Under the direction of American soldiers, German civilians exhume the bodies of prisoners from a mass grave 14 km. east of Zeitz. On June 18, 1945, the 7th U.S. Army, 69th Infantry Division was notified about a mass grave near Zeitz. The grave was discovered by a Dutch soldier who had been a prisoner for three years in the nearby labor camp of Troeglitz, a sub-camp of Buchenwald. The 400 victims exhumed from the grave were also prisoners of Troeglitz, which provided labor for Brabag (Braunkohle-Benzin AG). All the victims were male and without identification, except for a few with numbers on their tattered and partly decayed clothing. Civilians from the area claimed that the bodies were buried just before the arrival of U.S. Army troops.