Death camp discovery moves Kiwi
A former Wellington High School student has helped unearth a Holocaust-era escape tunnel dug by Jews trying to escape a Nazi death camp.
Wellington geophysicist Alastair McClymont, who is based in Canada, was involved in rediscovering the forgotten tunnel alongside a team of archaeologists and map makers.
The site is in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, which was known as the Jerusalem of Lithuania before World War II. It holds mass burial pits and graves where up to 100,000 people were massacred and their bodies dumped or burnt during the Holocaust. The bulk of the dead were Jews, but thousands of Poles and Russians were also slaughtered.
McClymont studied at Victoria University and said being part of the research team had been a unique experience.
‘‘For me, it’s pretty special – we didn’t expect to make these discoveries,’’ McClymont said.
Using radar and radio waves to scan underground, researchers found the 30 metre-long passageway up to 2.7 metres below the surface, the team said on Wednesday.
Towards the end of World War II, the Nazis tried to cover up the atrocities by using prisoners from a nearby concentration camp to form an 80-strong ‘‘corpse unit’’ to dig up and burn bodies.
McClymont recalls a harrowing story of one of the men from the unit – later known as the ‘‘burning brigade’’ – who discovered his own buried wife and children and was forced to burn their bodies and mix the ash with sand.
‘‘It must have been just horrific,’’ McClymont said. For three months in 1944, knowing they too would soon be killed, the unit set about digging the tunnel from their holding pit with spoons, their bare hands and other implements found on the bodies of the dead.
Eventually, 12 of the 80 prisoners managed to escape, but many were shot by Nazi guards.
Only 11 made it to the nearby forest and survived the war to tell their story.
Jewish Federation of New Zealand president Rob Berg said the escape was a phenomenal story and it was great to have a Kiwi involved in rediscovering it.
Berg said myths and doubts could build up around the horrors of the Holocaust, leading some people to question the facts.
‘‘Anything that can prove these things happened keeps the truth alive and stops the deniers.
‘‘It shows their determination against the ultimate despair and their escape let the world know what happened,’’ Berg said.