Three categories of artifacts can be systematized: items that belonged to the victims, objects related to the functioning of the camp, and items that belonged to the perpetrators.

Items belonging to victims form the largest group, testifying to the enormity of the crimes committed in Sobibór and the ruthlessness of the Nazi perpetrators. It also provides emotional and historical value. It includes personal items of women, men and children; everyday items and unique objects of a decorative or commemorative nature – items that were lost, intentionally hidden by their owners, discarded during segregation, or overlooked during packaging and shipping to the Third Reich. It is worth mentioning that from the time of the camp’s liquidation in 1943 until the excavations began in 2000, only objects made of durable materials, such as: metals, plastic and glass, remained in the ground. It is natural that among them there are small items necessary in everyday life: glasses, apartment keys, a wallet with some money, medicines or cosmetics. Only the elements of framework remained from women's handbags, metal elements and fragments of leather from the footwear, as well as buttons made of plastic, brass or pearl from the clothing. A large sub-group of personal items are jewelry and decorative elements: rings, signet rings, wedding rings, cufflinks, various pendants, brooches, earrings and fragments of bracelets. Among them several rings of small size were found, fitting a little girl's fingers. A relatively small number of objects are made of precious metals, which undoubtedly indicates that the valuable items were looted by the perpetrators. Some were also bartered by the prisoners, who were selected to work in the camp, for additional clothing and food or were used for settling their private matters. A dozen or so items had a commemorative character for their owners: a silver ring and a business card holder with the inscription "Ciechocinek," travel badges nailed to tourist sticks, or brass theater binoculars. Undoubtedly, religious worship items had enormous emotional value: silver pendants with the Star of David worn around the neck as a symbol of faith, but also tags or an armband stigmatizing the Jewish population. The collection also includes several Catholic crosses and medallions, which may indicate that among those deported to Sobibór were some converts considered Jewish by the Nazis.

More than 200 combs made of plastic or tortoise shell and intended for both combing and pinning hair, as well as various types of glass bottles and containers for perfumes or medicines have been preserved in relatively good condition. Medicines were probably brought in the luggage. It is possible that they were used by the prisoners selected to work in the camp. These included ointments, creams, tablets and liquid substances. In addition to packaging, thermometers, injection needles and syringe fragments were also found.

Among the museum exhibits there are no paper documents or photographs that belonged to the victims brought to Sobibór. Most of them were burned on a regular basis, and if something was omitted or hidden, it did not survive for so long in the ground. However, several objects enabling identification of their owners were found. This particular group includes three tags with names, surnames, birth dates and children's addresses, as well as a triangular pendant with a name and engraved wishes of happiness. A plaster label with the personal data of sixty-year-old Sara Mock-Hakker, deported to Sobibór from the camp in Westerbork on March 5, 1943, has survived on an enameled metal plate. Six metal plates with names also appearing on transport lists were unearthed in the area of the railway ramp. Oblong, enameled (one of them brass) plaques probably come from their owners’ apartment doors. The museum collection was also enlarged by a round brass plaque belonging to Rosalie Groenteman-Baruch, a seamstress from Amsterdam, who died in the gas chamber with her husband and their two-year-old son on June 4, 1943.

Although items that belonged to the victims are mostly anonymous, they make it possible to confirm the origin of their owners. Many objects contain the names of the producers or companies, trademarks, seals and punches. This allows us to specify the place and date of their production, at least approximately. The most “credible witnesses” are undoubtedly the coins, containing information about the place and year of their minting. Nearly 600 coins that belong to the Sobibór collection were minted in the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Slovakia, Czechia, France, the Soviet Union and Hungary. Other relics include various types of metal and ceramic dishes or cutlery. Some have engraved or scratched initials and other markings.

The second, quite extensive part of the museum exhibits are objects related to the functioning of the facility. The camp buildings were demolished and destroyed after the prisoners' uprising on October 14, 1943. The Germans erased most of the evidence of the camp’s existence and were subsequently aided by nature in the following years. The objects found during excavations are only small fragments of the camp infrastructure: bricks with the names of regional brick factories imprinted, nails, hooks, shovels, steel elements of tools. A fragment of the telephone exchange has survived from the equipment. The objects directly related to the extermination and the process of killing are of particular importance: fragments of railway tracks with traces of fire used as structures for burning corpses as well as barbed wire and metal markings from fence posts.

The last category in the Sobibór collection are items that belonged to the perpetrators. Among them are several objects that cannot be clearly classified as the property of the camp staff, but which were certainly elements of the equipment of the German army: the Daimonette signal flashlight, produced for military and civilian needs, or a portable torch for sterilizing tools. Nazi emblems and an iron cross undoubtedly belonged to the SS men. Around 1,000 shells and bullets from Mauser and Mosin rifles and pistols were also found on the area of the former camp.

Items recovered from the ground of the former extermination camp are not merely components of the museum's collections. On the one hand, they are a testimony of an unimaginable crime, and the last items left after thousands of women, men and children murdered only because of their Jewish origin. On the other hand, they symbolically restore the identity of the people who often believed to the very end that they would be able to live and work in that place. Each of these things carries a human history marked by suffering.

Aleksandra Szymula