AN ingenious escape tunnel that helped a group of condemned Jews escape their Nazi captors has been uncovered more than 70 years later.
Tasked with covering up the Nazis’ horrific crimes in the face of the advancing Soviet troops, 80 Jewish prisoners were ordered to dig up and burn more than 100,000 bodies.
But using just spoons and files, they were able to also burrow an intricate tunnel out of the pit – previously used as a mass grave – where they were forced to sleep.
The story had long been known among historians, but the mystery of the tunnel’s location remained.
Its entrance was found by a local archaeologist in 2004.
Forty prisoners of the ‘Burning Brigade’ were able to cut their iron shackles with nail files on the night of April 15, 1944.
Of those, 13 cut the camp’s fence and 11 were able to flee to the safety of anti-Nazi resistance fighters.
Remarkably, scientists reckon they can see the metal shackles still buried in the tunnel, which will remain untouched.
Professor Richard Freund, who helped discover the tunnel said the find would help give survivors and their relatives some closure.
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He told The Times: “Many of them had heard of this story from their parents and grandparents and I know that in their heart of hearts they probably did not believe it was true.
“But at that moment, when I showed them the scans, I felt we had provided them with a small measure of closure.”
More than 100,000 Jews, Poles and Russians are believed to have been shot dead and buried in mass graves in Lithuania’s Ponary forest between 1941 and 1944.
Six million Jews were put to death by the Nazis, initially using firing squads, but later in the gas chambers of deaths camps like Auschwitz and Treblinka.
It is estimated another six million non-Jewish people were killed, including prisoners of war, gypsies and the disabled.
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