Seventy years after they were buried underground, five nameplates belonging to Jews who were murdered by the Nazis have been discovered at the site of the Sobibor death camp in Poland in recent weeks.
The plaques were unearthed during excavations by Israel Antiques Authority archaeologist Yoram Haimi, his Polish colleague Wojciech Mazurek and Dutch archaeologist Ivar Schute.
Haimi, who has two relatives that perished in the Holocaust, told Israel Hayom the nameplates were an exciting find "because there is clearly a human story here."
One of the names that appear on the plaques is M. Nunes Vaz. Extensive research by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial pointed to two different names: Marcus Nunes Vaz and Meijer Nunes Vaz. According to Dutch Holocaust memorial books where those names appear, Marcus was born in Amsterdam on May 19, 1899. He was murdered at Sobibor on June 4, 1943. Meijer was also born in Amsterdam, but on Oct. 29, 1878. He, too, was murdered on June 4, 1943. According to Yad Vashem, the name Vaz is Portuguese in origin. The organization further noted that the nameplate had likely been installed on a mailbox outside the family's home.
According to Haimi, the discovery of the nameplate "is proof the Jews that were brought to Sobibor thought they were coming to a place where they would begin new lives. It illustrates their innocence and the Nazi fraud, which led Jews to believe they were moving to a new place of residence. Jews therefore took their plaques with their names with them."
Haimi said he and his partners plan to track down the surviving relatives of the families whose nameplates they discovered, "so that they might hold a memorial ceremony for their relatives who were murdered at Sobibor."
