We are now at the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Russian soldiers liberated it on January 27th of 1945. The Germans had abandoned it on January 18, 1945.
60,000 prisoners from 3 other camps were marched west because of the approaching Soviets. Prisoners were given the choice to join the march or stay behind. Many joined the march because they feared the Germans would shoot them if they stayed behind.
This was a death march. Many did not make it because they were elderly, or too sick, or infirm, or too young, or injured. Those who did not die right away were shot and left in the road.
In one group, a survivor says, of the 3,000 who marched, only 500 survived.
There were 5,800 prisoners, including 611 children, left behind by the Nazis at Birkenau (Auschwitz 2), and 1,200 abandoned to the Russians at Auschwitz I.
When the camp was liberated, the same barracks in Birkenau were used to house German Prisoners of War captured by the Russians. A year later the camp was empty. Many of the German POWs had been released and yet many others had been marched into Russia to other camps. They became slave laborers, some for as long as 10 years, in the rebuilding of the Soviet Union, which had suffered a lot of war damage.
The 60th anniversary is an important one. It is common belief that there will not be but a few survivors of the death camps when the 70th anniversary rolls around. They have stories to tell. I think we owe it to them and to ourselves to educate ourselves and our children about what happened.
My daughter is 7, and I have educated her about what happened. Kids are resilient little sponges�and only you know if your child is mature enough to know about this history. I think it is important to teach your children about racism and hatred early on, so that their little minds will not be able to form it.
It�s important to note that Hitler�s ideologies were not rare for his time. They were rooted in the beliefs and fears of the people, and he seized that opportunity to put his �Final Solution� into action. We must not let that happen again.
2/3�s of Europe�s Jewish population was murdered, including 1 and a half million children. Also murdered were political prisoners, opposition of the Nazi party, Polish, Russians, Gypsies, homosexuals, and it�s little known, some Catholics.
Anti-Semitism is alive and well in the world today. It is everywhere, like a disease. It still exists in Poland and Germany. In Russia, Jews still deal with it today. France has seen a rise in anti-Semitic activity including defacing of temples and vandalizing Jewish cemeteries. Great Britain�s leaders have said this will not be tolerated. They have dealt swift punishments to those that break the law there and commit hate crimes.
Genocide didn�t just occur in Europe in the 1940�s.. It occurred decades later in Bosnia, Darfur (Sudan), Cambodia and Rwanda. Maybe the world did not learn from the Holocaust.
Indifference will be the death of us all.
Unless we learn from this.
From a speech by Elie Wiesel, a child survivor of Auschwitz and the other of �Night�, a book about his experiences in the Holocaust:
Yitgadal veyitkadash, Shmay Rabba: Weep for Thy children whose death was not mourned then: weep for them, our Father in heaven, for they were deprived of their right to be buried, for heaven itself became their cemetery.
8:42 am - January 26, 2005
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