World History

source-https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/january-27/soviets-liberate-auschwitz


snip-"Auschwitz was really a group of camps, designated I, II, and III. There were also 40 smaller “satellite” camps. It was at Auschwitz II, at Birkenau, established in October 1941, that the SS created a complex, monstrously orchestrated killing ground: 300 prison barracks; four “bathhouses” in which prisoners were gassed; corpse cellars; and cremating ovens. Thousands of prisoners were also used for medical experiments overseen and performed by the camp doctor, Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death.”


snip-"The Red Army had been advancing deeper into Poland since mid-January. Having liberated Warsaw and Krakow, Soviet troops headed for Auschwitz. In anticipation of the Soviet arrival, SS officers began a murder spree in the camps, shooting sick prisoners and blowing up crematoria in a desperate attempt to destroy the evidence of their crimes. When the Red Army finally broke through, Soviet soldiers encountered 648 corpses and more than 7,000 starving camp survivors. There were also six storehouses filled with hundreds of thousands of women’s dresses, men's suits and shoes that the Germans did not have time to burn."

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THE LIBERATION OF KL AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU – 27.01.1945
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Behinds the scenes of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau | article - Instytut Pileckiego

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Behinds the scenes of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau | article
"The question is often asked how it was possible that the descendants of Heine and Goethe were able to subject other nations in the heart of Europe to such a terrible fate in the first half of the 20th century". Article by Professor Tadeusz Panecki.

Prof. Tadeusz Panecki

THE LIBERATION OF KL AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU – 27.01.1945

One of the key problems plaguing the post-war generation and hampering historical awareness of the years 1939–45 is the issue of the genocide committed by Nazi Germany. The question is often asked how it was possible that the descendants of Heine and Goethe were able to subject other nations in the heart of Europe to such a terrible fate in the first half of the 20th century. Moreover, why did the civilized world take no affirmative action to put a stop to the atrocities being committed on such an unprecedented scale? These questions are often asked of the then leaders of the western democratic world, the governmental heads of the great Anglo-Saxon powers who possessed the military means perhaps not to prevent but at least to minimalize the tragic consequences of the extermination of the nations of occupied Europe: Jews, Romas, Poles, Russians and others. The genocide committed by the Germans was implemented mainly in extermination camps, that is factories of death established on occupied Polish land, and was carried out almost without hindrance right up until the final days of the Second World War. The largest Nazi German extermination camp was established in April 1940: KL Auschwitz-Birkenau, where more than 1.5 million human lives were claimed.

The leaders of the United States of America and Great Britain were well aware that the Germans were exterminating Jews, Poles, Russians and citizens of other nations en masse at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. News of the atrocities being committed there was delivered by representatives of the Polish government-in-exile in London which received up-to-date intelligence from both the Government Delegation for Poland and the Home Army command. In spite of this knowledge, however, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill did nothing to halt the mass atrocities being committed by the Germans in KL Auschwitz-Birkenau. The western Allies had the technical capabilities to bombard the gas chambers in the camp and their destruction would certainly have thwarted the Germans’ criminal plans at least for a certain time. The Americans in particular had this capability: it was their Superfortresses stationed in Great Britain and southern Italy which ran bombing raids on Romania’s oil refineries before landing at airfields in Ukraine where they would refuel and rearm before making the return journey with an escort of Soviet fighter planes. One such flight was made on 18 September 1944 when 107 of the United States 8th Air Force’s B-17 heavy bombers carried out a supply drop for the insurgents fighting in Warsaw. Possibilities did indeed exist and yet the western leaders decided not to bomb the German installations in KL Auschwitz-Birkenau apparently out of concern for the loss of life among prisoners that such an operation might cause.

An open but also particularly significant question on the present issue is whether or not Joseph Stalin was as apprised of the situation as were Roosevelt and Churchill. It is difficult with the currently available documentation to prove conclusively one way or the other if the Soviet leader knew exactly what the Nazi German Auschwitz-Birkenau camp was. At the same time, it is also difficult to believe that Stalin, with his far-reaching network of agents operating throughout Europe, was unaware of the nature of the camp built by the Germans near the Polish town of Oświęcim annexed into the Third Reich, a camp in which citizens of his own country were being imprisoned and murdered. What is more, the Soviet leader remained in constant contact with the leaders of the USA and Great Britain regarding the issues of military strategy and the situation in areas occupied by the Third Reich via letters and face-to-face meetings (for example the conference of the ‘Big Three’ in Teheran between 28 November and 1 December 1943) prior to the liberation of KL Auschwitz-Birkenau. The issue of German crimes was one of the sticking points in the relations between the leaders of the three great powers. It is possible, then, to claim with a large amount of certainty that the leader of the Soviet Union was aware of the nature of the camp and of the scale of the atrocities being committed there. If Roosevelt and Churchill had the operational means to destroy the camp’s crematoria from the air (which, we know, did not happen), then Stalin possessed the key to the liberation of the camp since at least the summer of 1944 when the Red Army’s land forces came within range of the area in which the largest of Nazi Germany’s death factories was located.


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