Mass grave in Germany may hold Anne Frank

BERLIN: A mass grave discovered near a Nazi concentration camp in Germany may contain remains of the Jewish wartime diarist Anne Frank who died in 1945.

The mass grave was found by Dutch researchers near the site of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp that was liberated 70 years ago on April 15, 1945.

Frank, who hid with her family in an attic in Amsterdam before being caught by the Nazis, died in the camp aged 15.

She was buried with her elder sister Margot at an unknown location, 'The Sunday Times' reported.

Paul Verschure, a Dutch researcher looking for the remains of his grandfather, has found what could be the prisoners' final resting place after speaking to survivors of the concentration camp to help pinpoint the burial site.

"One of the surviving inmates gave me a map which indicated where my grandfather was buried," Verschure told the Dutch television programme Nieuwsuur.

The camp's buildings were infested with typhus and diphtheria and the British soldiers who liberated it had to burn the site to the ground - which added to the difficulty of locating the grave.

This month it was identified in the middle of a large meadow at the end of the former main road of the camp, which is now a memorial site.

More than 70,000 people are believed to have died between 1940 and 1945 in the camp in what is now Lower Saxony.

Frank, who chronicled her experiences of hiding from the Nazis in her diary, died of typhus during an outbreak in March 1945.