In Belgium, the police began on Monday the exhumation of 17 bodies among the 262 victims of the Bois du Cazier mining disaster in 1956. The authorities hope to be able to return the remains of at least three of them to their families.
These are the 17 minors who could never be formally identified. Half of the victims of this tragedy were Italians. The process to finally inscribe a name on these 17 graves in the Marcinelle cemetery, in Charleroi, was launched by Michele Cicora, the son of one of these anonymous dead. Before his mother died, this Italian promised to bring back to the country the remains of his father, killed in the disaster.
Wood of Cazier.
August 8, 1956.
162 minors lose their lives.
136 are of Italian origin.#BoisDuCazier #Marcinelle pic.twitter.com/o5cUV0UotM– Jo 👀 (@JodyBau) August 8, 2021
A real investigation that begins
“We found his story really poignant,” explains Christian Decobecq, head of the disaster victim identification service (DVI) of the federal police. “We decided to help him. »Placed in zinc chests inside the coffins, the skeletons were well preserved, according to the first observations. The exhumations are expected to continue until at least Thursday, before the post-mortem exams phase.
It will then be a question of comparing bones and teeth with DNA samples taken from relatives. The experts will use descriptions obtained from families at the time and information kept in the archives of the museum, erected at the site of the disaster. “We have not found all the families,” notes Christian Decobecq. “Some miners had no descendants. “
“Tutti cadaveri”
At this point, besides the Cicora, two families (one Belgian and one Greek) are involved in the process. DNA samples in Italy and Greece were carried out with the assistance of Interpol. “This is a duty of remembrance,” adds the police chief. “These people came to earn a living but also contributed to the economic development of Belgium in the 1950s.”
The Bois du Cazier disaster is the worst in Belgian mining history. On the morning of August 8, 1956, a series of chain incidents caused a fire which quickly spread throughout the mine, where men sometimes penetrated more than 1,000 m underground. After two weeks of efforts, the last rescuers rose to the surface and one of them uttered two words that went around the world: “Tutti cadaveri. “
Only about ten minors survived. The tragedy left 262 dead, of twelve different nationalities, including 136 Italians. Ten years earlier, Italy had sent thousands of workers to Belgium under a labor-for-coal deal.
