A forensic archaeologist has unearthed fresh evidence to prove the existence of mass graves at the Nazi death camp Treblinka.
Some 800,000 Jews were killed at the site, in north east Poland, during the Second World War but a lack of physical evidence at the site has been exploited by Holocaust deniers.
British forensic archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls has now undertaken the first co-ordinated scientific attempt to locate the graves, according to an interview in the Radio Times.
As Jewish religious law forbids disturbing burial sites, she and her team from the University of Birmingham have used “ground-penetrating radar”.
Her work at the site, where the Nazis tried to destroy all traces of industrial-scale killing, is being followed in forthcoming Radio 4 documentary The Hidden Graves Of The Holocaust.
The programme’s presenter, Jonathan Charles, a former BBC foreign correspondent, wrote in the Radio Times that the ground-penetrating radar had also discovered the foundations of buildings and that two are likely to have been gas chambers.
Sturdy Colls said: “All the history books state that Treblinka was destroyed by the Nazis but the survey has demonstrated that simply isn’t the case.”
She added: “I’ve identified a number of buried pits using geophysical techniques. These are considerable in size, and very deep, one in particular is 26 by 17 metres.”
The programme’s presenter wrote in the Radio Times that the pits contain the burnt remains of thousands of bodies.
The forensic archaeologist, who has now presented her findings to the authorities responsible for the memorial at Treblinka, said: “I really hope this is the first stage in a long-term programme to seek out those hidden graves of the Holocaust.”
Survivor Kalman Taigman remembers his arrival at the camp’s railway station, packed into a cattle wagon.
“I was with my mother. We were about 100 people in a wagon. They opened the doors, firing guns and hitting us, and sent us into a yard. I ran with my mother and tried to calm her.
“They told me to leave my mother but I didn’t do it quickly and I was hit on the head. When I got up, she was gone. She went with all the rest of the women to the gas chamber.”
(Source: Independent)
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3 Responses
It is just a quiet day and I am going about my business and then I read this and tears start to flow and I wake up out of my slumber… How much Yiddishe blood, how much pain…?? Ad mosai?!
There is a wonderful post in the cofferoom called “We are waiting”… it is a beautiful tefilla someone wrote. I just think about how one gadol explained it in his shiur that it says in the Shir Hamaalos that “we will have been like dreamers”… and he explains that all the tzaar is not even going to be like a dream but like it never happened AT ALL … It should happen soon!!
Here is a link to “We’re Waiting” on the YWCR
http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/were-waiting
Mourning for what happened and very nervous about our future.
I just heard a tape, of a Heimishe story teller for children, with a motive to improve their Middos Tovos.
He talks about, “Don’t do onto others what you would not want to be done to you”. But he prefaces his speech by saying, “You all know, Kinderlach, that you are never allowed to hurt the feeling of another Yid”.
Now, wouldn’t HKB”H have much more Naachas, if he would tell the children, never to hurt the feelings of another Human Being.
We need so much Rachamim from hashem, and what are we doing.