A University of Arizona project could help identify the remains of thousands of people believed to be World War II Holocaust victims unearthed from a mass grave in Ukraine. The UA DNA Shoah Project is building a reference database of DNA collected from Holocaust survivors and their relatives, said Matthew Kaplan, laboratory coordinator for the project.

The resource could help forensics experts in Ukraine, and at other sites where graves are found containing dated remains, identify victims, he said."You are talking about millions of people who disappeared and were murdered," Kaplan said. "This is not just for a day like today, but for all the days like today that will come over the century."

The grave was found by chance last month when workers were laying gas pipelines in the village of Gvozdavka-1, about 110 miles northwest of the Black Sea port city of Odessa, said Roman Shvartsman, a spokesman for the regional Jewish community.Hundreds of mass graves exist in Ukraine, and many have not yet been discovered, said Holocaust expert Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

The DNA Shoah group has collected DNA samples from more than 500 people linked to the Holocaust, said Lynn Davis, an information specialist with the project. Forensics experts can obtain workable DNA from bones, even those buried for more than 60 years, Kaplan said. But unlike fingerprints, which can be used to identify people, no widespread reference base for identifying Holocaust victims using DNA exists, Kaplan said.The nonprofit Shoah Project will provide such a database, he said.

DNA samples from Holocaust survivors, as well as close relatives such as children and grandchildren, can help make identifying victims found in Ukraine a solvable problem, Kaplan said. The project will also be able to help reunite Holocaust survivors with lost relatives, he said. "It will be used for the purpose of identifying remains of this nature, and also the potential still exists to unite siblings and orphans that were separated during the Holocaust," Kaplan said.