Unearthing The Atrocities At Auschwitz Death Camp Through A Reconstructed Letter Of A Forced Laborer
Scientists have reconstructed the letter of a Marcel Nadjari, a Greek Jew, who was a forced laborer at the Auschwitz Death Camp in 1944. The letter reveals the details on how the Jews were killed in this Nazi extermination camp.
The letter was buried in a forest near the camp and was found again in 1980. On the other hand, it cannot be read. So, the scientists used a new imaging technique called multispectral analysis to know what was written in this significant letter, which was enclosed in a thermos and wrapped in a leather binding.
The restoration effort is headed by a Russian historian Pavel Polian and the Russian IT expert Aleksandr Nikitjaev. The findings of their research will be published by the Munich-based Institute of Contemporary History in November, according to Gizmodo.
The scientists uncover about 90 percent of the document detailing the horrendous and sickening life of the Jews at the Auschwitz Death Camp. Nadjari, whose father, mother, and little sister were also killed had one thing in mind and that was to revenge. This was also written on the said letter.
Nadjari also elaborated on how the prisoners were exterminated. He wrote that they all suffered things in the camp that the human mind cannot imagine.
“Underneath a garden, there are two endless basement rooms: one is meant for undressing, the other is a death chamber,” wrote Nadjari.
“People enter naked and when it is filled with about 3,000 people, it is closed and they are gassed,” continued Nadjari.
Restored prisoner’s letter uncovers horrific details of life at Auschwitz death camp https://t.co/t8tImFiVXN pic.twitter.com/oRh0qkwcxB
— Gizmodo (@Gizmodo) October 10, 2017
Then, the work of Nadjari began. He and other prisoners carried the dead bodies to the crematory ovens. According to Nadjari, “a human being ends up as about 640 grams of ashes.”
“We carried the corpses of these innocent women and children to the elevator, which brought them into the room with the ovens, and they put them in there the furnaces, where they were burnt without the use of fuel, because of the fat they have.”
Nadjari was a Jew, who lived in Thessaloniki, Greece. He was chosen to work as a member of Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommando. He and other laborers had to remove the dead bodies from the gas chambers and extracted their teeth. They also had to shave off their hair and delivered the bodies to the crematorium and disposed of the ashes in the rivers. Most members of Sonderkommando were killed and only a few survived.
Nadjari thought he will be killed too in the gas chamber. On the other hand, he survived. After the Second World War, he returned to Greece and then he and his wife and son emigrated to the United States in 1951. He stayed in New York and worked as a tailor. In 1971, he died at the age of 54, before his letter rediscovered, according to DW.
[Featured Image by 1/Thinkstock]
