text: Lying five feet below the surface, the tunnel stretched for 32 feet from one of the barracks and under the barbwire fences surrounding the camp. 
   
   Its discovery provides the first physical evidence of prisoners trying to dig their way out of a Nazi death camp. 
   
   The length of the tunnel gives an indication of the ingenuity of prisoners desperate to escape a camp that claimed the lives of an estimated 250,000 in the 17 months of its operations in German-occupied Poland . 
   
   "We were excavating near where the sonderkommando barrack was and we came across two rows of buried barbed wire," said Wojciech Mazurek, from the archaeological team. "Digging down we found the traces of the tunnel. 
   
   "It was about as wide as a human, and we are 99 per cent certain that it was an escape tunnel." 
   
   The sonderkommando was comprised of prisoners tasked with herding victims to the gas chambers and disposing of the bodies. Their function at Sobibor would have spared them the death on arrival that awaited so many of the camp's victims, and given them the time to excavate the tunnel. 
   
   The tunnel's discoverers believe it is unlikely that anybody ever used it to escape the camp. There were no reports of successful escape attempts from Sobibor until 600 prisoners broke out during an armed uprising in October 1943. 
   
   Experts said that the tunnel was probably discovered, and everybody who might have been connected with it executed. The excavation was apparently then filled in. 
   
   Its discovery has shed new light on the history of a camp of which little is known in comparison to other German extermination sites. 
   
   Few people survived Sobibor. Not long after the uprising, Himmler ordered the camp to be razed to the ground and trees planted in an attempt to erase all traces of the facility. ||||| 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.
target: – Archaeologists think they've found the first evidence of prisoners trying to dig their way out of a Nazi death camp. The find comes after more than a decade of excavations at the Sobibor camp in Poland; Nazis leveled the place after its prisoners revolted in 1943, LiveScience explains. In the course of their work, the team last month "came across two rows of barbed wire," one archaeologist tells the Telegraph. "Digging down we found the traces of the tunnel. It was about as wide as a human, and we were 99% certain that it was an escape tunnel." The tunnel, found 5 feet below ground, runs an astonishing 32 feet, from under where one of the barracks once stood to the other side of the barbed wire. The Telegraph explains that the barracks in question would have housed the sonderkommando: prisoners tasked with bringing victims to—and bodies out of—the gas chambers. Having avoided an immediate death, archaeologists speculate they would have had time to work on the tunnel. There's no evidence of whether it was actually used.