The remains of 86 Jewish people sent to Nazi gas chambers in 1943 have been found at a forensic medicine institute in Strasbourg in France.

They were found by historian Raphael Toledano and included bodies that were dismembered and burnt and a jar of “skin fragments” from a gas chamber victim.

It is believed that after the victims were killed, their bodies were transported to the laboratory in Nazi-occupied Strasbourg where they were used by SS captain and anatomy professor August Hirt for experiments.

The Board of Deputies says “serious questions” need to be asked.

“This discovery raises serious questions about who knew about these remains and why they did not reveal this sooner. We would expect a prompt and full investigation in to these matters, and the remains of these victims to be accorded a respectful burial in accordance with Jewish law as soon as possible,” said a Board of Deputies spokesman.

Some of the bodies remained intact – preserved, according to Toledano by Camille Simonin, a forensics professor who was investigating Hirt. A letter written by Simonin after the concentration camps were liberated at the end of the war mentioned “samples taken in the course of judicial autopsies carried out on the Jewish victims of the Struthof gas chamber”.

Local authorities are reportedly planning to return the remains to the Jewish community of Strasbourg where they will be buried at the cemetery of Cronenbourg.

Hirt committed suicide in July 1945 before he could be tried for war crimes.