German civilians exhume murdered Russian workers.

German civilians exhume murdered Russian workers. The bodies of Russian slave laborers, murdered by Germans at Essen before the city was taken by U.S. forces, are exhumed for now and decent burial. German civilians were forced to dig the bodies out of the mass of mud that formed their common grave. Essen, known as the arsonal of Germany, fell April 10, 1945, to the 17th U.S. Airborne Division after having been attacked by Allied air raids and artillery of the Ninth U.S. Army.