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The Sixty-First Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz

Friday, January 27 marks the 61st anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi Concentration Camp. The main theme for this year’s observances is women and children Auschwitz prisoners.

The official observances were held at the foot of the Monument to the Victims of Fascism at the Birkenau site. Those taking part included former Auschwitz prisoners, representatives of veterans’ groups, state officials led by Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, members of the diplomatic corps, and local government officials. One of the highlights of the ceremony was a program of reminiscences prepared by former Auschwitz prisoners. The event concluded with the placing of flowers and the lighting of candles in front of the monument at Birkenau.

During the ceremonies, the Foundation Act of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust was open at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum for former prisoners to sign. During last year’s 60th anniversary observances, former Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp prisoners Władysław Bartoszewski and Simone Veil signed the Foundation Act in the name of former prisoners. Several hundred more former prisoners have signed the Act since then.

Friday Is the 61st Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz

January 24, Bielsko-Biała (PAP) – The 61st anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz German camp falls on Friday. The Red Army freed more than 7,000 badly exhausted prisoners. 231 Soviet soldiers fell while fighting to take Auschwitz, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the Monowitz sub-camp, and the city of Oświęcim from the Germans. Second lieutenant Gilmudin Bashirov and another man were killed just outside Auschwitz I.

The last general roll call in Auschwitz was held on January 17, 1945. An extant report by the camp resistance movement states that a total of 67,012 prisoners were counted that day—31,894 in Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and 35,118 in the sub-camps.

In mid-January 1945, the Nazis began the final evacuation and liquidation of Auschwitz, as a result of the approaching Soviet offensive. The Death Marches began. A total of 58,000 people were marched out of Auschwitz and its sub-camps. The first columns marched mostly towards Wodzisław Śląski and Gliwice, from where the prisoners were transported into the depths of the Reich on open freight cars. At least 9,000 prisoners, and more probably 15,000, died during the evacuation.

Over 9,000 prisoners, including about 500 children, remained in the camp. The SS garrison regarded them as incapable of evacuation on foot. All of them were to be liquidated. The Nazis managed to kill about 700 of them, including 200 who were burned alive in barracks at the sub-camp near the Fuersten coal mine in Wesoła near Mysłowice.

The Germans also set about destroying the camp buildings. They blew up crematoria II and III in Auschwitz II-Birkenau on January 20, and crematorium V on January 26. On January 23, they burned “Kanada II,” the complex of storehouses filled with property plundered from the victims.

Most of the SS had left the camp by January 26. Oblivious to sniping by the last of the guards, prisoners clambered over the storehouses in search of food and clothing.

Many of them were shot as they attempted to ward off death by starvation. Others died after eating too much. Some prisoners, mostly those assigned to the camp hospitals, attempted to set up some kind of organization, and above all to help the bedridden. This mutual aid among the prisoners was a natural continuation of the camp resistance movement.

The mission of liberating the city of Oświęcim and the Auschwitz camp fell to the soldiers of the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front, who advanced along the left bank of the Vistula from Cracow towards Upper Silesia. The 100th Lvov Infantry Division, under General-Major Fyodor Krasavin, was directly involved in the Oświęcim operation.

Soldiers crossed the Vistula on January 26. The next day, Saturday morning, division reconnaissance entered the grounds of the Monowitz sub-camp. They liberated the center of Oświęcim at noon. After a brief skirmish with the retreating Germans, they simultaneously entered the grounds of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, about 3 kilometers away, at 3:00 p.m.

Soviet losses in the liberation of Auschwitz, Birkenau, Monowitz, and the city of Oświęcim amounted to 231 officers and men, including Lt. Col. Semen Byesprozwanniy, commander of the 472nd Battalion, who was posthumously awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Polish Republic by Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski in 2000.

A total of about 7,000 prisoners were liberated in Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz. The Red Army also freed about 500 prisoners in several sub-camps.

Prisoners healthy enough to do so started home immediately after being liberated. The rest were placed in hospitals that the Red Army medical service and local Polish civilians set up at the sites of the camps. There were over 4,500 former prisoners, most of them Jews, from more than 20 countries, in these hospitals. 200 of the patients were under 15. Some patients were sheltered in private homes.

For many of them, the reflexes acquired in Auschwitz were stronger than the sense of reality. Weeks after liberation, nurses were still discovering bread hidden under mattresses by patients who did not believe they would receive another portion the following day. Some patients ran and hid when told to that they would be going to the showers, fearing that they would find gas instead of water there. Others resisted medical injections because of the association with lethal injections of phenol.

Meals had to be dosed like medicine so that the patients would not die of overeating. At first, for instance, they received one tablespoon of potato soup three times a day, before gradually being allowed to eat several spoonfuls at a time.

The majority of the former prisoners left the Soviet and Polish Red Cross field hospitals three to four months after liberation. (PAP)

The International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust (ICEAH)

Former Auschwitz prisoners signed the Foundation Act of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust (ICEAH) during last year’s observances marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the camp. The ICEAH is an integral part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim. It is a continuation of the task embarked upon by those who survived the camp, so that Auschwitz will never be repeated anywhere.

Through education at a historical Holocaust site, supported by the collections and archives and drawing on more than fifty years of research and educational experience by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, the Center contributes to a better understanding of the tragedy of Auschwitz as a symbol of genocide and the Holocaust.

The authenticity of the historical site and the importance of Auschwitz to different ethnic and religious groups have made the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim a natural and exceptional education center. The grounds of the death camp, relics, documents, works of art, and above all the memory of contemporary civilization’s largest cemetery are preserved there.

The Center Project will make it possible to transform the ongoing educational work of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and adapt it to the requirements and challenges of the 21st century.