Romanian medical students have purchased bones of Holocaust victims, the Rabbinical Centre of Europe (RCE) has learned. An American Jewish medical student currently in the northeastern Romanian town of Iasi has informed the RCE that the students have purchased human bones and skulls for research purposes from a mass grave of Holocaust victims in Podu Iloaiei. Over a thousand Jews who died from thirst and exhaustion on a death train were buried there in 1941.

Medical students at the university in nearby Iasi said that each bone costs $40, which is paid to the cemetery custodian. The email explains that the price includes digging the grave and “cleaning them up nicely.”