44x14 - Holocaust Escape Tunnel

[bunniefuu]

NARRATOR: In the
heart of Lithuania,

archaeologists
search for a tunnel

rumored to have been dug
by desperate Jewish prisoners

inside a little-known n*zi
execution site called Ponar

[g*nsh*t]

RICHARD FREUND: They were

systematically exterminating
people at this site

ABE GOL: Once
you get taken away,

you'd go to Ponar to die

Nobody comes out of Ponar alive

MAN: Let's look at the IP,

see what we get

NARRATOR: The
investigation will open

a nearly forgotten
chapter of the Holocaust...

The story of Vilna,

a renowned center
of Jewish culture,

destroyed by the Nazis

Now, a team of scientists
from around the world

has come here

PAUL BAUMAN: Could
be a trench, could be a pit

NARRATOR: searching
for the last traces

of a vanished people

Where's the grave here?

NARRATOR: Who were they?

AVINOAM PATT: Vilna was
one of the most important cities

in Jewish history

FREUND: It had
the greatest scholars,

it had the greatest writers

NARRATOR: Armed with
advanced scientific tools,

their work will help restore
the memory of this lost world

and something more

ALASTAIR McCLYMONT:
We're picking up two hotspots

NARRATOR: A story of
hope in the city's final hours

But time is running out

Few remain who remember

Is there anything
left to be found?

FREUND: There is something there

NARRATOR: The
secret history of Vilna,

and the legendary
Holocaust escape tunnel

Take the moment, take the moment

NARRATOR: Right now on NOVA.

NARRATOR: Just six miles
outside of Lithuania's capital city

is a forest park few
have ever heard of

Here more than 70,000
people, most of them Jews,

were m*rder*d by the
Nazis and their collaborators

There are no gravestones

The bodies could be anywhere

But that's not the
only secret buried here

More than 75 years ago,


to dig a tunnel and escape

Only the entrance
was ever found,

leaving questions unanswered...

Was it ever finished?

Where did it lead?

The answers seem lost to time

But can science
reopen the investigation

and help us understand
not only this place,

but the Holocaust itself?

TIMOTHY SNYDER: It's
strange to say, but the Holocaust

is actually much more
terrible than we realize

And it happened in a
way different than we think

NARRATOR: For some, it
is a history still unresolved

[several people
saying, "Shalom"]

[indistinct conversations]

NARRATOR: These people

are the children of a unique
group of Holocaust survivors

Their fathers survived the
killings pits of Ponar Forest

My father used to say that
they started it just behind

Not that I ever
doubted that the stories

were the right stories

NARRATOR: They
heard stories of the tunnel

[woman speaking Hebrew]

NARRATOR: But with
their fathers now gone,

and no firm evidence,
only questions remain

What really happened?

HAIM MATZKIN: It would complete

the entire picture if
they would find the tunnel

[speaking local language]

NARRATOR: Now
two archaeologists,

Richard Freund of the
University of Hartford,

and Jon Seligman

of the Israeli
Antiquities Authority,

believe they can
answer these questions

But doing so

will take them to a place
few would expect... Lithuania

Armed with new technology

We now know we're
going to follow that line back

NARRATOR: their mission
is focused on a renowned city

of 70,000 Jews
wiped out by the Nazis

The traces are
almost invisible today

And with each passing decade,
the story is further distorted

by the lens of time

McCLYMONT: We're
picking up two hotspots

NARRATOR: To unlock

the hidden history
of this lost city

will require not one
investigation, but three

The search begins

where Vilna ended... The
brutal n*zi execution site

known as Ponar

To this day, the location
of multiple mass graves

is still a mystery

The second piece of the
puzzle is Vilna's great synagogue,

devastated by the Nazis, erased
by the Soviets after the w*r,

as if to warn the Jews,
"Don't come back"

The last piece takes
them back to the forest,

and Vilna's final
chapter, to find proof

that the escape
tunnel really existed

If successful,

the team may uncover
not just a lost civilization,

but a turning point

in the evolution of the
n*zi k*lling machine

Today, few clues would reveal it

But more than 75 years
ago, it was here in Lithuania

that the Final Solution...
The systematic mass m*rder

of six million
Jews... First began

Before the industrialized
k*lling of the gas chambers

in places like Auschwitz,

the Nazis and their
collaborators m*rder*d Jews here

by the thousands,
one b*llet at a time

They began k*lling 500,


[g*nsh*t]

This is ground zero
for the Final Solution

NARRATOR: It
is a painful history

Lithuania is only now
beginning to explore

The pieces were
in motion by 1940

Lithuania was trapped
under a brutal occupation

by Stalin's Soviet army

With the Germans approaching
the border, antisemitism,

already simmering, exploded

ELLEN CASSEDY:
Right before the w*r,

n*zi propaganda flooded
the country of Lithuania,

promoting the idea that
Jews were communists,

and communists were Jews,
and that if the Soviet Union

was moving tanks
into the country

it was because of the Jews

Now, in fact, most Jews
were not communists,

and most communists
were not Jews

But that idea really took hold
in the Lithuanian consciousness,

and it was very, very damaging

NARRATOR: Amidst the upheaval,

the Soviet army began
digging pits to store oil and gas

just outside the
capital, in Ponar Forest

Samuel Bak, now an
internationally known artist,

spent part of his childhood
in the nearby village

SAMUEL BAK: I was there

I was in Ponar in
this dachu of my aunt

I remember this kind of
the noise of the digging

of their construction
that was supposed to be

a big base for containers of gas

NARRATOR: But
construction was never finished

In June 1941, the
Germans invaded Lithuania

and pushed the Soviets out

In June the Germans attacked us

They bombed us

And on the 24th, they
walked into our city

NARRATOR: The Nazis soon
found Lithuanian collaborators

eager to help in
the k*lling of Jews

They also found something
else... The freshly dug pits

in the forest

Just days after the invasion,
they brought the first victims

to the site, where
they were shot

[g*nsh*t]

SNYDER: And this Holocaust
by b*ll*ts, as it's called,

it's how it starts

It's how half the victims die

But it's also the
decisive moment

when it's realized that
something like this is possible

FREUND: This
was the tipping point

Because at this place they began
systematically k*lling the Jews

PATT: When historians
try to understand,

when did the Germans
decide that the policy of the w*r

would be total annihilation,
total extermination of the Jews,

they look at the summer
of 1941 and they see

a real turning point
in this transition

to mass m*rder

NARRATOR: The k*lling was directed
by n*zi troops known as einsatzgruppen.

JON SELIGMAN: We
know the people's names

Martin Weiss was
the head of that unit

And he was the person

directly responsible for
the management of Ponar

Under his control he had now


the Lithuanian r*fle Association

who went into another unit
which is called the Special Ones

They were the ones who
were directly responsible

for the actual k*lling and
the actual annihilation

of the Jewish population
on a day-to-day basis

[speaking Russian]

[translated]: Going
to Ponar was death

That's what people said

There was no escaping

NARRATOR: Today, trains
still pass by Ponar Forest

FREUND: You're
hearing the trains going by

There were three ways that
they used to bring the victims here

One was by truck,
one was by walking,

and one was by train

So when you hear these
trains, you're listening

to the sounds of the first
moments of the Final Solution

[train horn blasts]

NARRATOR: Little
evidence survives

The Jewish State Museum here

is determined to
preserve what still remains

Six burial pits have
been identified so far

There may be more

There are as many
as 12 burial pits here

NARRATOR: But how to find them?

German aerial
photographs from the w*r

provide one clue

More recently, a LiDAR
study commissioned by

the Jewish State Museum
used laser imagery

to strip away the foliage,
confirming the six known pits

A large indentation
in the ground nearby

reveals a possible seventh pit

But they can't
simply start digging

FREUND: The biggest
problem that you face is that

there are people buried here

How do you excavate
to find out which way?

NARRATOR:
Geophysicists Paul Bauman

and Alastair McClymont

You can see how
deep that is Very deep

NARRATOR: are using a tool

that is relatively new to
the field of archaeology...

Electrical resistivity
tomography

The technology
requires no digging at all

Instead, the team will
essentially scan the ground

in a narrow slice,

generating a picture
of the soil hidden below

BAUMAN: We have these gadgets,

these things that can
see under the grounds

Our goal is to identify
the area of the pit,

the depth of the pit, and
then we can calculate

a volume in the pit

NARRATOR: Once
the volume is known,

the team can then estimate the
number of bodies buried within

The first step is to hammer

a line of metal
spikes into the ground

The spikes are then
linked together with cables

A control unit powered
by a car battery

then fires hundreds
of electrical pulses

and measures the way
the soil conducts electricity

The resulting measurements
are then assembled

into a detailed map
revealing what lies below

To the trained eyes
of the geophysicists,

it can reveal where
the natural soil ends,

and any disturbance,
like a mass grave, begins

BAUMAN: It is a subtle signature

However, we're fortunate
that in this environment

that there's h*m* sand
where everything looks the same

So even a subtle signature
stands out very clearly

NARRATOR: The entire
process takes hours,

as the machine sends
electricity into the ground,

slowly mapping the soil

Something's happening at

NARRATOR: It
takes multiple passes

BAUMAN: How many meters
do you think it could be off?

Five to then, ten to 20?

NARRATOR: before they
finally start to see results

BAUMAN: Oh, this is better!

So that's good

It looks like we have a pit

NARRATOR: The rest
of the team is summoned,

and Freund briefs
the student volunteers

It's about 24 meters
large, four meters deep

So it's a burial pit

If somebody asks you
what is going on here,

you can say there are
about 5,000 to 7,000 people

who are buried
in this unknown pit

NARRATOR: Thousands
of people buried in this forest,

m*rder*d by the Nazis

But who were they?

Today this city goes by
its Lithuanian name, Vilnius

But for centuries, it
also had another name,

one rarely heard now...

Vilna, its name in both
Hebrew and Yiddish,

the everyday language
of European Jews

They called it the
Jerusalem of the north

DAVID FISHMAN:
That's an unusual title

There are only a few communities

in Jewish history that got
named "the Jerusalem of"

PATT: Vilna was one of
the most important cities

in Jewish history,

certainly one of the capitals
of European Jewish civilization

NARRATOR: Prior to World w*r II,

Jews made up a
large part of the city

Most people think New
York is a very, very Jewish city

Well, that's 15%

But Vilna was, at
its peak, 40% Jewish

PATT: It was a center

of Jewish learning,
of Jewish culture,

of Jewish politics

NARRATOR: Six Jewish newspapers,

museums, the largest
Jewish library in the world

Esia Friedman was born
in Vilna before the w*r

For me Vilna was the most
beautiful place in the world

Everything was gorgeous

Any little synagogue that
you went in was beautiful

BAK: There was all this learning

And there was a very specific

cultural character
of the Jews of Vilna

that was the result of the
studies and the attitudes

of a very famous rabbi

who is called the Gaon of Vilna

NARRATOR: The Gaon's legacy
of scholarship, both religious

and secular, came to
permeate all of Vilna

But today, Vilna's most
sacred places have vanished

This patch of soil was once the
most important Jewish landmark

in the entire city

For centuries, this was the site
of the Great Synagogue of Vilna

Destroyed by the Nazis,

the ruins were
leveled by the Soviets,

who sealed them away
by building a school on top

Only fragments survive
in museums today

Some of those fragments
were recovered in 2011

when Lithuanian archaeologists
dug three excavation pits

next to the modern school

[speaking local language]

[translated]: The goal was
to pinpoint more precisely

the location of the
Great Synagogue itself,

and the main architectural
features of the synagogue

NARRATOR: The excavations
uncovered pieces of the main worship area

FREUND: What's
amazing is it was right here,

where the ark sat

And they found the column
base, and the steps leading

up to the main bema,
where the Torah was read

NARRATOR: Today, much of the
worship area lies buried under the school

But the complex was far larger

SELIGMAN: We've got to look

at this whole complex as
a sort of community center

You would've been coming in
from the Jewish street over there

You would have been
walking down the Jewish street,

coming in the main courtyard

NARRATOR: Dating
back to the 16th century,

the Great Synagogue was not
the only synagogue in the city

In fact, there were
more than a hundred

Then, as now,
Judaism was diverse,

ranging from
ultra-orthodox to secular

But the Great Synagogue,
more than any other,

was integral to
the identity of Vilna

It was unmatched...
There was nothing like it

NARRATOR: The complex
housed the world-famous library,

kosher meat butchers,

and a communal well

It also held another
critical structure:

the mikveh, the ritual bath
required for observant Jews

SELIGMAN: It
potentially could be

one of the oldest
parts of the structure

So that's a really important
aspect of the whole complex

NARRATOR: Based on historical
diagrams, Jon Seligman suspects the mikveh

is under the playground

For the archaeological team,

it is an appealing target

Mikvehs are great places to
excavate, because people lose

all their personal items when
they're going into the bath

NARRATOR: Recovering this
lost world is a personal mission

for many on the team:

Lithuanian archaeologists,
Israeli volunteers,

American students

ALEX KLEINSCHMIDT:
For me personally,

my goal is to be
able to contribute

to mankind and to be able
to say that I did something

NARRATOR: For lead
archaeologist Jon Seligman,

the investigation is
even more significant

His family once lived here

So this for them would have
been the place they would have

looked up to as the
most important place

within their own community

NARRATOR: Most of them were
m*rder*d in the k*lling pits of Ponar

SELIGMAN: Looking
over my shoulder

there's my grandfather,
maybe, thinking "Good on you"

And so for me that's
something of great meaning

NARRATOR: With no
clues visible from the surface,

the search for the mikveh
begins with a technology

known as ground
penetrating radar

Harry Jol is the
team's GPR expert

HARRY JOL: So ground
penetrating radar, or known as GPR,

uses FM radio waves,
just like we're listening to

in the car here

We're actually
putting those waves

into the ground,

they're reflecting
off of surfaces,

and that's what we're
seeing in the radar

NARRATOR: By
measuring how quickly

the signals are reflected back
to the unit, GPR can reveal

features in the ground
that don't look natural

JOL: Particularly
in archaeological,

you're looking for
those right corners

Nothing in nature builds
anything with a right corner

And so if we can figure out

a feature that
has a right corner,

we can say, "Oh, that's
a building, that's human"

NARRATOR: With
scanning complete,

the data is sent to
California for processing

while the team sleeps

By morning, the
results are ready

JOL: The data just came back

And what we're seeing
here in these slices

is some straight lines,

and they're coming
in at right angles

The only thing these
could be is potential walls

NARRATOR: Jol hands the data
over to cartographer Phil Reeder

REEDER: We look for all the
existing maps and diagrams

and then what we're able to
do is we're able to overlay them

on top of each other, get
everything in the same scale,

and then we can
add our data to that

NARRATOR: When the GPR data

is matched against the
floor plan of the complex

from before the w*r, the team
knows exactly where to start

The first loads of
soil go into the sifters

And almost immediately,
artifacts appear

FREUND: And now
we have silverware

I don't think
we're in a kitchen,

although the possibility is that

somebody was
actually cooking here,

because there's coals,
there's burnt wood

NARRATOR: Coins, pottery,
tiles from the large heating stoves

that once stood here

SELIGMAN: You'd have, like, a
stove which would be stoked from below

and it would be
heating up the water,

and the room itself... the room
would have to be warm as well

I mean, if you're talking
Lithuania today, it's a nice

sunny day but in the winter
over here it's miserable

It's fantastic, and it's
beautifully decorated

NARRATOR: The tiles from the
heater suggest they may be close

to the mikveh...

Close to discovering a key
part of the Great Synagogue

that was burned and bombed
by the Germans during the w*r

NARRATOR: In 1941, the 70,000
Jews of Vilna found themselves trapped

There was no escaping the Nazis

MARKAS ZINGERAS: And then, of course,
a sudden occupation of the n*zi Germany

So there was not much time
to run away from Lithuania

VADIM ALTSKAN:
There were a few trains

which left Vilnius, but
many travelled on foot,

and they couldn't even cross
old Soviet-Lithuanian borders...

They had no proper documents

It was like a nightmare

No doctors, no going to school,
no walking on the sidewalks

No food

The Germans immediately
told us that we had to be marked

So we put on the
yellow Star of David

NARRATOR: Soon the
door-to-door searches began,

and people started disappearing

ALTSKAN: And this is a time,

it's late June, early July 1941,
when Vilnius is a very dangerous

place for Jews

They snatch from streets,
they taking by so-called

hapuns...this is Yiddish word
for people who are catching

NARRATOR: Ten
weeks after the invasion,

the remaining Jews were
forced into one of two ghettos,

including young Samuel Bak

BAK: One day

the Lithuanian police came
and said, "You just take with you

what you can carry and
go out into the street"

RACHEL SHARON: In one apartment,

like 50 peoples here

One by the other,
one by the other

FRIEDMAN: One Saturday morning,

my mama heard screaming

She opened the door

And there was an elderly man
from my street being shoved

These barbarians
were pushing an old man

And then they
went after my friend

Nahama was her name

She had a sister and
a baby and parents

And the little girl was
crying, so they bayonetted her

and threw her out

NARRATOR: Children
were regularly targeted

SHARON: My sister was
two years younger than I

Her name was Shaindele

Shaindele, in Hebrew,
it mean yapheh.

In English, it "beauty"

And she was a real beauty

In that morning when
I kiss her, I said to her,

"I will no never see you again"

And I didn't see her again

It was my last
time that I saw her

Like an angel

FRIEDMAN: My mother was brave

I don't understand it

She went to work, but she
would hide me in an attic

And she would go to work

I was hungry

And she would always
tell me, "Not a word"

You know, "You
have to stay quietly"

And she was hiding me out

And this is how I lived

for what I thought
was a long, long time

NARRATOR: Also
hiding inside the ghetto

was a group of Jewish
rebels determined to fight back

Known as the FPO,
or simply the Partisans,

their leader was a man
named Abba Kovner

PATT: It's no coincidence

it's in Lithuania,
it's in Vilna,

that we first see somebody
like Kovner, who says,

"This is not isolated

"This is something
that is going to happen

to every Jew in Europe"

NARRATOR: The Partisans
began to stockpile weapons,

hoping to hold on until
the Soviets returned

to drive the Nazis out

In 1943, the FPO snuck out of
the ghetto through the sewers

They began launching attacks
on n*zi targets in the forests

around the city, including Ponar

By this time, the n*zi
execution site here

had been active for two years

About 70,000 Jews
had been m*rder*d,

along with thousands
of suspected communists

and other people the
Nazis deemed enemies

The burial pits were nearly full

It was damning evidence,
and the Russians were coming

FREUND: By December of 1943,

the Nazis knew that the Russians

were on the border,
ready to take back Lithuania

They had committed,
by that time,

nearly a hundred
thousand atrocities

Many of the people
had been shot,

and they were kept
in these burial pits,

but they now needed the
evidence to disappear into ash

NARRATOR: Only
a few thousand Jews

were left in prisons and
small labor camps in the area

The Nazis gathered


and brought them to
Ponar, not to be shot,

but to work

Much later, their
children learned the story

of their ordeal

HANA AMIR: He was the
youngest one, my father

There were 80 people that worked

There were four women
that were in the kitchen

MATZKIN: During the first
months, they were asked to

to cut down trees

And they were not told what
the trees were to be used for

Towards the end of 1943,
somewhere in December,

the beginning of '44, they
were told what the purpose

of those logs were

GOL: The German
commandant of Ponar said,

"The reason that
we brought you here

"is because all
these Lithuanians

"committed this horrific
crimes against the Jews,

and we want you
to clean that up"

MATZKIN: Their job would be

to dig them out and burn them

NARRATOR: Dig out the
thousands of bodies and burn them

GOL: The diggers, the burners,

everybody had their own task

The younger people were charged
with pulling out the gold teeth

MATZKIN: He said the corpses
were already decomposed,

but he recognized some
of them by their clothes

I think he found his
two children, I'm not sure

But I know for sure
that he found his wife

and he found the
other family members

They used to burn, he said,

about 200 corpses on
each layer of wood, of logs

They used to put,
like, ten layers,

so it was about 2,000
corpses, plus or minus, a day

AMIR: He said
that in one big hole

they counted between


My father said you
can try to imagine what

You can't imagine it

NARRATOR: The stacks of bodies
were so large, ramps were needed

to build the topmost layers

This is the burning brigade's
bridge that they used

And they would be
able to grab the bodies,

and then they would be
able to throw them onto pyres

MATZKIN: As a child, I remember
him waking up and shouting

in Lithuanian, "Pajarna,"which
is fire or something like this

Burning or fire

He was really haunted
by those pictures

SABINA DOMBA: [speaking Hebrew]

[speaking Hebrew]

She says that in
fact her father didn't

tell her very much

He actually was he was silent

most of the time

and he would sit
silently and chain smoke

My father, afterwards, kept
on washing hands, all the time

FREUND: And in
December, January,

they all realized, those


four women

that when they're finished
they would be the last victims

So they hatched a plan

AMIR: He said that, "All we
thought is that someone will survive

and tell the world what's
going on, what happened here"

FREUND: And they started digging

an escape tunnel for 76 days

GOL: She said there
were two of them at the time

One would dig, and another
one would ferry the dirt

back into the bunker

[speaking Hebrew]

She says that the candle
they were using for lighting

would go out... wasn't enough
oxygen to keep the candle going

So her father set up
an electrical system

with a lightbulb

[translated]: The tunnel,
despite being small,

had to be correctly engineered

One had one had to understand
the distribution of pressure

and so on

My grandfather had a
degree in engineering,

and could be useful
in the construction

NARRATOR: These stories
testify to the existence of a tunnel

But so many years
later, can it be found?

We do a lot of tunnel
detection, and it's really difficult

And especially a tunnel
like that where it's just

it's hand dug, it's small

There's nothing in it

There's no metal supports

It's surrounded by sand

Very improbable

NARRATOR: But can
new technology help?

BAUMAN: So when I
come to these projects,

I don't expect everything
to work and us to find

everything we're looking for

I just want to have some success

NARRATOR: The team
has only one clue to go on...

A Lithuanian excavation in


FREUND: The
entrance to the tunnel

was found in the original
excavations they did

But they couldn't find the
continuation of the tunnel...

That was the key

NARRATOR: The first thing the
geophysics team needs to figure out

is the direction the tunnel
would take, if ever completed

Architect Ken Bensimon spent
his career designing prisons

Our design was
to prevent escapes,

and to prevent the
design of tunnels

NARRATOR: Ruling out where
the Lithuanians already excavated,

and knowing the diggers
would not have backtracked

across the pit,

Bensimon has flagged
an area for examination

And on their very first run,
the team gets a surprise

BENSIMON: Wow

It's exactly there

NARRATOR: One hotspot stands out

It looks like the cross
section of a collapsed tunnel,

about 130 feet away

from the previously discovered
entrance back in the pit

Most of the soil... colored
blue... is too dry and sandy

to conduct electricity very well

But the soil in the
collapsed tunnel is looser

and holds more moisture,

conducting more electricity

and generating the signal
they see on their screens

BAUMAN: It rains here a lot

Here you even a ditch leading
into it where it's collapsed,

and even if it's collapsed
it's not going to be as compact

as the originally sand
that was laid down

Okay

NARRATOR: It's
not definitive though

They need to verify this
signal is a segment of a tunnel

So they decide to scan
the entrance found in 2004

and check if the images match

So this is the area
where the tunnel began

The entrance is
about four feet below

where I am standing right now

NARRATOR: Though the pit is
empty today, a small hut stood here,

later sketched by
one of the survivors

GOL: They were told to
build their own living quarters,

basically said that the German
commandant of Ponar said,

"This is where you will live"

NARRATOR: Climbing out of
the pit to escape was impossible

MATZKIN: The
Germans put a lot of mines

So they could not
really try and escape

And he always described
that at the end of the day

they were brought down with
a ladder to the bottom of the pit

The ladder was taken out,

Was taken away so there was
no way they could climb it up

NARRATOR: Their only chance at
freedom was to dig through the floor

MATZKIN: And they
had like a cupboard

and the cupboard used to
cover the entrance to the tunnel

NARRATOR: This is what the
geophysics team will scan for

When they process their data,

the tunnel entrance inside
the pit shows up clearly

in exactly the same spot where
the Lithuanian team found it

in 2004

Oh, my God!

[laughter]

There's a resistivity section

We have a slightly
more conductive anomaly

NARRATOR: Equally important,
the signal matches the first reading

they got 130 feet away,
roughly the length of the tunnel

according to the
survivors' stories

Oh yeah Oh yeah

Now we know exactly
what we're looking for

NARRATOR: It seems they have
the beginning and end of the tunnel

But can they
find the rest of it?

BAUMAN: Lots and lots
of naysayers that will say,

"Any two points make a
line, show me a third point"

So yeah, I think we need a
third point to convince everybody

NARRATOR: Months before the
tunnel was begun, in September 1943,

the Germans begin k*lling
the last ghetto residents,

a process known as "liquidation"

FRIEDMAN: So my mother,

she always had another
plan of what would happen

And she pushed me over
like a wall or a hall or wherever

But you know what she
said to me before, in Yiddish?

[speaks Yiddish]

Which means, "My child,
never forget that you're Jewish"

And she pushed me out

NARRATOR: Sam Bak
was taken with his father

to a work camp

But for children, it was
no safer than the ghetto

BAK: So about 200 kids

that were in the
camp were k*lled,

and my father brought me
out to the gate of the camp

carrying me in a sack

Therefore my last memory
of my father is the feeling

to be on his oh his shoulder,

kind of a physical
feeling of his presence

I don't even know if the
voice of somebody shouting

"Run, run, run" when they
liberated me from the sack,

I don't even know if it is his
voice or somebody else's voice

But then he was just k*lled

a few days before
the Russians arrived

NARRATOR: In 1944, the
Soviets drive out the Germans,

annexing the country

They would rule
for nearly 50 years

In the Great Synagogue yard,

the archaeology team finds
what appears to be a remnant

of the Soviet era

Yeah, do you know what it is?

Yeah [makes g*n sound] from g*n

MANTAS DAUBARAS: It was obviously
shot because of the dots over there

I do believe it's Russian

NARRATOR: A Russian-made
b*llet from the post-n*zi era

when the few remaining
Jews, alongside other minorities,

had to endure the Soviets'
attempt to stamp out

their religion and culture

FAINA KUKLIANSKY: It was
not so easy in the Soviet time

We could not go to synagogue

But you know, the
people were so anxious

that they wanted to
have their culture so much

NARRATOR: Fearing their
precious artifacts would be destroyed

by the Soviets, Jewish
leaders sent them away

Today, one precious
treasure has returned

JUDAH PASSOW: In 1960,
my father came to Vilnius,

where he met the leaders

of what was left of
the Jewish community

And at this meeting,
they produced this scroll

and they pleaded with
him to take it out to the West

for safekeeping

SELIGMAN: That's extraordinary

These are valuable
possessions of every community...

These really are the most
important possessions

of every Jewish community,
were the Torah scrolls

NARRATOR: The Torah will be authenticated
while the team returns to work

They only have two
days left on their permit

to find and document
the mikveh, the ritual bath

But they've uncovered
an important clue

SELIGMAN: We have an arch,
you can see the bricks over here

What kind of depth
do we have right now?

MAN: Roughly 1 5 meters

NARRATOR: With the clock
ticking, the team digs in shifts

And then a lucky break

Literally

SELIGMAN: Oh, my goodness

NARRATOR: They
clear away a small hole

FREUND: If we can
get in underneath,

then we may have won the lottery

SELIGMAN: Have
you hit the floor?

Right now I did

SELIGMAN: How much is that?



It's about ten-and-a-half feet

NARRATOR: The hole is just
large enough to fit a GoPro camera

You can see brickwork

MAN: A wall

SELIGMAN: Like
a wall or something

MAN: Okay, so we are going down

SELIGMAN: I think that's
pretty clear that's a heater,

it looks like a water heater

We're standing in
the corner of the vault

The line would continue
more or less in line

with where Jorgas
is standing over there

And around about three or
four meters in that direction

And somewhere around
about close to the back wall

we have a heater

Metal heater, which
is heating up water

NARRATOR: A water heater,
likely for the bathhouse and mikveh

SELIGMAN: That's
the fun of archaeology

is you've got no idea what
you're going to find down there

No, it's the first time
I've actually seen

something like that

It's been a good day

NARRATOR: A good day indeed

They've found an intact piece
of the great synagogue complex

SELIGMAN: It's
absolutely successful

We will find more, I
hope, in the future,

and that's the way
archaeology works

You find a bit now and
you come back next year

and you find the rest

NARRATOR: At Ponar Forest, where
the Nazis m*rder*d about 70,000 people,

the geophysics team is
within striking distance

of finding the escape tunnel

They found two cross sections,
but they need more evidence

to prove that it was
actually completed and used

I'm going to split the
difference between these two

MAN: Yeah

NARRATOR: A sudden
rainstorm might actually help

BAUMAN: It's a lot easier to get
current into wet sand than dry sand,

so the rain actually
works in our favor

NARRATOR: If they find it,
they will have tangible proof

for what have been only stories

handed down from the
survivors to their children

FREUND: Their
accounts are riveting

Because they give us detail

And on the last night
of Passover, April 15,

between 9:00 and 10:00,

they knew that there
was great danger

But they were going to
try to get through the forest

without making too much noise

[twig snaps]

AMIR: The guards heard the steps,
and that's when they start sh**ting

GOL: And the guards
started firing indiscriminately

They didn't see anybody, didn't
know who they were firing at

My father was able to climb
out of there and start running

[g*nshots]

NARRATOR: Of the 80 prisoners,

only 11 escaped and
made it through the w*r

FREUND: It is one of
the most horrific escapes

that we have in the
Holocaust, but it also is,

I mean, a great testament
to the courage and survival

NARRATOR: Once in the forest,

they were found by Abba
Kovner and the Partisans

Some joined the
fight against the Nazis

AMIR: My father said,
"We wanted to fight,

we wanted revenge"

NARRATOR: Years later, Abe
Gol's father ended up in America

The engineer, Yuri Farber,

returned to his
birthplace in Russia

Hana's father, Motke
Zaidel, settled in Israel,

as did Haim's father and
the rest of the survivors

For decades, their words
were the only evidence

for the tunnel

Now modern technology is
about to prove the story true

The inversion's finished? Yep

NARRATOR: Because
there, on the screen,

appears the third
piece of their tunnel

BAUMAN: This is astounding

Like as good as we
possibly could have hoped for

That's our third point

Oh gosh

Oh!

FREUND: We've found a major part

of the tunnel

And there's something
extremely personally moving

about knowing what these
people must have gone through

in those 76 days

NARRATOR: Two last scans
provide the final confirmation

So the tunnel is many feet below
where I am standing right now

It extended about the
same level under this hill,

out in this direction

Our technology indicates

it's approximately
on this alignment,

under this hill

and continued for
about 90 to 100 feet

And the exit is somewhere
beyond this area here

NARRATOR: The news of the discovery
soon makes international headlines,

reaching the survivors'
children in Israel,

who are eager to see the
proof of their fathers' stories

[speaking Hebrew]

FREUND: See all
the blue? That's sand

And we have five slices
that we did of the tunnel

Where is the
entrance to the tunnel?

FREUND: The tunnel
is at the corner here

AMIR: It's just like my father

used to do with the hands,
"We dug just like this"

Just behind the kitchen

SELIGMAN: This is a
very special opportunity

to look at what
happened at that place

It was something that
you felt was really unreal

And you thought, well,
they mystified some of it

And then, everything is here

The moment I saw
it, I was shocked

This actually closes
the full circle for me

Absolutely

NARRATOR: Modern technology
has brought them the closure

they thought they
would never have

But the civilization
known as Vilna is gone

More than 95% of the
Jewish community of Vilnius

was destroyed, and thousands
of other lives were taken

A vital culture,
hundreds of years old,

embodied by the Great Synagogue
at its center, is extinguished

[praying in Hebrew]

NARRATOR: The Torah
scroll, back from safekeeping,

has been authenticated

It is one of the last
surviving pieces of Vilna,

now kept in one of the
city's only active synagogues

As time passes, memories
of Vilna and its people

will fade and die out

But the truth of what happened
here has not been forgotten

and now, through the proof
that science has given us,

it will never be erased