The mysterious remains of a World War Two German soldier with a rosary in his mouth have been found on a Polish island.
Researchers from the Latebra Foundation, an organization dedicated to recovering and protecting lost works of art, announced on Wednesday last week that they made the “extraordinary” discovery during excavation work on Sobieszewo Island near the northern Polish city of Gdańsk.
The area around the Baltic Sea island saw military activity in the closing months of the war, and dog tags uncovered with the remains indicate the soldier served in a reserve infantry company within the Wehrmacht, the armed forces of Nazi Germany.
Although the foundation said improvised graves were common in the final months of the war – with bodies often found in forests or along roads reflecting the fact that the realities of combat meant soldiers could not get a proper burial – experts can only theorize why the rosary was placed in the soldier’s mouth.
In a social media post about the “moving” find, the foundation said: “This gesture was not part of an official military or church ritual. It most likely represented a combination of folk beliefs and the realities of war. Slavic traditions included practices designed to protect the living from the ‘return’ of the deceased.”
It said that placing the rosary in the soldier’s mouth could have had various meanings. It could have been intended to “symbolically ‘close’ the body” or it could have been a “symbolic ‘conversion’ of the enemy at the last minute.”
It may have also been an “act of irony or bitter mockery” or simply a “sincere attempt to ensure peace of mind and protection from the ‘spirit of the enemy’”.
Dr. Agnieszka Bednarek-Bohdziewicz from the University of Gdańsk told Polish Press Agency that the German army often placed dog tags in the mouths of dead soldiers to help with identification of bodies during later exhumations.
“In this case, however, the rosary is not an administrative item, but a personal and symbolic one. It is a ‘spiritual dog tag’ that carries a request for salvation instead of a unit number,” she added.
In its social media post, the Latebra Foundation concluded: “This find demonstrates how faith, fear and ancient traditions intertwined in wartime conditions. Each such object is more than just an artifact – it is a testament to human emotions and decisions made in extreme circumstances.”