Archeologist Richard Freund visited Eastern Connecticut State University on Nov. 15 to present a lecture on “A Secret Tunnel, A Daring Holocaust Escape Attempt: What We Can Learn from the Human Spirit.”
The event was held in the J. Eugene Smith Library and co-sponsored by the Holocaust and Human Rights committee and the intellectual committee of Temple B’nai Israel in memorial of Kristallnacht. Kristallnacht was when the Nazis in Germany torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses and killed close to 100 Jews.
Freund, a professor of Jewish history at the University of Hartford, spoke to audience members about a secret tunnel from a burial pit in Lithuania that his team of archaeologists uncovered. This forgotten tunnel was dug by 80 Jews with their hands and spoons to escape from a Nazi extermination site during World War II. The site in Ponar, Lithuania, holds burial pits and graves where up to 100,000 people were killed and their bodies dumped or burned during the Holocaust.
“We don’t study to find out how many deaths, we study to find out what was lost,” said Freund. “If there was anything we can learn it’s that this was a story of hope and courage.” Using radar and radio waves to scan beneath the ground, researchers found the 100-foot passageway between five and nine feet below the surface. “I wouldn’t put anyone on a higher pedestal,” said Freund. “They were very desperate, but they didn’t give up.”
Freund brought students with him on his mission. “It’s important to bring students and train them this way,” said Freund. “They learn a lot more with these hands-on experiences than ever sitting in a classroom and reading about them. They get to touch, feel and really experience what happened and see how their work matters to the people who were lost.”
Freund spoke specifically about a woman who reached out to him hoping to find her family. Freund’s team was able to uncover the bodies of four of her family members. “This was an important find for science,” he said. “We were able to find these four people and that was amazing.”
Eastern students were impressed with Fruend’s presentation. “It was amazing to see what was found,” said Allyson Gyarfas, a senior Education major. “This was part of the Holocaust that isn’t really talked about because it wasn’t a concentration camp. The strength that these people had was amazing and Freund and his team are very intelligent, they were able to give that woman her family back and answers she wouldn’t have been able to have without them.”
The lecture concluded with Freund sharing a short clip from his NOVA, the most-watched primetime science series, documentary on the burial pits and the great synagogue in Vilna, Lithuania, that will be aired on PBS in April 2017.
“This is how great the human spirit is,” said Freund. “I always tell my students that archeology isn’t about the architecture, walls and artifacts; it’s about the people, and at the end of the day these people are our neighbors.”