Mossad.
Most
Holocaust survivors
Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally accep ...
had left Poland long before these events, and the camp was largely forgotten.
[Richard C. Lukas]
''Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust''
University Press of Kentucky 1989 - 201 pages. Page 13; also in Richard C. Lukas, ''The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939-1944'', University Press of Kentucky 1986 - 300 pages.[ Michael C. Steinlauf.]
Poland
. In: David S. Wyman, Charles H. Rosenzveig. ''The World Reacts to the Holocaust''. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
The first monument to Sobibór victims was erected on the historic site in 1965.
The Włodawa Museum, which was responsible for the monument, established a separate Sobibór branch on October 14, 1993, on the 50th anniversary of the armed uprising of Jewish prisoners there,
some of whom successfully escaped in 1943 (see ''
Escape from Sobibor
''Escape from Sobibor'' is a 1987 British television film which aired on ITV and CBS. It is the story of the mass escape from the Nazi extermination camp at Sobibor, the most successful uprising by Jewish prisoners of German extermination ...
'', which aired on CBS in 1987), thus prompting the camp's premature closure.
The small-size museum is scheduled to be replaced with a modern visitor centre based on the results of an international design competition closed at the end of 2013 and sponsored by the Polish-German Foundation ''Pojednanie''.
On 24 June 2014 the State Secretary from the Polish
Ministry of Culture and National Heritage
Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland ( pl, Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego) is a governmental administration office concerned with various aspects of Polish culture. It was formed on 31 October 20 ...
presented the winning design at a ceremony in Warsaw, in the presence of the King of the Netherlands
Willem Alexander and his wife
Queen Máxima
Queen or QUEEN may refer to:
Monarchy
* Queen regnant, a female monarch of a Kingdom
** List of queens regnant
* Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king
* Queen dowager, the widow of a king
* Queen mother, a queen dowager who is the mothe ...
, the partners in the project along with Israel, Poland and Slovakia.
Research and conservation programs
The Museum complex comprises the museum building located near the former railway station, which are connected by a paved Trail of Memory; a cast-iron statue of a woman with child on the "Road to Heaven" (''Himmelfahrtstrasse'') sculpted by Mieczysław Welter, as well as a large circular enclosure with a mound of ashes and crushed bones of the victims, collected at the site and formed into a broad
pyramid
A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilat ...
next to the original open-air cremation pits; and local archive of the facsimiles of testimonies and pertinent documents.
The camp is scheduled to undergo more advanced geophysical studies and further archaeological excavations. In the camp perimeter, there are practically no fixed objects of any kind since the
SS meticulously removed as much evidence as possible.
[''Lest we forget'' (14 March 2004)]
"Extermination camp Sobibor"
''The Holocaust''. Retrieved on May 17, 2013. Any research work around and near the graves is conducted under the strict supervision of the Chief Rabbi of Poland,
Michael Schudrich
Michael Joseph Schudrich (born June 15, 1955) is an American rabbi and the current Chief Rabbi of Poland. He is the oldest of four children of Rabbi David Schudrich and Doris Goldfarb Schudrich.
Biography
Born in New York City, Schudrich lived i ...
.
The first excavation project was completed in October 2007. Over one thousand items belonging to the victims were unearthed. In October 2009, the second excavation phase was conducted, which determined the exact placement of double-row barbed-wire fencing posts around the camp. The work revealed numerous new
artifacts as well, including false teeth, keepsakes from
Marienbad, and many suitcase keys.
In the autumn of 2012 the north-western section around mass graves 1 and 2 was analyzed, including geophysical evidence of the barbed-wire enclosure that separated mass graves and cremation pits from the living area of Camp III, and the perimeter of the killing zone as well.
In May 2013 the Israeli and Polish archaeologists conducting excavations near Camp III, unearthed an escape tunnel long and 1.6–2
m deep in some places, beginning under the barracks of the Jewish ''Sonderkommando'' and leading toward a double-row barbed-wire fence.
The tunnel may have collapsed with people inside; the camp perimeter is known to have been
mined. Notably, the camp records do not mention any incident of this kind. Other new findings included children identification tags from the Netherlands, and seven human skeletal remains possibly those of the
Jewish work-detail shot upon the completion of the removal of genocide evidence.
Notes
External sources
*
"Sobibor. Ministerstwo zbuduje muzeum", at the ''RP.pl'' webpage. Retrieved June 8, 2013.
Retrieved June 8, 2013.
"The Museum of the Former Nazi Death Camp in Sobibór has been closed," at ''Sztetl.org'' webpage.Retrieved June 8, 2013.
The museum faced with closure on April 30, 2011, at the ''Fight Hatred.com'' webpage.Retrieved June 8, 2013.
"How to get there", at ''Polish Forums.com'' webpage.Retrieved June 8, 2013.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Majdanek State Museum
1943 in Poland
World War II sites in Poland
World War II sites of Nazi Germany
Museums in Lublin Voivodeship
World War II museums in Poland
Monuments and memorials in Poland