Forensic Taphonomy: The Postmortem Fate of Human Remains

Ed William D Haglund, Marcella H Sorg

CRC Press, £72, pp 636

ISBN 0 849 39434 1

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On 5 March 1940 Stalin gave the order for the NKVD to execute prisoners of war captured during the combined German and Soviet occupation of Poland. In 1943, 4500 victims were discovered in mass graves in the Katyn Forrest, after the Germans had overrun Soviet territory. The Polish government in exile demanded a commission to investigate, and an international team of forensic investigators under German authority examined the victims. This investigation placed the blame …