A rusty road sign is seen outside the perimeter of a Nazi death camp in Sobibor September 18, 2014. 
 
 A rusty road sign is seen outside the perimeter of a Nazi death camp in Sobibor September 18, 2014. 
 
 A recently uncovered well, used by the prisoners in Camp 1, is seen in the perimeter of a Nazi death camp in Sobibor September 18, 2014.. 
 
 A golden ring inscriptioned in Hebrew is shown after being discovered in the perimeter of a Nazi death camp in Sobibor September 18, 2014. 
 
 A medallion in the shape of the Star of David is shown after being discovered in the perimeter of a Nazi death camp in Sobibor September 18, 2014. 
 
 Recently uncovered bricks of a former gas chamber are seen inside the perimeter of a Nazi death camp in Sobibor September 18, 2014. 
 
 Recently uncovered bricks of a former gas chamber are seen inside the perimeter of a Nazi death camp in Sobibor September 18, 2014. 
 
 Recently uncovered bricks of a former gas chamber (bottom) are seen inside the perimeter of a Nazi death camp in Sobibor September 18, 2014. 
 
 SOBIBOR Poland Archaeologists working at the site of the Nazi concentration camp at Sobibor, in eastern Poland, say they have uncovered previously-hidden gas chambers in which an estimated quarter of a million Jews were killed. 
 
 German forces tried to erase all traces of the camp when they closed it down following an uprising there on Oct. 14, 1943. The Nazis demolished the gas chambers and an asphalt road was later built over the top. 
 
 Archaeologists excavated beneath the road and found lines of bricks, laid four deep, where they believe the walls of the gas chambers used to stand. 
 
 They have been able to establish how big the chambers were, information they said would help build up a more precise picture of how many people were murdered at the camp. 
 
 "Finally, we have reached our goal -- the discovery of the gas chambers. We were amazed at the size of the building and the well-preserved condition of the chamber walls," said Yoram Haimi, one of the archaeologists. 
 
 Haimi said two of his own uncles, who had been living in Paris during the war and were rounded up by the Germans, were among those who were killed at Sobibor. 
 
 The archaeologists said among the personal items they had come across buried in the ground near the gas chambers was a wedding ring which carried the inscription, in Hebrew: "Behold, you are consecrated unto me." 
 
 EVIDENCE DESTROYED 
 
 Historians say that because the Germans razed the camp, and because so few of those detained there came out alive to give testimony, there is less information about how Sobibor operated and the scale of the killing than there is for some other concentration camps. 
 
 Polish archaeologist Wojciech Mazurek, who has also been involved in uncovering the site, said the excavations revealed there were eight gas chambers. 
 
 "The extermination of people took place there; murder by smoke from an engine that killed everyone within 15 minutes in these gas chambers, in torment, shouting," he told Reuters Television. 
 
 "It is said that ... the Nazis even bred geese in order to drown out these shouts so that prisoners could not have heard these shouts, these torments." 
 
 According to Israel's Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research, the 1943 uprising was organized by Jewish civilians at the camp and Jewish officers in the Soviet army who had been taken prisoner and sent to Sobibor. 
 
 About 300 people escaped, but most were caught and killed. Those who did not take part in the break out were also killed. At the end of World War Two, about 50 escapees were left alive. 
 
 The research project at Sobibor is being carried out in coordination with the Israeli-based Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research, the German-Polish Foundation, and the Majdanek State Museum, near the Polish city of Lublin. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Robert Furmanczuk and Michal Ratynski; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Crispian Balmer) ||||| Traces of an escape tunnel have been uncovered at the site of an infamous Nazi death camp in Poland, according to news reports. 
 
 Archaeologists say the passageway, found 5 feet (1.5 meters) below the surface, spanned 32 feet (10 m) and reached beyond the barbed-wire border surrounding the extermination camp at Sobibor, The Telegraph reported. 
 
 "We were excavating near where the sonderkommando barrack was and we came across two rows of buried barbed wire," Polish archaeologist Wojciech Mazurek was quoted as saying by The Telegraph. "Digging down we found the traces of the tunnel. It was about as wide as a human, and we are 99 percent certain that it was an escape tunnel." [8 Grisly Archaeological Discoveries] 
 
 Sobibor was operated in German-occupied eastern Poland between 1942 and 1943. Estimates for the number of people killed there range from 167,000 to upwards of 250,000. Virtually all of the victims were Jews and most were gassed upon arrival. Some prisoners were spared immediate death and kept in the work units known as the sonderkommando, forced to help in the gas chamber operations and the disposal of bodies. 
 
 The researchers digging at the site reportedly don't have any evidence that the newly discovered escape tunnel was ever actually used. Prisoners at Sobibor did, however, stage an uprising in October 1943. Six-hundred prisoners revolted and managed to kill nearly a dozen of their guards. Many of the 300 laborers who broke out of the extermination camp were eventually captured and killed, and only 50 escapees are believed to have survived the war. 
 
 After the uprising, Nazi officials leveled the camp and covered its traces. That makes work difficult for archaeologists trying to understand the site. 
 
 "The area we were excavating has been disturbed and plundered many times over the years since the war," Yoram Haimi, an Israeli archaeologist who is also investigating the camp, was quoted as saying by Haaretz. "It's a mess containing human bones, human ash, glass, pieces of metal and a lot of waste." 
 
 Excavations have been underway at Sobibor for more than a decade. In addition to the escape tunnel, the team has reportedly found a crematorium, human skeletal remains, and dozens of artifacts including eye glasses, jewelry and sobering personal items, like a Mickey Mouse pin, that seem to have belonged to children. 
 
 Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.
– After seven years of searching, archaeologists digging in Poland have found the exact location of the Sobibor death camp's gas chambers. Less had been known about this concentration camp's chambers, which were razed by the Nazis along with the rest of the site following a prisoner uprising in 1943, the Jerusalem Post reports. A road was later built over the camp's remains, and archaeologists searching beneath it uncovered rows of bricks that they believe demarcate what one archaeologist involved in the dig says were eight chambers, Reuters reports. "We were amazed at the size of the building and the well-preserved condition of the chamber walls," says a second archaeologist, whose relatives were killed at Sobibor. Being able to determine the size of the chambers is a big win for researchers, who say it will enable them to more accurately determine how many people were killed at the camp; current estimates put the figure at 250,000. As the Telegraph explains, Sobibor was not a work camp like, for example, Auschwitz; all prisoners who arrived here were sent to the gas chambers. As such, few survivor stories exist. In addition to the chambers, a well containing prisoners' personal items discarded by the Nazis was also found. The archaeologists also surfaced a wedding ring bearing a Hebrew inscription reading, "Behold, you are consecrated unto me." (There was another very significant find at Sobibor this summer.)