid to halt work at mass grave site

A Jewish group asked the Ukrainian government to stop construction on the site of a grave containing the remains of an estimated 26,000 victims of the Holocaust.

The Jewish community in Odessa says a developer has begun building what it believes will be a shopping mall on the site. When construction workers began digging, they found bones, skulls and children’s toys, said Avrohom Wolf, chief rabbi for Odessa and southern Ukraine. He said the builder had removed all the remains it dug out and said he had no clue where to search for them. Wolf would not name the company, saying he hoped to find a solution to the controversy.

The victims were executed in the fall of 1941, shortly after German troops invaded the Soviet Union, according to Wolf. The plot of barren land not far from the city center was marked by several Jewish monuments but not officially labeled a cemetery.