This article appeared in today's issue of the Times of Israel, announcing NOVA's April 19 premier of "Holocaust Escape Tunnel" on all PBS stations in the United States.
Besides locating the Escape Tunnel from Pit 6 (where the "Burning Brigade" was confined, and what we call "Soviet Pit 1" (the first and largest of the extermination pits), we better pinpointed what we believe is the trench in the photograph. Alastair McClymont and Paul Bauman used electrical imaging to identify the fill material in the trench. We created a very high resolution digital elevation model (DEM) with contours of about 2 centimeters so as to see the subtle but distinct linear subsidence of the earth associated with the trench. And we used induced polarization to identify metal objects in the trench. The victims were blindfolded, and marched through the trench into Soviet Pit 1. The archaeologists believed that as the victims heard gunshots from the Pit, and knew that they were being marched to their deaths, they would have emptied their pockets of their few remaining and most personal belongings, hoping that some day they would be found. As such, small metal objects identified in the geophysical surveys may provide more information about who these people were, and what was of greatest importance to them during their last few living moments. Later, the Nazis and collaborating Lithuanians abandoned the use of the trench, and simply marched Jews directly into the pits, or up to the edge of the pits, and usually shot them in groups of tens.
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The Jewish holiday of Passover, being celebrated now by Jews everywhere, commemorates the exodus of the Jews from slavery in ancient Egypt, as described in the Book of Exodus in the Bible. A conundrum for archaeologists and historians of this period was the near complete lack of any physical or documented evidence for such a mass movement of people from one of the greatest empires in world history. And one thing for sure, agreed upon by all serious archaeologists and historians, is that Mount Sinai in the Southern Sinai Desert certainly is not Mount Sinai of the Bible where Moses received the Ten Commandments.....there is not even a single pottery sherd there that could be dated to within even a few hundreds of years when these tens of thousands of Jewish slaves may have camped there.
In 1954, the Italian archaeologist Dr. Emmauel Anati first came to a mountain in the Negev Desert of Israel, attracted by the spectacularly plentiful presence of ancient rock art in the area. In 1980, Anati returned, and would continue to return for the next 30 years and beyond, convinced that Har Karkom was in fact Mount Sinai. In early April, 2007, under the direction of Dr. Richard Freund now of the University of Hartford, myself and my colleague, Chris Slater, used geophysics and aerial photography from weather balloons and kites to assist Dr. Anati in his explorations. In fact, we spent Passover and enjoyed our Passover meals beneath the shadow of Har Karkom, partaking heavily of Italian wines and foods - no pasta of course - brought by the Italian archaeologists. There is a great deal of evidence to support Anati's hypothesis; in fact, in 2010 the Vatican accepted his ideas. I will try to lay out some of the pieces of the puzzle during this Passover holiday. Some of the more astounding of our finds were geoglyphs - giant rock art visible only from the air, created by removing the overlying weathered rock and revealing the underlying white, unweathered rock. The best preserved of these geoglyphs was that of a wild boar, pictured here. Now this geoglyph pictures neither an animal that would be in any way considered Kosher, not could be dated any closer to the present then, say, 40,000 to 100,000 years ago. This would be at least more than 35,000 years before the Exodus. But this rich collection of rock art and geoglyphs clearly tells us that ancient peoples have been migrating across this area for tens of thousands of year; and, it is likely that the Israelites would have crossed the Sinai Desert along an established and more secure route such as this one. Geoglyphs, rock art, sacrificial altars, and various monuments all indicate that the environment of Har Karkom has been held in reverence for as long as perhaps 200,000 years. Of course there were other more recent artifacts that certainly were evocative of the Biblical period, for instance, the pictured rock drawing that could be interpreted as a map of Har Karkom, divided into 12 areas suggesting the twelve Tribes. And even Har Karkom itself, seen in the distance beyond Chris Slater and the magnetometer, eerily evokes the image of the Sphinx, from where the Israelites fled. I will show pull out other images of geoglyphs rock art, artifacts, and intriguing geophysical data over the Passover period. The NOVA trailer for the work done in Vilinus has finally been relief. Read the teaser published by NOVA, and click on the link below to watch the trailer! In the heart of Lithuania, a Holocaust secret lies buried. A team of archaeologists probes the ruins of a Nazi death camp to find the truth behind tales of a tunnel dug by desperate Jewish prisoners and their daring escape. The Holocaust’s Great Escape
A remarkable discovery in Lithuania brings a legendary tale of survival back to life (click image for article) We are featured as one of the New York Times' top news stories of 2016! Take a look! Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://nyti.ms/2hWADwe New York Times Science writers have picked the discovery of the Holocaust period escape tunnel, dug by the “Burning Brigade” in the Ponar forest of Lithuania, as one of the top science stories of 2016. The 34 meter tunnel was dug by hand over 76 nights by Jewish slaves assigned to burn 100,000 bodies at the Ponar extermination site (see earlier Facebook posts). The pro bono geophysical work was done by Dr. Alastair McClymont and Paul Bauman from the near surface geophysics group in Calgary, Alberta, under the direction of archaeologists from the University of Hartford, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and the Gaon Museum in Lithuania. Besides the tunnel, we also identified the original Soviet fuel storage pit used for the mass burial of the initial 25,000 victims, the intact sub-levels of the “Great Synagogue” in Vilnius ransacked by the Nazis and later razed to the ground by the Soviets, and an individual and likely very significant grave inside the Rasu Prison that only 3 weeks ago was excavated and the tooth of a skeleton was removed, and is presently undergoing DNA analysis (more to come!). Below is a link to an earlier interview with Paul Bauman by the National Post, the link to the original New York Times Science Section article, and the link to the recent top 2016 science article retrospective. Paul and Alastair will be back in Lithuania in July doing pro bono investigations at other mass burial sites, particularly in Kaunas, the capital of Lithuania during the period between World War I and World War II. Unfortunately, and even tragically, the even more impressive and important water exploration pro bono work that 7 geophysicists (Erin Ernst, Randy Shinduke, Doug MacLean, Paul Bauman, Landon Woods, Coln Miazga, and Franklin Koch) from the Calgary office carried out in the Kakuma Refugee Camp and the Turkana Desert of northwest Kenya did not receive similar international media attention – though perhaps it will this year as the ongoing regional refugee crises become a worldwide calamity. http://news.nationalpost.com/…/a-canadian-pinpointed-the-se… http://www.nytimes.com/…/holocaust-ponar-tunnel-lithuania.h… For the NY Times "Science News that Stuck with us in 2016", copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://nyti.ms/2hWADwe Trudeau's visit to the Auschwitz concentration camp on Sunday July 10, and Canada's Supreme Court ruling in favor of Helmut Oberlander, the roving death squad Einsatzkommando member, all seem good reasons to post this interview on As It Happens between Laura Lynch and Paul Bauman.
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-friday-edition-1.3658354/calgary-scientist-helps-locate-escape-tunnel-at-nazi-concentration-camp-1.3658367 Don't believe what I write about Ponar. Listen or read the translation of what tunneler and Holocaust survivor Mordechai Zeidel says about Ponar and his escape. Because this is an interview with me rather than a report made from a news feed, I believe it is one of the better, and certainly more accurate articles to come out on the tunnel discovery and Ponar. Of course, I also like that there are two photos of me!
news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/a-canadian-pinpointed-the-secret-tunnel-nazi-prisoners-dug-to-escape-the-holocaust-in-lithuania What geophysicist would not brag about being reported on in the New York Times Science Section?! Though surprisingly, it's not the best or most accurate of the articles. You can view the dramatic WGBH NOVA movie trailer for the upcoming documentary on Ponar and the story of the Jews of Vilna (Vilnius). http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/science/holocaust-ponar-tunnel-lithuania.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0 Paul speaking about the discovery of the Burning Brigade escape tunnel on CBC News, the last 3 minutes from 27 to 30 in the broadcast. Alastair and I are gratified that the discovery of the tunnel has awakened interest in the Burning Brigade, and their unstoppable desire to fight back and survive to tell their story. http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/716403267702/ An article about the tunnel discovery was published today in Israel's leading newspaper, HaAretz. Because of the ties of so many Jews and Israelis to the Holocaust and the Jewish communities of Europe in general, and Vilnius in particular, the tunnel discovery is a very big deal in Israel. The Israel Antiquities Authority, lead by one of the Directors, Dr. Jon Seligman, was one of the leading partners in the project, and a pleasure to work with! www.haaretz.co.il/news/world/europe/1.2991326 Check out the riveting Press Release/movie trailer (though the movie will not be completed until 2017) of NOVA's documenting of the pre-1941 Jewish community of Vilnius, the beginning of the Holocaust In Lithuania and at Poneriai, and of course the tunnel escape!! http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/military/vilnius-tunnel/ Don't believe what I write about Ponar. Listen or read the translation of what tunneler and Holocaust survivor Mordechai Zeidel says about Ponar and his escape. How often does one get a chance to meet one's heroes, especially years after their deaths! Last Thursday, kilometers outside of Vilnius, in the darkest and most spooky of Baltic forests, some time between midnight and 2 AM, running through the forest with gun shots ringing among the trees, I met Szolma Gol, Isaac Dogim, Yudi Faber (aka Farber, aka Farberis). I feel I know them all a bit as I have read portions of the testimonies from the tunnel escape from Pit 6 in Poneriai, or as best as one can read a Google translation of Russian. All were of the Burning Brigade, and all were supermen and superwomen (there were 4 women in the Burning Brigade) living off of bread crusts and potato porridge blended with straw and ice and mud. Gol's testimony is particularly memorable as he was a body counter, a required bit of bookkeeping of the SS at Poneriai as the Burning Brigade removed an estimated 68,000 corpses and burnt them to ashes in pyramids of thousands of bodies and logs. Gol committed to the escape when he found the body of his brother, recognizing the identity card. Dogim, along with Faber, was one of the masterminds. Dogim stumbled on his wife's corpse which he recognized by a medallion, along with the bodies of his mother and two sisters. At that point, he realized he had nothing left to live for, but no reason to worry about dying. Faber's testimony is particularly moving. Captured in the Soviet Army in the fall of 1941, he and 8000 Red Army comrades endured horrific conditions as prisoners of war near Vilnius. He recounts how 50 or more would die daily from typhus or cold or starvation. Recognized as a Jew, Faber was sent to Poneriai as part of the Burning Brigade. Faber describes in detail the living conditions and the work, but he never shows any indication that he doubted he would get out alive, even after working all day with the dead. He engineered the tunneling, chose the directions and angles, designed the supports, wired in electricity for light, organized the escapees on that final dark night of April 15th, cut the wire fences, hung a white rag to guide the others through the gap, pulled the escapees who could not swim across the river, and finally a week later told his story to Abba Kovner and the Jewish partisans with whom he connected. Very, very early Friday morning, June 17, NOVA filmed a reenactment of the tunnel escape. Even though each episode required a few takes, the long evening only made the excitement build. As in real life, not all the actors made it through the night alive. I cannot imagine how those many hours of drama will be distilled into a few minutes. I can already highly recommend the movie! |
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