Archaeologists function in Lithuania have uncover a tunnel Jewish prisoners used to escape Nazi incarceration during Lithuania ’s infamous Ponary massacre . Using noninvasive technology , they locate the long - lost route in the Ponar forest just outside the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius , according toThe New York Times .
Historians estimate that 100,000 multitude in the region were killed by Nazis between 1941 and 1944 , and their body were dumped in pot grave . The end toll included 70,000 Jews from the city that Napoleon famouslycalledthe Jerusalem of the North . In 1943 , as the Germans were retreating from oncoming Soviet forces , the Nazis start render to overlay up the evidence of the genocide , forcing 80 prisoner from the Stutthof concentration camp to dig up and burn the trunk . At Nox , the captive were chained together in a deep property nether region ( seen above ) antecedently used for capital punishment .
Using their bare handwriting and spoon they found on the bodies they were burn , the prisoners spend three month poke an approximately 100 - understructure - foresightful tunnel out of the nether region . In April 1944 , about 40 of the prisoners foreshorten their bond with a nail filing cabinet and fawn through the burrow toward freedom . But guard caught twist of the escape in progression , and only 11 prisoner made it out of the camp alive and through the forest to Allied forces to survive the war .
The Ponar discovery , as well as the researchers ’ work rediscovering the archeological site of the destroyed Great Synagogue of Vilnius , will be detailed in a NOVA documentary in 2017 .
“ The exciting and important find of the prisoner escape burrow at Ponar is yet more proof negating the lies of the Holocaust deniers , ” Israeli culture minister Miri Regev tell in apress statement . “ The success of modern technical growth , that have aided the Jewish people to reveal another larger-than-life story the Nazis attempt to hide , profits all humanity . ”
[ h / tThe New York Times ]
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