Polish authorities found human remains of victims of post-war communist repression on the land now occupied by a housing development in central Warsaw.

The exhumations will continue this Wednesday, according to what the vice-president of the Institute for Polish Historical Memory, Krzystof Szwagrzyk, told the press, who stated that, since the discovery of the first human remains last Monday, the conclusion has been reached that the total number “is very large”.

On the site of Calle 11 de Noviembre where several blocks of flats built in the 1990s now stand, was the detention and torture center known as “Toledo”, where political prisoners were interrogated and executed under the government. Polish communist between 1945 and 1956.

“Right under the windows of this beautiful and modern housing estate lies the evidence of Stalinist crimes.. History is alive in this place,” said Professor Szwagrzyk, who regretted that the investigations in that place have begun, in his opinion, “decades late.”

“30 years ago we found here the remains of more than 30 people who were murdered in that prison and buried in its vicinity.. Today, in just a few minutes of excavation, we have found more fragments of human remains,” said the researcher.

Professor Szwagrzyk stressed that “the prison that was here was one of the harshest in all of Poland, death sentences were carried out here against soldiers, members of the Resistance, many of them young people”, and in most cases they were buried outside the walls”.

Although, according to historians, it will be impossible to identify all the victims whose remains are found, “it is only a matter of time before the identity of some can be determined and then we will contact their relatives,” Szwagrzyk explained.

According to the Polish Institute for Historical Memory, at the end of World War II about 2,500 people were buried in mass graves throughout Warsaw and only about 400 have been exhumed so far.