Objects excavated in Sobibor at the new Holocaust Museum

Amsterdam, 14 October 2022 – SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor was an extermination camp in the German-occupied Poland where approximately 180,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis during the Second World War. Over 34,000 Jews were deported to Sobibor from the Netherlands. When inmates at the camp revolted on 14 October 1943, exactly 79 years ago today, the Nazis decided to demolish Sobibor and to destroy all trace of the mass murder committed there. A team of archaeologists has excavated the area where the camp stood to reconstruct the lay-out of the terrain. A number of items discovered by the team will be shown in Amsterdam when the National Holocaust Museum opens in early 2024.

Norit and the Night Watch
Annemiek Gringold, Shoah curator and National Holocaust Museum project leader, visited the repository of the State Museum at Majdanek to view the excavated items. She selected a few objects which most probably came from the Netherlands, including a Norit tablet tube with Dutch lettering and a brooch showing Rembrandt’s Night Watch.

Buttons
When the National Holocaust Museum’s permanent display opens, it will show ten buttons from various garments. They were found at the place where those who were about to be murdered were forced to undress. “At first sight, there’s nothing special about these buttons. Yet they were the last things these people touched that belonged to them. Clothes protect you from the cold, but they also project a sense of identity. With clothes, you show who you are,” Annemiek Gringold explains.

Joint project
In 2019, a delegation from today’s Sobibor complex visited Westerbork memorial centre and the Jewish Cultural Quarter in Amsterdam. They had been invited to the Netherlands by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. Staff at the Jewish Cultural Quarter, of which the National Holocaust Museum is a part, helped lay the groundwork for the planned Sobibor Museum. Last year, Annemiek Gringold visited the storage depot in Poland to apply for various loans. The Polish state accepted the application so that these objects retrieved in Sobibor will be displayed in the National Holocaust Museum after opening.

About the National Holocaust Museum
The National Holocaust Museum is due to open in the autumn of 2023. It is the first and only museum to tell the whole history of the destruction of Dutch Jewry. A history of segregation, persecution and murder. But also of rescue, survival and solidarity. Here visitors will learn how it was possible for the Shoah to happen, who the victims were, and the perpetrators – and how we can prevent this happening again. The National Holocaust Museum is the place where the victims are remembered and the consequences of indifference and discrimination, then and now, are discussed.