This week, some seventy years after the Holocaust, a death camp was uncovered in Sobibor, Poland, where about 250,000 Jews were exterminated at the hands of the Nazis.
Nazi Germany committed a great deal of resources attempting to cover up the atrocities they committed against six million Jews and others during the Holocaust, but Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the victims of the Holocaust in Jerusalem, announced the finding on Wednesday after an archaeological dig found the mass-exterminating gas chambers.
The Jerusalem Post described the brutal history behind the Nazi-occupied death camp in Poland and why it took so long to find its remains:
Some 250,000 Jews were murdered at Sobibor, but on October 14, 1943, about 600 prisoners revolted and briefly escaped. Between 100 and 120 prisoners survived the revolt, and 60 of those survived the war. After the camp uprising, the Nazis bulldozed the area and planted it over with pine trees to conceal their crimes.
“The discovery of the exact location of the gas chambers at the Sobibor Camp is a discovery of the utmost importance in Holocaust research,” said Dr. David Silberklang of the Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust research. “A small window has been open into their daily suffering,” he added.
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