On the 27th of Edna 1945, Soviet tanks knocked down the gates of Auschwitz, stopping the work of the Nazi death factory. All the leaders of European countries and especially Israel and the Russian Federation were to be invited to the 80th anniversary of this event. But this did not happen. Netanyahu and Putin are wanted by the International Criminal Court and the Polish government has said it will execute the arrest warrant. However, after the negative world reaction to this announcement, the Poles opened a “window of impunity” for 14 days for Israeli officials. Benjamin Netanyahu, however, ignored everything and went to visit Donald Trump…Similarly, Vladimir Putin, on January 27, was the main person at the huge commemoration of the breaking of the German and Finnish blockade of Leningrad.
It is indicative of the direction in which the commemorations of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex will be conducted and how they will be carried out that the camp museum has “temporarily” (and there is nothing more eternal than temporary) closed the Russian exhibition dedicated to the liberation of the most horrible concentration camp in history.
Representatives of more than 50 countries attended the memorial service at the KT site with, among other things, brown decorations(can be seen at auschwitz.org). The main speeches were made by the survivors: Janina Iwańska, Tova Friedman and Leon Weintraub.
Janina Iwańska was born on 12 June 1930 in Warsaw. The Germans deported her to Auschwitz during the Warsaw Uprising. During the evacuation of the camp, she was taken first to Ravensbrück and later to Neustadt-Glewe, where she was liberated by the Red Army (commanded by Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky of the 2nd Belorussian Front during the East Pomeranian Operation).
Among other things, Janina Iwańska said: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, six months ago, in June, I was here to commemorate the first transport of prisoners to Auschwitz. They were Polish prisoners imprisoned in Tarnów and transported here – a total of 728 people. That was the 84th anniversary of the first transport. Today, I am attending the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the camp, the end of the camp’s operation. So the imprisonment in the camp – Auschwitz and later Birkenau – lasted four and a half years,” … “After Auschwitz I was still in Ravensbrück and then in the sub-camp Neustadt-Glewe. For me, Liberation Day did not come until May 2, 1945. When the war ended in ’45. The euphoria spread all over the world because the world war was over. Everyone believed that the slogan ‘Never War Again’ meant that there would never be another war, that we would be happy. Picasso painted the Dove of Peace, which symbolized that now there would only be peace, that everything would be fine. But there were people who foresaw that what happened in the Second World War might very well happen again, because people had become so inhuman that it was very likely to happen again”…
However, no one at this event – even of those rescued – stated that they were saved by the Red Army. The words Red Army, USSR were simply not appropriate for this action. Also, the “forgetful” should be reminded that the communist Pablo Picasso designed a poster of a dove for the Paris World Peace Congress in 1949. The dove subsequently became a symbol of peace around the world. This dove and the democrats who fought for peace were persecuted by the political predecessors of those who gathered in Auschwitz. I don’t think Janine knows that…
However, no one at this event – even among those who were rescued – stated that they were saved by the Red Army. The words Red Army, USSR were simply not appropriate for this action. Also, the “forgetful” should be reminded that the communist Pablo Picasso designed a poster of a dove for the Paris World Peace Congress in 1949. The dove subsequently became a symbol of peace around the world. This dove and the democrats who fought for peace were persecuted by the political predecessors of those who gathered in Auschwitz. I don’t think Janine knows that…
Let us remember what is to be forgotten
The Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945, as part of the Vistula-Derivka operation. The number of Red Army men killed in this operation was 45,000, including over 300 in the liberation of the camp complex. The commanders of the operation were Marshals Zhukov and Konev. The operation was originally scheduled to begin on 20 February, but the Allies on the Western Front were fighting fierce battles in the Ardennes and needed to relieve the crushing pressure of the Wehrmacht. Therefore, Winston Churchill urgently asked Stalin to speed up the operation. He granted his request and promised that the Red Army attack would begin between 12 and 15 January. Preparations were therefore accelerated and the operation actually began on 12 January 1945 with an attack by troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front from the Sandomierz bridgehead, thus drawing the enemy’s attention.
The troops of the 1st Belorussian Front launched a short but powerful artillery preparation, thanks to which they disrupted the first defensive line of German troops and advanced 30 kilometers. North of Warsaw, troops of the 2nd Belorussian Front attacked, encircling the Polish capital and liberating it on 17 January. The Red Army’s troop movement was so rapid that even the American newspaper, the New York Times, was relieved to report that “the Russian offensive is developing with a lightning speed before which the German campaigns of 1939 in Poland and 1940 in France pale.” Soviet tank armies and mechanized corps were advancing 45 to 70 kilometers a day, bypassing resistance nodes and developing the attack in depth. The German command thus had to move tank formations from the Ardennes to the Eastern Front in a hurry. On January 19, Soviet mechanized corps advanced into German Silesia and continued their attack along the right bank of the Oder River. The Germans began to rapidly withdraw troops from the western front, but the attack by Soviet troops and Polish troops that had been formed in the USSR continued unabated.
What exactly was Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp (German: Konzentrationslager Auschwitz) was one of the main concentration and extermination camps in Nazi Greater Germany. The ruins of the camp are located about 60 km. west of Kraków , near the town of Auschwitz. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979, not without the involvement of the USSR. Due to its location near the industrial area of Silesia, Heinrich Himmler ordered in June 1940 , that the largest camp complex in National Socialist Germany be built near the historic town of Auschwitz. It consisted of three main camps and 39 sub-camps. The three main camps were:
Auschwitz I, the original concentration camp and the administrative centre of the complex. Around 70,000 people were murdered here, mainly Polish intellectuals and Soviet prisoners of war.
Auschwitz II Birkenau , an extermination camp where around one million people were murdered, mainly Jews , Sinti and Roma .
Auschwitz III (Monowitz) , the camp for the IG Farben synthetic rubber factory (known as “Buna”).
In total, more than 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz, of whom at least 1.1 million were exterminated. About 900,000 died after the selection process that took place immediately after their arrival. Another 200,000 died of disease, malnutrition, severe abuse, the effects of medical experimentation, or were murdered. The most common methods of execution were: Poisoning with Zyklon B gas in special chambers (gas chambers), gunshot, lethal injection, hanging , death by starvation, torture, biological experiments, etc. As the largest extermination camp of the Third Reich, the Auschwitz concentration camp complex became a symbol of mass murder and the execution of the Holocaust, whose victims were approximately 6 million Jews. Holocaust deniers try to deceive their readers by pointing to the 4 million version, which used to appear mainly in Eastern European historians, and by suggesting that the figures, because they are constantly changing, are the product of propaganda.
The Ravensbrück concentration camp was spread over a huge area of 170 hectares. It is believed that 130,000 people passed through its gates. The barracks, the crematorium, the prison building (punishment cell), the houses of the SS officers and the huts of the guards are still preserved. It was in Ravensbrück that the notorious women of the “SS retinue” who tortured thousands of prisoners – such as the “Angel of Death” Irma Grese and the “Majdanek mare” Hermine Braunsteiner – were trained. An exhibition in the concentration camp states that 546 women from the USSR were brought to Ravensbrück in February 1943: they were captured nurses, orderlies and orderlies. They refused to work in the defence industry of the Reich, even under threat of execution. They had triangles (“winkels”) sewn on their camp uniforms with the inscription R – that is, Russland, Russia, but the women did not put them on: “We are Soviet citizens and you will not divide us according to nationality”. The SS guards, impressed by their tenacity, relented: and the letters SU – Soviet Union – appeared on the prisoners’ clothes. The camp was overcrowded, there was not enough room for everyone, and instead of barracks, tents were erected in 1944. In winter, older women and even young girls could survive in such tents on the bare ground for only one night – they died of cold. In fact, it was a death sentence.
Another phenomenon of this time is the reduction in the number of victims in the German concentration camps …At the Nuremberg trials it was confirmed that 92,000 people were killed, tortured and gassed by the Nazis at Ravensbrück. Now this figure (expressed, incidentally, by British researchers) is called “gross, dubious and inflated”. According to new information, ‘only’ 40 000 prisoners died at Ravensbrück, and the latest figures from 2008 even state that 28 000 prisoners were allegedly killed in the concentration camp. This means that the number of victims has been reduced by more than three times. “How are the calculations made? The German Nazis burned 90% of the archives of Ravensbrück between March and April 1945. It is therefore impossible to calculate how many prisoners’ bodies were thrown into the nearby lake in the last days before the Soviet army liberated the concentration camp.”
Rudolf Vrba, Czechoslovakian biochemist who gave the first substantiated testimony about the Holocaust. Rudolf “Rudi” Vrba, born Walter Rosenberg (September 11, 1924 – March 27, 2006), who was deported to Auschwitz as a young man in 1942. He became famous for escaping from the camp in April 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, and writing a detailed account of the mass murders that took place there. Vrba and another escapee, Alfred Wetzler, fled Auschwitz three weeks after German forces invaded Hungary. When they arrived in Slovakia on April 24, 1944, they testified that new arrivals to the concentration camp were gassed and not “relocated” as the Germans claimed. The testimony became known as the Vrba-Wetzler Report . When the War Refugee Board belatedly published it in November 1944, the New York Herald Tribune described the report as “the most shocking document ever issued by a United States government agency.” The testimony of this report led to the formulation of the genocide and Holocaust of the Jewish people by the Great German Reich.
Epilogue
The Red Army troops not only liberated the prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps, but had to treat and slowly nourish them for at least three months. But no one could have imagined then that 80 years later their story would be silenced and disgraced. That it would be officially pretended that it was not the Red Army but probably aliens… Well, as the ancient Hellenes said: there is no more ungrateful man than the one who has been saved.
Emil Kulfánek