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How science is helping unearth an 80-year-old Holocaust mystery

Out of the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto, remnants of resistance emerge, thanks to advanced geoscientific tools and a team determined to keep the horrors of history from fading.

In a grassy patch of public park in central Warsaw last week, archaeologists dug up a rusted metal coat hook and the tangled chain of a decayed necklace. The objects couldn’t be more ordinary. Or more extraordinary.

The team excavated them from the buried rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto, where German occupiers sealed hundreds of thousands of Poland’s Jews into crowded, desperate squalor during World War II and over 80,000 died inside the walls of starvation, exposure and infectious diseases. Amid the twisted metal and bits of glass, the archaeologists unearthed small, unassuming remnants of daily life, suspended in hardened earth «like a time capsule,» says Philip Reeder, a professor of natural and environmental science at Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University and chief cartographer for the group working on the dig.

A fork. A light-green heart-shaped keepsake. A palm-size silver memorial medallion for a man named Nachum Morgenstern who died in 1880, inscribed in Hebrew.

«It makes you think,» Reeder muses of the tiny heart. «Did it belong to a child who lived in that house and most likely ended up dead when the ghetto was liquidated?»

The excavation — organized by Poland’s Warsaw Ghetto Museum and led by its research specialist Jacek Konik — is part of a broader effort to fill gaps in Holocaust history using geoscientific tools. These include ground-penetrating radar; GPS systems; magnetometers, which study variations in Earth’s geomagnetic field; and electrical resistivity tomography, a technique typically used for engineering and environmental investigations that images subsurface structures down as far as 660 feet (200 meters). Geoscience allows for what’s called «non-invasive archaeology.»

«Archaeology is the most destructive science on Earth,» says Richard Freund, an archaeologist and professor of Jewish studies at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. «What’s good about the geoscience is you don’t destroy anything before you stick a spade in the earth. It’s not very labor intensive and, most importantly, it’s not very expensive.»

Because these advanced tools identify and map historical sites without disturbing human remains, they also enable searches that honor the view held by some that digging up Holocaust graves disrespects the victims.

«It’s a game changer for Holocaust studies,» says Freund. He heads a multidisciplinary geo-archaeological research group aimed at unearthing lost Holocaust history to preserve the past and to protect the future from similar depravity. The group includes Geoscientists Without Borders, a program of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists that applies geoscience to humanitarian efforts.

This summer in Warsaw’s Krasinskich Park, a powerful metal detector turned up an anomaly that Freund’s team thought could be part of the Ringelblum Archive, a vast undercover cache of documents collected by as many as 60 volunteers determined to bear witness to Jewish life in Poland under Nazi occupation. The archive contains tens of thousands of invaluable items that testify to terror and suffering, but also to courage and acts of defiance. Collated in secret, the archive itself represents one such act.

The archive — spearheaded by Warsaw-based Jewish historian and political activist Emanuel Ringelblum starting in fall 1939 when Germany invaded Poland — includes underground newspapers, essays, letters, postcards, diaries, last wills and testaments, tram tickets, ration tickets, Nazi decrees, school schedules and original drawings, literature and poetry by Jewish artists and intellectuals that bring daily life in wartime Warsaw and beyond to vivid life.

In 1946, one of the few survivors of the ghetto guided a search party to metal boxes filled with archive documents amid the ghetto’s ruins. Polish construction workers building new apartments chanced upon two milk cans holding more archive material in 1950. Another milk can has long been rumored — based on diaries like Ringelblum’s — to be hidden at the site of an old brushmaker’s shop near the ghetto’s edge.

The archaeologists had hoped the metal object detected this summer would be that missing piece. Instead, they dug into the rocky earth last week to find a large steel beam collapsed on top of brick walls.

This was a letdown, but still a significant victory, as the other, more subtle artifacts they found carry their own historical and emotional value.

«In many ways it’s a somber experience,» Reeder says of uncovering such everyday relics. «But in many ways it’s an exhilarating experience. You get to tell the stories of people who can’t.»

Freund has led international teams exploring some 30 Holocaust-era sites in Poland, Latvia, Greece and Lithuania. There, researchers have mapped sites of mass burials and used radar and radio waves to uncover a 100-foot (30-meter) hidden escape tunnel leading out of a little-known Nazi extermination site at Ponar forest, known today as Paneriai. Eighty Jewish prisoners dug the tunnel over 76 nights using only their hands and rudimentary tools like spoons.

Just 12 prisoners managed to make it through the escape tunnel to the forest, with 11 surviving to recount constructing the passageway and squeezing through it to avoid massacre. But until Freund’s team found the tunnel, there hadn’t been physical evidence to reinforce the survivors’ accounts.

More than 100,000 people died at Ponar, bullet by bullet, including 70,000 Jews, as well as Poles and Russians. The tunnel’s discovery sheds light on another piece of the story: the tenacity and hope some prisoners still managed to harbor in the most unspeakable circumstances.

«We’re using science to help write or rewrite history,» Reeder says.

Electrical resistivity tomography images the ground’s subsurface by assessing the transition of electrical charges at various depths. Because different materials conduct electricity in different ways, the ERT instrument can delineate between stone, sand, clay, organic material or open voids buried underground. It reports findings back to an attached monitor and, after processing the information with ERT-specific software, generates images that outline the shape of the underground finds.

«There’s nothing it cannot locate,» Freund says.

In July, 21-year-old Christopher Newport University undergraduate Mikaela Martínez Dettinger stood in Krasinskich Park and watched tangible pieces of the past pulled from the ground attached to electricity-conducting metal ERT stakes as passersby rode their bikes and pushed strollers in the afternoon heat.

«The tips of [the stakes] were all stained terracotta orange, and it was because we had literally been hammering them into the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto factory that was right beneath our feet,» says Martínez Dettinger, a senior studying political science, philosophy and comparative religion who joined Freund in Poland as a research intern this summer.

«I never want to make it sound like I know what it would have been like to be in [ghetto inhabitants’] shoes,» Martínez Dettinger added, «but you can feel in your heart the sorrow or the feelings of anger or persistence these people must have felt.»

Martínez Dettinger, who wants to pursue a career in archaeology, worries her generation doesn’t know enough about Holocaust horrors. She cites a 2020 national survey of Holocaust awareness among American millennials and members of Gen Z from 50 states. Of all survey respondents, 63% didn’t know 6 million Jews were murdered and 36% thought «2 million or fewer Jews» were killed. Of those polled, 48% couldn’t name a single ghetto or concentration camp.

This summer, visiting the most notorious of those camps, Auschwitz, Martínez Dettinger walked the path that prisoners took to the gas chambers where they took their last breaths. And she toured warehouses where prisoners sorted fellow inmates’ suitcases and other personal effects. As she stepped off a gravel path onto the floor of one warehouse, she noticed the sound of her footsteps changing and realized she was standing on hundreds of buttons that had once fastened shirts, possibly like the one she was wearing that day.

With most Holocaust survivors now in their 80s and 90s, fewer and fewer are alive to share their memories. Holocaust deniers distort the facts of the mass extermination or claim it never happened at all. Earlier this month, a Texas school district came under fire after an administrator discussed with teachers the potential need to offer «opposing» views of the Holocaust, based on a new state law that requires teachers to present multiple perspectives when covering «widely debated and currently controversial» issues.

«The science helps prove if atrocities have taken place and can be used to demonstrate war crimes,» says Alastair McClymont, a Calgary-based geophysicist and environmental consultant who joined the Ponar excavation in 2016 and just returned home from working on the Warsaw dig. «Holocaust education helps young people understand how important it is to protect human rights and keep democracies from failing.»

«May this treasure end up in good hands, may it live to see better times. May it alarm and alert the world to what happened,» 19-year-old Dawid Graber, one of the Jewish volunteers who hid the Ringelblum Archive, wrote in his last will and testament.

The Ringelblum Archive isn’t the only trove of eyewitness testimony to survive the Holocaust, but it’s considered the most comprehensive, valuable chronicle of Jewish life in occupied Poland, and a vital piece in the history of Jewish resistance. UNESCO included the archive in its Memory of the World register, alongside the original manuscripts of composer Frederic Chopin and writings by astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.

Sealed off in November 1940, the Warsaw Ghetto confined more than 350,000 Jews, about 30% of the city’s population, into 2.4% of the city’s total area, or about 1.3 square miles. German SS and police forces liquidated the ghetto in May 1943 following the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a monthlong armed revolt of Jewish ghetto residents trying to prevent their deportation to death camps.

Before the ghetto’s obliteration, the archivists — a group code-named Oyneg Shabes («Sabbath pleasure») — strategically hid the archive, divided in three parts to increase the chance at least some of the documents might survive. They also transmitted to the Polish underground all the information they’d recorded about deportations and murders. The underground smuggled the materials out of the country so the free world could learn first-hand of the horrors taking place.

But as Warsaw was rebuilt post-war, some city maps shifted, and that has complicated the search for the archive’s missing piece.

Using subsurface mapping techniques, Freund’s team surmised that the wartime location of the brushmaker’s shop at 34 Świętojerska Street doesn’t correspond with the modern-day 34 Świętojerska Street, where the Chinese embassy now stands — and where another team using traditional archaeology methods already tried, unsuccessfully, to find the missing part of the archive. The geoscientists concluded the old shop can now be found across the street beneath Krasinskich Park, countering long-held assumptions about the best place to search for the lost section of the archive.

«We solved an 80-year-old mystery,» Freund says.

At the end of one long workday in the park this summer, Martínez Dettinger found Freund sitting on an equipment bin, staring transfixed at a section of grass with pink flags stuck in it to indicate scanners had found an object of interest. She asked him a question, but he couldn’t seem to summon the words to answer.

«He could not take his eyes off the piece of grass, and he looked at me and goes, ‘This could be the Ringelblum Archive,'» Martínez Dettinger recalls. «It felt like a moment out of a movie.»

Last week’s excavation might not have produced the cinematic scene the team envisioned, at least not yet. But they hope the Polish government will issue further permits so they can excavate more of the area they’ve identified as the former 34 Świętojerska Street.

«What we were unable to cry and shriek out to the world, we buried in the ground,» the young Dawid Graber wrote. Now that Freund’s team has pinpointed the original location of the brushmaker’s shop, they’re determined to make more silenced voices heard.

«The work,» Freund says, «will continue.»

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Invincible VS Is a Tag-Team Brawler Packed With Bloody Superhero Carnage

The Invincible franchise is heading to Xbox.

Microsoft’s Xbox Games Showcase had its share of surprises, including a new game from Pokemon developer Game Freak and the ROG Xbox Ally portable handheld. Another surprise is a fighting game featuring characters from the Invincible comic and show. 

Invincible VS is a three-versus-three tag fighting game featuring characters from the Invincible universe. The trailer showed several characters from the show, including Invincible, Omni-Man, Atom Eve, Rex Splode, Bulletproof, and two Viltrumites — the powerful alien species Omni-Man and Invincible belong to.

The game itself has a comic book art style to it, but its action is more along the lines of Mortal Kombat. The fighting is very bloody, which is faithful to the comic and show, but no kind of fatalities were shown in the trailer. There are also a couple of familiar settings from the show. While we saw only a handful of characters in this first glimpse of Invincible VS, there is a wealth of heroes and villains that could be added to the game before it launches. 

Robert Kirkman’s Invincible
 started as a comic in 2003 and ended its run in 2018. In 2021, an animated series based on the comic made its debut on Amazon Prime Video. The show wrapped up its third season in March and has already been renewed for a fourth season. 

Skybound Games is publishing Invincible VS with development handled by Quarter Up, an in-house studio led by members of the team that created 2013’s Killer Instinct. 

Invincible VS will be released sometime in 2026 for PC and Xbox Series consoles. 

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I Played With the ROG Xbox Ally, the Upcoming Xbox Handheld

The new handheld console was revealed during the Xbox Games Showcase, and I got to spend some time with my hands on it.

Microsoft revealed its long-rumored Xbox handheld console running Windows 11 during the Xbox Games Showcase — two models called the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X — and I spent a short time playing around with one soon after. 

Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures or videos of the demo since the hardware we got to test wasn’t final. That became evident when our designated guide had HDMI connection issues with the unit. I was able to play around with the Xbox full-screen experience and the various settings menus and play the beginning minutes of Gears of War Reloaded, which comes out this summer.  

The device is quite comfortable to hold, with slightly textured grips. The face buttons, triggers and analog sticks all felt familiar, very similar to what I’m used to on an Xbox controller. 

What’s really exciting is that you can download your games, remote play from your Xbox or stream from the cloud, making this more useful than PlayStation’s Portal, which can only stream and play remotely. That’s one of the major benefits of being inside Xbox’s ecosystem: You can play a game on any of its devices, regardless of where you bought it, whether that be Xbox consoles, PC, cloud or this new handheld. This more open-platform approach makes the Xbox Ally closer in spirit to a Steam Deck compared with a Nintendo Switch, which can only run Nintendo games. 

When it ships — expected in time for the winter holidays — you’ll be able to navigate via a full-screen Xbox app, which combines your Xbox game library with installed games from several other marketplaces into a single Xbox experience. The company specifically mentioned Xbox, Game Pass, battle.net (owned by Microsoft) and «other leading PC storefronts,» which I’m hoping includes Steam. Much like on an Xbox, each game has icons depicting which platform they’re from. In my demo, the only example of a different storefront was Hearthstone, which had a battle.net icon. 

The Xbox Ally consoles use the Game Bar, and if you’ve used the Xbox app on PC, then you’ll find it familiar. In fact, pressing the new Xbox button opens an almost identical version of the guide when playing Xbox games on PC. However, there’s also a new Command Center tab on the far left to adjust settings for power consumption and performance, similar to what we’ve seen on Steam Deck.

In Game Bar, you can quickly jump to the home screen, your library, launch games, open apps, chat with friends, adjust settings and more. And this Game Bar works alongside Asus’s Armoury Crate overlay. This is a little worrisome, as Armoury Crate has usually felt more like unnecessary bloatware, but when we get to test the device later this year we’ll see if Asus has stripped it down to the relevant functions rather than just added more on top.

Since it’s a Windows 11 device, you’ll also be able to launch and use apps like Discord and Twitch and access game mods. The Xbox Ally boots directly into the «Xbox full screen experience» similar to how a Steam Deck launches into Big Picture mode. The full-screen experience is optimized specifically for handheld gaming, and Xbox told me the device minimizes background activity and allocates more system resources to gameplay like Game Mode does on Windows. This means more memory and potentially higher framerates for your games.

The ROG Ally and Ally X have been out for a bit now, but the Xbox models have some unique features. In addition to the Xbox button, the ROG Xbox Ally also has larger, contoured grips. The previous ROG Ally is more rectangular; the Xbox Ally is closer to the design of the PlayStation Portal, with dedicated, slightly separated hand grips that mimic the look and feel of a standard game controller. They also have upgraded components over the Asus versions.

The handheld comes in two options, a white Xbox Ally and the more powerful Xbox Ally X that comes in black. The lower-end Ally is powered by an AMD Ryzen Z2A processor, comes with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD storage, weighs 23.6 ounces (670 grams) and has a 60Wh battery. The Ally X has an AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme processor, 24GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage, weighs a bit more at 25.2 ounces (715 grams) and has an 80Wh battery. 

Both models are equipped with a 7-inch,120Hz 1080p screen, the same as on the original Asus versions of the devices. They also have RGB lights surrounding the analog sticks, something I hope I’ll be able to turn off when I spend some real time playing on the device. The Ally X did feel on the heavier side, but then again, the recently released Switch 2 and my Steam Deck OLED are also pretty heavy, so I think that’s just what handhelds weigh these days.

Xbox hasn’t yet revealed  the pricing or release date, aside from «this holiday.»

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Everything I Suspect Will Be Announced at WWDC 2025 Monday

We could see new iPhone, Mac and Apple Watch software called iOS 26, MacOS Tahoe and WatchOS 26. Apple is rumored to overhaul all of its OSes with a unifying visual interface.

Apple’s developer conference, WWDC 2025, kicks off Monday at 10 a.m. PT. At its last two WWDC events, Apple launched itself into new territories, jumping into both AR/VR and generative AI. There’s pressure on the company to match, if not top, what it’s done in the past. CNET has editors and writers attending in person to report on live WWDC 2025 developments as they break.

There was the Vision Pro in 2023, and then Apple Intelligence in 2024. What big announcement is coming in 2025? With both the Vision Pro and Apple Intelligence having faced slow and heavily criticized starts, the big message at this year’s WWDC doesn’t seem clear at all. Apple might focus on operating system redesigns and gradual improvements across the board.

WWDC is usually a showcase for Apple’s future-forward ideas. It’s also where the company discusses its developer tools, as you’d expect. And it’s where previews of all the new OS versions are revealed, giving an early look at what’s coming to the iPhone, iPad, Mac and other Apple devices.

It’s possible Apple will reveal a new home device — a display-enabled HomePod — or even a new Apple Pencil with a calligraphy mode. But the biggest rumors so far suggest a new cross-OS redesign and renaming that could be Apple’s way of deflecting some attention away from not having big new AI features to show off.

OS by year: Will it be iOS 26?

Recent reports from Bloomberg’s often-correct Mark Gurman say Apple is going to ditch the existing numbered OS convention it’s used for years and instead go with another approach to naming: labeling all annual OSes by year number. Instead of iOS 19, we’ll have iOS 26. And iPadOS 26, and MacOS 26, and WatchOS 26, TVOS 26, VisionOS 26. Samsung made a similar move in 2020, jumping from the Galaxy S10 in 2019 to the Galaxy S20 in 2020.

Apple’s numbering has felt pretty disjointed as the numbers have gone ever-higher across multiple device categories. A yearly number would at least help people know if they’re on the current version. 

Glass as the new look

The WWDC invites, featuring a hazy transparent ring, hint at a reported redesign of all the company’s software to a new «glass» look. Bloomberg’s Gurman reported on a large incoming cross-OS design shift, calling it a dramatic redesign and one of the biggest Apple’s done in years. The design may mirror the Vision Pro’s VisionOS feel, which has lots of frosted glass panes, layers of transparency and circular app icons. Front Page Tech’s Jon Prosser showed a preview of the expected design based on information from his sources, and it definitely looks VisionOS-esque.

Beyond a coat of paint, will the OSes start to feel more similar in function too? I’m particularly curious about how iPadOS and MacOS start to close in on each other even more. Apple’s iPad has slowly inched toward acting like a computer, with features like Stage Manager for multitasking, and it’s felt inevitable that the tablet line would eventually provide a comparable experience to the MacBook.

WatchOS should get Apple Intelligence, and the Health app may be part of it

One of the devices that’s missed out on Apple Intelligence so far has been the Apple Watch, and that should be changing soon. Apple is expected to put more AI on the next Watch OS, which could help with message summaries, translation and maybe even composing messages. It could also bring overdue health and fitness upgrades. Reports say Apple could be working on adding generative AI insights to its Health app data and even using AI as a medical service, with a launch target of 2026. Health could possibly get a paid subscription tier, similar to Fitness and what many of Apple’s current services are adding. This could be like what Google is doing with Wear OS, which has long used Fitbit Premium as a health subscription (a broader Gemini rollout is on the way too). 

I like AI coaching and insights on a watch, but I don’t like subscriptions. We’ll see what happens, and if Apple gets into any of these future plans at this WWDC.

Battery life boosts

Another recent report (again, Gurman) says AI will help Apple improve battery life on its devices. How many devices? The iPhone, but hopefully the Apple Watch, too — these are the products in the lineup that I find I need to charge more than I’d like. For me, at least, iPads and Macs are mostly fine on battery life as is, but I’ll never refuse longer battery life for anything.

Apple has made gradual boosts to its battery features over time, but maybe there will be more intelligently applied power modes this time.

Game news?

Apple may be pushing the importance of games again, just as the Nintendo Switch 2 debuts. Bloomberg reports that the company could release a new app to act as a hub for games and game services including Apple Arcade, becoming an overdue overhaul of Game Center.

A number of game controller accessories, like Backbone, already have app hubs that function as game launchers, but Apple has never done much to help organize games on its devices in a way that feels more like what you find on a console. A new app seems like a good fit for those types of controllers, too.

Apple just acquired its first game studio: RAC7, the developers of hit Apple Arcade game Sneaky Sasquatch.

Apple could also have VR gaming news, if older reports come true: PlayStation VR 2 controllers have been expected to work with Vision Pro headsets, in a push to expand gaming on Apple’s VR/AR headset. Maybe that’ll be part of a push to get more developers onboard, as Apple could be readying a less expensive version of the Vision Pro in the next year. Right now the headset can’t compete with Meta’s more affordable Quest headsets in the gaming department.

AI: Live translation, and maybe Vision camera advancements

Apple opened up camera access to enterprise developers last year, and now it’s time for AI tools to emerge for everyone else — tools that could help describe what you’re seeing, or help you remember things too. Apple has already added assistive support for some camera-enabled functions on the Vision Pro and other products, suggesting more to come.

Though Apple’s WWDC keynote presentation isn’t expected to include many announcements of AI strides, the company still needs to compete with Google, Open AI, Perplexity and many others who are making such strides. Reports say live translation will come to some AirPods models, which would mirror what Google and Meta have been doing on glasses and earbuds and on phones.

The biggest VisionOS move I’d expect to see is some introduction of camera-aware AI. Apple Intelligence debuted on Apple’s VR/AR spatial computer headset earlier this year, but none of the AI can take advantage of the system’s cameras to «see» what you’re seeing. At least not yet. Google’s use of Gemini to access the cameras on upcoming headsets and glasses, and Meta’s support of camera access for Quest developers (and its expanding AI tools on Ray-Bans), suggest Apple needs to move this way now to begin paving a way for camera-aware AI to work on future headsets and eventually glasses. 

Apple Pencil

We could see either a brand-new Apple Pencil or updated features that make the current device feel new, according to a report from Bloomberg. Expect to see a new a digital reed calligraphy pen feature unveiled. It’s unclear whether this new software will be for both the original Apple Pencil and the Apple Pencil 2, or if we’ll actually see a brand-new version of the stylus.

A new HomePod-slash-iPad?

There could be a new product emerging at WWDC: a look at a long-expected screen-enabled HomePod that may be part of a bigger push into smarter smart home tech. Reports suggest it’ll be something like a HomePod now — speaker-enabled, with an array of mics — but with a touchscreen. Would it be a screen big enough to act as a photo frame, or something more like a control panel? Where would this thing live, exactly? And what would it cost? Originally, reports of this device even suggested a robotic arm that would allow the screen to follow your face, but those plans seem to be off the table for now.

Of all the wild-card product ideas Apple could announce at this show, this seems the most likely.

WWDC/Gurman potpourri

There are, of course, a number of other rumors from Gurman. Here are some that caught our attention:

  • Messages app: iOS could get the ability to add backgrounds to chats and group chats.
  • iPadOS: Apple may reveal an iPadOS version of the Preview app.
  • iPadOS: MacOS-like multitasking might come to the iPad.
  • iPhone Camera app: The interface could get an overhaul focused on making it simpler to use.

We’ll know more soon

WWDC is happening June 9, with the keynote video presentation streaming at 10 a.m. Pacific. We’ll be there at Apple Park, too, covering it in person. We’ll know more about how all this software could be hinting at new products, and get a check-in on where exactly Apple is with its AI strategies. And maybe we’ll get a bit of product news, too — you never know.

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