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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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Technologies

See Ya, Siri: Why Apple Might Make Third-Party Voice Assistants Available in Europe

When given the choice, iPhone owners might opt for alternatives given the delayed rollout of Siri’s AI revamp.

Apple is reportedly working on changes to the iPhone’s operating system that will make it possible to choose an alternative voice assistant to Siri.

The ability to switch from Siri to another voice assistant, potentially powered by third-party companies including OpenAI, Google or Meta, could be a reality in the near future, but only for iPhone owners in Europe, Bloomberg reports. Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Apple is preparing the changes to Siri in anticipation of the European Union demanding the company allow European users a choice of voice assistants, according to Bloomberg. It would be similar to the policy shift Apple has already made in allowing rival app stores onto the iPhone, which was sparked by Europe’s Digital Markets Act.

Apple has faced many regulatory hurdles with the EU in recent years, largely in the form of challenges to its proprietary technology and walled-garden ecosystem, which provide Apple device owners with high levels of consistency, privacy and security, but often make it difficult for smaller companies to compete.

These regulatory challenges often leave Apple with little choice but to make significant changes to the way its tech works. Some of these changes — such as switching from Lightning connectors to the universal standard of USB-C — affect Apple device owners globally. Others affect only those who live within the EU.

Siri’s AI troubles

Siri has been available on iPhones since 2011 and has spawned many copycats. But the advent of generative AI over the last few years has brought about a number of chatbots, most notably OpenAI’s ChatGPT, that rival and surpass Siri’s capabilities, to the point where Apple is now seen as lagging behind competitors.

Apple announced an AI revamp of Siri last year at WWDC, its June developer conference, but the company delayed its rollout. Apple Intelligence-powered Siri is still nowhere to be seen, and may not even make an appearance at this year’s WWDC, per Bloomberg.

In light of this, it may be possible that European iPhone owners, when given the option, choose an alternative voice assistant. Unless Apple’s hand is forced, there’s currently no indication that people elsewhere will be given the same choice.

But Thomas Husson, VP and principal analyst at Forrester, doesn’t believe the AI overhaul of Siri is Apple’s main challenge.

«Is Siri’s revamp well overdue? Yes. Does Apple give the impression that they have an AI issue? Yes. It is too late for them? I don’t think so,» he said. Instead, Husson said what’s really at stake for the company is its ability to invent a user interface adapted to the AI era and create an ecosystem with companies and developers that will allow for new experiences within existing apps.

«Meeting the EU regulations and especially the DMA makes things more complex,» he added, but that’s the case for any digital platform operating in Europe.

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Technologies

I’ve Been Tracking Tariff Price Impacts Every Day: Here’s the Latest News

CNET’s tariff impact tracker is keeping tabs on price moves for several popular products, and while things seem steady, problems could be coming this summer.

President Donald Trump’s tariff policies could be leading to a rough summer for a lot of US consumers, as Walmart, the largest grocery store chain in the country, has become the latest company, and perhaps the most impactful, to warn of impending price hikes due to the administration’s import taxes. The company said that these increases are «inevitable» due to the circumstances.

«We will do our best to keep our prices as low as possible,» CEO Doug McMillon said during an earnings call for the country’s largest grocery chain. «But given the magnitude of the tariffs, even at the reduced levels announced this week, we aren’t able to absorb all the pressure given the reality of narrow retail margins.»

This prompted a heated response from the president, who said in a post to Truth Social that the chain should eat the costs of the tariffs instead of passing them onto consumers, a tactic that’s not likely to gain much ground with most businesses, even Goliaths like Walmart. The administration previously lashed out at Amazon over reports that they were considering a plan to show consumers what portion of their purchase prices were caused by tariffs, calling the idea a «hostile and political act.» The Trump White House has by and large been extremely combative over the notion that companies might admit that the president’s tariffs have caused price inflations, which as I’ve explained in the past on CNET, is absolutely the case.

In this article, I’ve been tracking the daily effect of Trump’s tariffs on the prices of 11 popular products you might want or need to buy, whether it be a new phone, laptop or your daily coffee. So far, we’ve seen notable price hikes for the flagship Xbox game console, while everything else has either remained steady aside from occasional fluctuations that might not be tariff-related. That sort of consistency is far from certain, however, especially with new reports emerging that Apple might be looking to make iPhones more expensive this year.

Below, you can check out a chart with the average price of the 11 included items over the course of 2025. This will help give you a sense of the overall price changes and fluctuations going on. Further down, you’ll be able to check out charts for each individual product being tracked.

The recent tariff agreement with China, much-hyped by the White House, did significantly cut tariff rates against the US’s biggest trading partner. The new 30% rate is only temporary, however, and still historically high. It just looks more reasonable next to the ludicrous 145% rate that was previously in place. As those negotiations move along, companies continue to warn of impending price hikes in order to deal with the new tariffs, including Sony, which could potentially mean a price hike for its ever-popular PlayStation 5 consoles.

We’ll be updating this article regularly as prices change. It’s all in the name of helping you make sense of things, so be sure to check back every so often. For more, check out CNET’s guide to whether you should wait to make big purchases or buy them now and get expert tips about how to prepare for a recession.

Methodology

We’re checking prices daily and will update the article and the relevant charts right away to reflect any changes. The following charts show a single bullet point for each month, with the most recent one labeled «Now» and showing the current price. For the past months, we’ve gone with what was the most common price for each item in the given month. 

In most cases, the price stats used in these graphs were pulled from Amazon using the historical price tracker tool Keepa. For the iPhones, the prices come from Apple’s official materials and are based on the 128-gigabyte base model of the latest offering for each year: the iPhone 14, iPhone 15 and iPhone 16. For the Xbox Series X, the prices were sourced from Best Buy using the tool PriceTracker. If any of these products happen to be on sale at a given time, we’ll be sure to let you know and explain how those price drops differ from longer-term pricing trends that tariffs can cause.

The 11 products we’re tracking

Mostly what we’re tracking in this article are electronic devices and digital items that CNET covers in depth, like iPhones and affordable 4K TVs — along with a typical bag of coffee, a more humble product that isn’t produced in the US to any significant degree. 

The products featured were chosen for a few reasons: Some of them are popular and/or affordable representatives for major consumer tech categories, like smartphones, TVs and game consoles. Others are meant to represent things that consumers might buy more frequently, like printer ink or coffee beans. Some products were chosen over others because they are likely more susceptible to tariffs. Some of these products have been reviewed by CNET or have been featured in some of our best lists.

Below, we’ll get into more about each individual product.

iPhone 16

The iPhone is the most popular smartphone brand in the US, so this was a clear priority for price tracking. The iPhone has also emerged as a major focal point for conversations about tariffs, given its popularity and its susceptibility to import taxes because of its overseas production, largely in China. Trump has reportedly been fixated on the idea that the iPhone can and should be manufactured in the US, an idea that experts have dismissed as a fantasy. Estimates have also suggested that a US-made iPhone would cost as much as $3,500.

Apple has made several moves this year to protect its prices in the US as much as possible, like flying in bulk shipments of product ahead of the tariffs taking effect and working to move production for the American market from China to India, where tariff rates are less severe. This latter move provoked a response from Trump, given his noted fixation on the iPhone, saying on Thursday that he «had a little problem» with Tim Cook over the move, claiming without evidence that the Apple CEO pledged to bring more manufacturing to the US. Cook and others close to the company for years say that the supply chains for its products are too complex to move manufacturing entirely to the US.

Duracell AA batteries

A lot of the tech products in your home might boast a rechargeable energy source but individual batteries are still an everyday essential and I can tell you from experience that as soon as you forget about them, you’ll be needing to restock. The Duracell AAs we’re tracking are some of the bestselling batteries on Amazon.

Samsung DU7200 TV

Alongside smartphones, televisions are some of the most popular tech products out there, even if they’re an infrequent purchase. This particular product is a popular entry-level 4K TV and was CNET’s pick for best overall budget TV for 2025. Unlike a lot of tech products that have key supply lines in China, Samsung is a South Korean company, so it might have some measure of tariff resistance. In recent days, this model has fluctuated from $400, where its been for most of the year so far, and $470, where it sits today. These fluctuations don’t seem to be influenced by tariffs, at least for the time being.

Xbox Series X

Video game software and hardware are a market segment expected to be hit hard by the Trump tariffs. Microsoft’s Xbox is the first console brand to see price hikes — the company cited «market conditions» along with the rising cost of development. Most notably, this included an increase in the price of the flagship Xbox Series X, up from $500 to $600. Numerous Xbox accessories were also affected, and the company also said that «certain» games will eventually see a price hike from $70 to $80.

Initially, we were tracking the price of the much more popular Nintendo Switch as a representative of the gaming market. Nintendo has not yet hiked the price of its handheld-console hybrid and stressed that the $450 price tag of the upcoming Switch 2 has not yet been inflated because of tariffs. Sony, meanwhile, has so far only increased prices on its PlayStation hardware in markets outside the US.

AirPods Pro 2

The latest iteration of Apple’s wildly popular true-wireless earbuds are here to represent the headphone market. Much to the chagrin of the audiophiles out there, a quick look at sales charts on Amazon shows you just how much the brand dominates all headphone sales. The AirPods Pro 2 have hovered steadily around $200 on Amazon in 2025, but were on sale for $169 the first few days of May before jumping back up.

HP 962 CMY printer ink

This HP printer ink includes cyan, magenta and yellow all in one product and recently saw its price jump from around $72 — where it stayed for most of 2025 — to $80, which is around its highest price over the last five years. We will be keeping tabs to see if this is a long-term change or a brief uptick.

This product replaced Overture PLA Filament for 3D printers in this piece, but we’re still tracking that item.

Anker 10,000-mAh, 30-watt power bank

Anker’s accessories are perennially popular in the tech space and the company has already announced that some of its products will get more expensive as a direct result of tariffs. This specific product has also been featured in some of CNET’s lists of the best portable chargers. While the price has remained steady throughout the year, it is currently on sale for $16 on Amazon, but only for Prime members.

Bose TV speaker

Soundbars have become important purchases, given the often iffy quality of the speakers built into TVs. While not the biggest or the best offering in the space, the Bose TV Speaker is one of the more affordable soundbar options out there, especially hailing from a brand as popular as Bose.

Oral-B Pro 1000 electric toothbrush

They might be a lot more expensive than their traditional counterparts, but electric toothbrushes remain a popular choice for consumers because of how well they get the job done. I know my dentist won’t let up on how much I need one. This particular Oral-B offering was CNET’s overall choice for the best electric toothbrush for 2025.

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook

Lenovo is notable among the big laptop manufacturers for being a Chinese company making its products especially susceptible to Trump’s tariffs.

Starbucks Ground Coffee (28-ounce bag)

Coffee is included in this tracker because of its ubiquity —I’m certainly drinking too much of it these days —and because it’s uniquely susceptible to Trump’s tariff agenda. Famously, coffee beans can only be grown within a certain distance from Earth’s equator, a tropical span largely outside the US and known as the «Coffee Belt.» 

Hawaii is the only part of the US that can produce coffee beans, with data from USAFacts showing that 11.5 million pounds were harvested there in the 2022-23 season — little more than a drop in the mug, as the US consumed 282 times that amount of coffee during that period. Making matters worse, Hawaiian coffee production has declined in the past few years.

All that to say: Americans get almost all of their coffee from overseas, making it one of the most likely products to see price hikes from tariffs.

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Preorder a Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge With Free Storage Upgrade and $50 Amazon Gift Card

This new ultra-thin phone can be yours with 512GB of storage for the price of the 256GB model.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge is the latest addition to the existing Galaxy S25 lineup, and its main claim to fame is its impossibly thin design. It’s a solid addition, and it’ll officially go on sale on May 30. You can preorder it right now, and if you do it soon, you can pick up the new Galaxy S25 Edge with a free double-storage upgrade and a $50 Amazon gift card thrown in for good measure. The result is a Samsung Galaxy S25 deal that saves you a total of $170 off your order.

This deal is available across three different colors so make sure to pick the one you like best before ordering. You’ll get the 512GB model rather than the entry-level 256GB model with that gift card included all for $1,100.

The first thing you’ll notice about the Galaxy S25 Edge is its thickness. Or rather, it’s thinness. It comes in at just 5.8mm thick at its edge which is less than the 7.2mm Galaxy S25 and the Galaxy S25 Plus at 7.3mm. Despite the design change compared to the rest of the lineup, this model maintains the same IP68 dust and water resistance using a Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2 display paired with a Gorilla Glass Victus 2 rear panel.

Hey, did you know? CNET Deals texts are free, easy and save you money.

Up front, you’ll find a 6.7-inch display with a 120Hz refresh rate while the familiar 200-megapixel main camera is joined by a 12-megapixel ultrawide shooter. You’ll also find a 12-megapixel selfie camera hiding towards the top of the display. Other features of note include an under-display fingerprint sensor for biometric authentication, 12GB of RAM, and the fast Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chip.

SMARTPHONE DEALS OF THE WEEK

Deals are selected by the CNET Group commerce team, and may be unrelated to this article.

Why this deal matters

Super-thin phones are set to be a real trend for 2025, with Apple expected to launch the iPhone 17 Air later this year. But with this deal, you can get in on the act right now, all while saving some cash. And if you’re in the Android ecosystem, then this is the thin phone to check out, and soon.

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