The remains of six unknown Jews, including a child, murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau during the Holocaust were finally buried at a Jewish cemetery today after spending decades in a museum archive.
London's Imperial War Museum (IWM) made the decision to return them to the Jewish community after deciding it was 'no longer right' to hold them after they were sent by an anonymous donor 22 years ago.
The museum initially declined the remains, believed to have been collected by a Holocaust survivor, but the mysterious collector sent them anyway.
The hoards of survivors, around 50 of the 1,200 people in attendance, and well-wishers came off the back of an appeal for people to attend the service of the unknown people in the first public funeral for Shoah victims in Britain.
A pathologist surveyed the bones and ash in 2005 but was unable to identify any of them, or their gender.
Coffin with remains of six unknown Jews murdered at Auschwitz, is buried at United Synagogue's New Cemetery in Bushey
The ashes and bone fragments were buried at the United Synagogue's New Cemetery in Bushey, Hertfordshire, at 11am after a symbolic service.
'We don't know who you are, we don't know if you're male or female, we don't know which country you're from, but one thing we do know; you were a Jewish and brutally murdered,' Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis began by saying.
'You were let down badly at the time and now your remains have somehow come to the UK. And we have the opportunity of granting you the dignity and honour of a funeral service.'
IWM houses facilities to store human tissue which it is legally able to do, and said it 'cared' for the six people for the last 22 years.
They were originally sent to IWM from Auschwitz in 1997 with a number of other items relating to the Holocaust.
The museum had the ashes scientifically examined and discovered they were those of five adults and a child.
'Something like this is very unusual for us,' said James Bulgin from the IWM.
'It's not something we'd choose to hold here, it's not something we'd ever choose to display, we wouldn't use it for research, so there's no reason to hold it indefinitely. But the decision, to know what was the right thing to do, was very difficult.
'We have no idea who these people were, but they were human beings with hopes and dreams and lives of their own and what happened to them was nothing to do with them, they had no control over it.
A group of survivors of the Holocaust throw earth onto the coffin with the remains of six unknown Jews murdered at Auschwitz
'The least we can do is afford them the utmost dignity and respect that they were never given in life.'
