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Auschwitz is liberated

3 min read

This week (Jan. 27) in 1945, the Auschwitz death camp, the symbol of the systemic execution of 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany, was liberated by the Soviet Red Army.

Weeks before, the Schutzstaffel (SS) guards running the death camps had fled, taking with them some 60,000 prisoners in a forced “evacuation” (the prisoners called it a “death march”) toward Germany, where the survivors were to be put to work defending Germany from the coming Allied invasion. That number was significantly reduced by the thousands of deaths that occurred on the march, not just from the freezing cold – many walked barefoot in threadbare clothing – but also because, as one marcher recalled, “Anyone who dared even to bend over, or who stopped even for a moment, was shot.”

Some 7,000 prisoners too weak to march or to labor on behalf of the Reich were left behind at Auschwitz, and although the Reichsfuhrer-SS, Heinrich Himmler, had given orders to kill them, most survived because the SS guards ordered to stay behind and carry out those killings had already fled.

Thus, when the Red Army entered Auschwitz, what they found defied belief. The 7,000 prisoners were all half-starved, most were half-naked, covered in mud or excrement, and near death. So near death, in fact, some 55 percent of them died after they were liberated but before enough doctors arrived to care for them. The survivors did slowly recover, only to later discover that their homes had been destroyed or sold, and many of their family members killed. Their lives would never be the same.

The Red Army also found hundreds of boxes of camp records detailing the extermination procedures and numbers of deaths that the Germans had failed to burn, as well as clothing (nearly 375,000 men’s suits and 840,000 women’s dresses and coats) and jewelry destined for Berlin, but left behind. Nearly eight tons of human hair, to be used for a variety of purposes, was also found.

Two common stories were told by the liberators of Auschwitz and the other death camps. First, at every camp the prisoners would reach out and touch these liberators to convince themselves that they weren’t imagining this; it was real. Second, they made the liberators promise they would never let the world forget what they had seen here, so the world would never allow it to happen again.

At the gate of Auschwitz was – and so the world will never forget, still is – a cruelly mocking sign that says “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work makes you free”).

For most prisoners at Auschwitz, and at the thousands of other such camps constructed by the Nazis, it wasn’t work that made you free. It was death.

Bruce G. Kauffmann’s email address is bruce@historylessons.net.

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