The Holocaust’s Great Escape

Smithsonian Magazine’s Matthew Shaer investigates the history of a Holocaust escape tunnel in Lithuania that was discovered near a mass grave in 2016. Shaer writes that in 1944 several Jewish prisoners tirelessly used saws, files, and spoons over several months to make the tunnel and escape their Nazi captors. Today, the mass grave in Ponar, Lithuania, is home to a memorial, but the escape tunnel is not marked. Richard Freund, an archaeologist who helped discover the tunnel, said, “In any of these circumstances, what you want—the biggest thing you want, the most important—is to be able to make these places visible.”

Read at Smithsonian Magazine

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