For several years, a story has been circulating on the Internet about a couple of Polish fishermen who caught a huge fish that allegedly ate an SS officer during World War II. We checked whether such a catch actually took place.
If you believe publications on the Internet, then it happened in the Polish city of Krosno-Odzansk. There, two men allegedly caught a catfish weighing under 200 kg and measuring about 4 m, in the belly of which they found human bones and a metal badge with Nazi symbols. According to the examination, the remains belong to a soldier who served on the side of Germany in World War II. Catfish was supposedly about 100 years old.
Similar notes appeared in the media back in April 2015. For example, they are still published on the websites of TV channels "Star" And "Ren-TV", V "Petersburg Diary" - the official publication of the government of St. Petersburg, in RIA News Crimea", as well as on the portal "Checheninfo". But most of all, the story spread across social networks, where the number of posts on this topic amounts to at least several hundred until 2022. For example, there are posts on a Twitter account #MDK for April 20, 2015 and in a tiny community on VKontakte for January 9, 2022. In addition, a video with this story and the TV-3 channel logo blurred out is widely distributed on VKontakte. So, in the public “Book of Records (+Facts)” it collected over 5,300 likes and 256,000 views. The video is also available in groups "IGGS Hunting, fishing, mushrooms Udmurtia" And Best Video, but the results there are more modest: 19,000 and 71,000 views, respectively.
Some media and posts referred to the World News Daily Report (WNDR) website, where the news came out back on April 10, 2015. There, the material is accompanied by three photographs: the first shows a fish carcass and a fisherman holding its tail fin, the second shows a metal badge in the form of the coat of arms of Nazi Germany, and the third shows fragments of a human skeleton. The captions indicate that the badge from the belly turned out to be a German SS eagle cockade from the times of Nazi Germany and that it was usually worn on a ceremonial cap. Under the photograph of human remains it is written that more than a dozen half-digested bone fragments were found and that these were mainly parts of the human neck and skull.
Below is our translation of the main part of the article:
On April 6, Alfons Brzozowski and Marek Zdanowicz were fishing near the confluence of the Odra River and the Bubr River and were stunned by their catch: a giant catfish measuring 12 feet (3.68 m) and weighing 413 pounds (187.5 kg).
But their joy quickly turned into bewilderment and then disgust when the animal's belly was opened. In addition to a large amount of underdigested fish, they found an old metal insignia from the times of Nazi Germany, as well as dozens of fragments of human bones.
The fishermen immediately contacted the police, whose officers began an investigation to determine the origin of the remains.
The examination allowed authorities to determine that the bones belonged to a Caucasian man in his 20s who died many decades ago. In turn, biologists who examined the fish confirmed that this huge specimen was likely between 90 and 110 years old, making it one of the oldest catfish ever found.
Further analysis of the finds and bones revealed that they had indeed been swallowed by fish in the 1940s and that they were most likely the remains of a German SS officer killed during the occupation of Poland. However, the forensic team that conducted the study was unable to determine whether the man was actually killed by the catfish or whether he was already dead when the animal ate him.
“We only have a few bone fragments and most of the skeleton is missing,” said Dr. Patek Loiko. “We don’t have enough evidence to determine the cause of death, but we are almost certain that the bones belong to a German SS officer.” An SS cockade in the shape of an eagle was found, as well as two buttons and a cufflink from the same shape. “Unfortunately, it appears that over the years, many of the bones and artifacts were naturally expelled by the fish, and the DNA in the bones was damaged by stomach juices, so formal identification is currently impossible.”
However, this whole story is fiction. The fact is that the WNDR website specializes in publishing fake news. This is indicated both in the publication’s slogan: “Where facts don’t matter” (“Here facts don’t matter”), and in disclaimer: “WNDR takes full responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictitious nature of their content. All characters appearing in the texts on this site are entirely fictitious, even if based on real people, and any resemblance between them and any person, living, dead or undead, is a mere miracle.”
This is not the first time we talk about the inventions of this satirical portal. For example, we have already received fables O pensioner, who taught dozens of cats to steal jewelry, about the old lady, who gave birth at 101 years old, about the girl, arrested for making thousands of calls to her ex, and about a married couple, in which the husband pretended to be deaf for many years.
And all three photographs mentioned above accompanying the World News Daily Report are real, but they illustrate other stories. So, the photo with a fisherman and a huge catfish was actually taken in February 2015 in the Po Delta in Italy. Fish caught Dino Ferrari, and his twin brother Dario helped him. According to Sportex Italia (Ferrari's sponsor company), the catfish weighed 280 pounds (127 kg) and was 8 feet, 9 inches (2.67 m) long. In addition to the photo, there is also a video recording of this fish.
The bones from the other photo do not date back to the Second World War, that is, to the middle of the 20th century, but to the beginning of the 17th century. The photograph shows the remains of a girl approximately 14 years old. found in 2012 at an excavation site at Fort James in Jamestown, Virginia. According to scientists from the Smithsonian National Museum, the skull and lower leg bones show telltale signs of cannibalism at the fort during the famine winter of 1609–10, a period during which about 80% of the colonists died. The girl's cause of death could not be determined, since the remains make up less than 10% of the complete skeleton.
And a photo with Nazi symbols from the Second World War has been circulating on the Internet since at least 2009. It was then stated that the icon exhibited auctioned by Dotta Auction Co. Inc. in the town of Bushkill.
Thus, the media and some social network users fell for the satirical publication and have been spreading the fictitious story for several years now.
Image: Sportex Italia. Source
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