Dordrecht councilor Marc Merx apologized on Wednesday for a morbid matter. He announced that in the past graves were opened at the Essenhof municipal cemetery without a permit from the mayor and without permission from the relatives.
On the authority of a predecessor of Merx, officials had to come up with a solution to a difficult problem: there were bodies that did not decay and therefore could not be removed after the specified period of ‘grave rest’, fifteen years, had expired.
The cemetery struggled for space. For this reason, concrete burial vaults have been installed since this century, each with room for four deceased persons. These burial vaults would be easier to clear than the usual sand graves. That would be financially more beneficial in the long term and provide more capacity. The burial vaults would also ensure faster decomposition.
The latter turned out not to be the case. On the contrary.
For internal use
Councilor Merx (including city management and green maintenance, VVD) says over the telephone that a document from 2013 surfaced at the beginning of this year, ‘Research into the digestion of corpses in general cellar graves at the Essenhof cemetery in Dordrecht. Note for internal use.’ It described what had happened and why.
That year, the cemetery’s management wanted to know whether the dissolution was indeed happening faster. That is why the coffins in two crypts were opened. It then became clear that the bodies of the deceased were not in a state of decomposition, but had retained a solid, waxy form known as saponification. The cause: too little oxygen entered the concrete burial vaults for decomposition to take place. This is a problem for the cemetery because the graves cannot be cleared if the bodies have not decayed. And that is necessary to be able to use the limited space of Essenhof for new graves.
At that moment, Essenhof’s management decided to experiment with the bodies resting there
At that moment, the management of Essenhof decided, with the approval of the then councilor, to experiment with the bodies resting there – “and that should never have happened,” says Merx. “Substances were sprayed over eight corpses in two crypts,” and the four coffins of a third crypt were opened to photograph the bodies. “As a control group.”
In total, the peace of thirty deceased persons was disturbed in this way four times: the graves were opened once every six months to see whether the administered substance had any effect. “But the stuff has not produced any results,” says Merx.
In the meantime, some of the employees who had contributed to this developed health problems. Opening the graves (“obviously outside the opening hours of the cemetery,” according to the 2013 note) was not only “not carried out responsibly in terms of occupational health and safety,” says Merx, but it also still weighs heavily on the minds of the officials involved. “They are really not to blame,” Merx emphasizes. “They have been taking care of the greenery and the graves for years, they are committed to what the Essenhof stands for.”
Grave desecration
When the internal note – kept secret at the time so as not to cause social unrest, says Merx – was found, the current council of Mayor and Aldermen immediately started an investigation, which was carried out by agency TwynstraGudde.
The council also informed the Public Prosecution Service, because grave desecration can be a criminal offense. The Public Prosecution Service gave the municipality the opportunity to first conduct its own investigation. According to Merx, the Public Prosecution Service does not yet see any reason to conduct a criminal investigation in the results. The same applies to the Labor Inspectorate, which was informed out of concerns for the well-being of the employees involved.
They did not want the image of their loved one to be replaced by the image of a decomposing body
On Wednesday, Merx had a meeting with the relatives of some of the deceased whose graves had been opened. Relatives of four deceased showed up. The largest group that had approached the municipality simply did not want to know, says Merx. “They did not want the image of their loved one to be replaced by the image of a decomposing body.”
He found the meeting with the relatives confrontational. “These people have entrusted their loved ones to our cemetery in good faith, so that they would find a worthy resting place there. That trust has been violated.” The municipality offers experts in grief counseling for those who want it.
The complaints of the employees, some of whom still work for the municipality, are investigated by TNO to check whether their complaints are related to their work at the time. In addition, the municipality is calling on the help of scientists to see how the problem of saponified bodies can be solved.
Because it is not only burial vaults that make dissolution difficult, says Merx. There are also other circumstances that cause an oxygen shortage: “Deceased people who are buried in synthetic clothing or the lining of a coffin. The composition of the soil in which burial takes place can also play a role.”
Even though his predecessor’s actions were wrong, the problem he was trying to solve is real and current: the cemetery has limited space and graves need to be cleared.
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