Death camp dig unearths defiant Jews' belongings

A CHILD'S ring. Twisted reading glasses. A few gold coins... scraps of personal dignity, hurriedly buried in a last act of defiance to keep them from falling into Nazi hands.

Israeli archaeologists, helped by Holocaust survivors, are writing a new chapter in the terrible history of the German death camp at Majdanek, Poland, by excavating grounds long thought to be empty.

Their findings show how doomed Jews furiously dug into the grassy ground with their hands to bury what personal possessions they had with them before they were murdered in the camp's gas chambers.