Treasure Hunters Raid Sobibor Graves
The graves of Holocaust victims at the Sobibor Nazi death camp in Poland have been dug up by treasure hunters.
The mass graves were discovered to have been disturbed during an archeological dig, the Daily Mail online reported on Monday.
“There has been a big archaeological project going on, but when we started excavating we discovered that people had already been digging near to where the gas chamber had been in Camp Three,” a museum source told MailOnline. “We found lots of pits which were nothing to do with us and clearly weren’t professionally dug by scientists. We don’t know who did it, but we suspect they were looking for gold or metal.”
“The idea that thieves have been here looking for such disturbing mementos is truly shocking,” the source also said.
Up to 300,000 people, most Jewish, were killed at Sobibor.
Poles dug for valuables on the sites of Nazi death camps at the end of World War II, American-Polish historian Jan Gross, who described the “Treblinka Gold Rush” in his book “Golden Harvest,” claims.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO