WARSAW, Poland — Polish and Israeli Holocaust researchers said they have discovered the exact location of the building that housed gas chambers at Sobibor, one of the death camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland.
Israel’s Yad Vashem and the Majdanek State Museum in Poland, which oversees Sobibor, announced the finding Wednesday, calling it an important discovery in the field of Holocaust research.
Historians already knew the Germans operated the gas chambers at Sobibor from April 1942 to October 1943, killing an estimated 250,000 Jews sent there from elsewhere in Europe. But they have many unanswered questions about the operation of the site because there were very few survivors and most of the site was dismantled during the war by the Germans.
“Any small piece of information we can add to our knowledge is a great thing,” said Yoram Haimi, an Israeli archaeologist who has spent the past eight years digging at the site.
The Germans closed the camp after a prisoner revolt on Oct. 14, 1943, when about 300 of the young inmates killed several German officers and guards with axes and knives.
Many of the prisoners fled the camp, but all except 52 of them were killed by guards or died in water ditches and mine fields surrounding the camp.