A team of Israeli divers will search Hungary’s Danube River for the remains of Holocaust victims, with the help of the Hungarian government, it has been revealed.
Sándor Pintér, the Hungarian interior minister agreed to allow rescuers from the Zaka emergency service and victim identification organization to scour the river for bones of Jews who were shot and thrown into the waters of the Danube in Budapest during the Holocaust.
According to The Times of Israel, Pintér also agreed to provide extra assistance for the project from the Hungarian government.
Thousands of Jews were murdered on the banks of the River Danube by members of the Hungarian Nazi-allied Arrow Cross Party in 1944. The victims were among 600,000 Hungarian Jews wiped out during the Holocaust.
In 2011, human remains were discovered during construction work on the Margaret Bridge overlooking the Danube. Forensic examinations of the fragments indicated they belonged to more than 20 different people, including women and children, who had probably died during the war.
DNA tests revealed that at least nine of 15 samples from the bones were almost certainly Ashkenazi Jews from Europe, while the other six could also be of that ethnicity.
With mounting evidence that the bones were probably those of Jewish victims of the Arrow Cross, the dives have been approved to look for more victims.