Six decades later, belongings unearthed in Nazi death camp

[Behind the Aegis]

LUBLIN, Poland - A child's ring. Twisted reading glasses. A few gold coins: scraps of personal dignity, hurriedly buried in a last act of defiance to keep them from falling into Nazi hands.

Israeli archaeologists helped by survivors are writing a new chapter in the terrible history of the German death camp at Majdanek, Poland, by excavating grounds long thought to be empty.

Their findings show how the doomed Jews furiously dug into the grassy ground with their hands to bury what personal possessions they had with them before they were murdered in the camp's gas chambers.

The objects aren't worth much financially but "the value as a human story is immeasurable," said Yaron Svoray, an Israeli journalist who made his name infiltrating neo-Nazi groups some 10 years ago.

more here...

[rockymountaindem]

1. Oh God, that's definately not what I needed to read right before bed

:cry:

[Behind the Aegis]

2. Don't cry...

I see it as restoring their lost dignity and showing the world that they mattered. :)

:hug:

[renate]

3. thank you for that sense of perspective

Things really have been worse than they are today.

For what that story says about those people's last moments and how they dealt with the knowledge of their fate... well, there's no point in even trying to put that into words. I do hope and believe that over the years, with every catch of the breath, every pain in the heart that each person who hears about these things feels, these people have been honored and grieved in a most profound way.

[Hekate]

4. May their names be remembered for a blessing

And if no one knows their names, these tokens will remind others to remember them anyway.

Hekate

[Raine]

5. I just finished

rereading The Diary of Anne Frank, so much hate and pain in the World...it's all so sad. :cry:

[Behind the Aegis]

7. It is sad.

Sadder is that the world as a whole still has such a long way to go!

[unrepuke]

6. Iraq will be covered with such stuff - hidden from the Americans.