Auschwitz Liberated (1945)
Sat Jan 27, 1945
Image: Prisoners being led out of the Auschwitz gates, possibly a re-enactment taken a few weeks after January 27th. The motto "Arbeit macht frei" (English: "Work sets you free") can be seen above the gate. [Wikipedia]
On this day in 1945, the Soviet Red Army liberated Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, the largest such complex during the Holocaust. In 2005, the United Nations named today as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
As Soviet forces approached the camp, Nazis attempted to evacuate prisoners from the camp and to destroy evidence of their atrocities. Approximately 56,000 inmates were forced on a "death march" west away from the camp through the Polish winter.
Around 15,000 prisoners (about 1 in 4) perished during their forced march, and, by the time the Soviets had arrived, only 9,000 remained on-site, monitored by a handful of remaining SS guards and staff.
The buildings themselves were left largely intact, along with large amounts of clothing, seized items, and human hair, alongside the dying prisoners left behind.
One Red Army general, Vasily Petrenko, is quoted as saying, "I who saw people dying every day was shocked by the Nazis' indescribable hatred toward the inmates who had turned into living skeletons. I read about the Nazis' treatment of Jews in various leaflets, but there was nothing about the Nazis' treatment of women, children, and old men".
Efforts were made to document the atrocities, and to hospitalize the remaining inmates. Auschwitz remained in use as an ad hoc facility for German POWs until the end of the war in Europe later that year.
Since 2005, the day has been marked annually by the United Nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating all those targeted and killed by the Third Reich, including around six million Jews and five million others.
- Date: 1945-01-27
- Learn More: www.smithsonianmag.com, en.wikipedia.org, www.ushmm.org.
- Tags: #Fascism.
- Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org
Poland was occupied by Germany. Not some imaginary nation called Nazi. Your text is SEO optimized to avoid connecting Germany with atrocities they committed and the only time "Germany" is used is together with "POWs".
Think about that for a second. Because soon you will be writing that Palestinians genocided themselves.
Im not sure your logic tracks. The word “Nazi,” in regards to “Nazi-occupied ____” is irrevocably tied to the Nazi regime. Nazi Germany. These are all incredibly common phrases used to describe the holocaust and WW2 era Europe.
How does any of that mean, using that logic of “Palestine genocided themselves,” that this is akin to saying “the Jews genocided themselves?”
Not to pick on you, but just to bring up a larger point about this apparent battleground of words; this is the kind of nitpicking that everyone gets lost in and doesn’t end up doing anything else but police how we talk. Are there important discussions to be had about how language impacts the way people think? Absolutely. But so much of political discourse sort of runs on this track of people drawing lines about what sounds weird to them more than what’s actually harmful or what kind of language is systematically oppressing people.
This came off a little more attack-like than I intended, so I just want to say I don’t mean for it to, just trying to engage on the topic you brought up. You and I are probably pretty closely aligned, politically. So def no offense intended either way.