The issue of potentially finding human remains was brought to the city’s attention before road construction began; Some 700 people are buried at the site.

The excavation of mass grave of Holocaust victims in Lithuania was halted following an appeal by the Jewish community and the country’s chief rabbi.

On Wednesday, Martynas Siurkus, a municipal official in Siauliai, announced that the work would be halted “until the appropriate respect is guaranteed for the human remains of the people murdered and buried in the mass grave.”

Rabbi Chaim Burshtein had issued a statement on Tuesday calling for a halt to the removal of the bones in the mass grave discovered earlier in the week during road construction work in Siauliai, a city in

northern Lithuania located 120 miles northwest of Vilnius, the nation’s capital.

“Please halt all disturbance and moving of these human remains,” Burshtein wrote in reference to the work, which he called “the humiliation of the excavation of the human remains of hundreds of people

from the Holocaust-era mass-murder grave uncovered this week.”

Lithuanian Jewish Community chair Faina Kukliansky in a statement issued Thursday praised the municipal government for its cooperation with the Jewish community and for “responding quickly and helping solve the problem.”

Kukliansky said that the issue of potentially finding human remains was brought to the city’s attention before the road construction began.

Lithuania's Jews request halt to WWII mass grave excavation over 'humiliating' methods - Diaspora - Jerusalem Post