0th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz
01-29-2015, 12:21 PM
70 years ago this week, on 27 January 1945, troops of the 1st Ukrainian Army arrived at the gates of a death camp located outside Oświęcim, Poland. Auschwitz is a name that would go on to embody the Holocaust. Of its 12 million victims, at least 1.2 million - possibly up to 2 million - perished within its sprawling compound.
The Soviet liberators - veterans of 4 years' brutal fighting on the Eastern Front - had witnessed unspeakable horrors in their push westwards, including the aftermath of many a Russian village after SS troops had passed through it. What they beheld here, however, paled in comparison. Thousands of surviving inmates, meagrely dressed for the harsh January, many of whom were jammed into barrack huts stricken with dysentery. Quartmasters stores were methodically filled, row upon vast row, with suitcases, clothing, passports of the inmates; categorically compiled at the end of their final journey from all over Europe.
Then there were the gas chambers and crematoria - intact in the haste of the SS personnel that had neglected their destruction. Of course, the sickly smell of death, noticeable before you came in sight of the camp, belied their presence.
The Holocaust deserves remembrance as a gross perversion of humanity - a blight upon a people that had a coveted places as a cradle of scientific and cultural achievement among all Europe. I have known many Germans, and explored the country as a student; they are among the most level-headed people I have met, and proud of their country's standing. For such evil to have been committed in the name of their nation not a century ago is astounding.
That acts of near-genocide are being committed in this day and the recent past in Nigeria, Kurdistan, Rwanda and Bosnia, that anti-Semitism is on the rise and as we face an increasingly oppressive and belligerent Russia, it's all the more imperative that we never forget such blights on our past, and take steps to ensure that evil on this scale will never happen.
The Soviet liberators - veterans of 4 years' brutal fighting on the Eastern Front - had witnessed unspeakable horrors in their push westwards, including the aftermath of many a Russian village after SS troops had passed through it. What they beheld here, however, paled in comparison. Thousands of surviving inmates, meagrely dressed for the harsh January, many of whom were jammed into barrack huts stricken with dysentery. Quartmasters stores were methodically filled, row upon vast row, with suitcases, clothing, passports of the inmates; categorically compiled at the end of their final journey from all over Europe.
Then there were the gas chambers and crematoria - intact in the haste of the SS personnel that had neglected their destruction. Of course, the sickly smell of death, noticeable before you came in sight of the camp, belied their presence.
The Holocaust deserves remembrance as a gross perversion of humanity - a blight upon a people that had a coveted places as a cradle of scientific and cultural achievement among all Europe. I have known many Germans, and explored the country as a student; they are among the most level-headed people I have met, and proud of their country's standing. For such evil to have been committed in the name of their nation not a century ago is astounding.
That acts of near-genocide are being committed in this day and the recent past in Nigeria, Kurdistan, Rwanda and Bosnia, that anti-Semitism is on the rise and as we face an increasingly oppressive and belligerent Russia, it's all the more imperative that we never forget such blights on our past, and take steps to ensure that evil on this scale will never happen.
![[Image: 150126102625-01-auschwitz-liberation-012...ge-169.jpg]](http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150126102625-01-auschwitz-liberation-0126-exlarge-169.jpg)