68th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz

The Speech of Ivan Stiepanovich Martynushkin, Auschwitz liberator

Today, on 27th January, the International Holocaust Remembrance Day and 68th anniversary of the liberation by the Red Army of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, we are opening a unique exhibition of the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War under the name "Tragedy. Valour. Liberation", which is overflowing with deep meaning.

I happened to be directly involved in the liberation of the death camp in Oświęcim. In January 1945, I was a senior lieutenant, commanding the machine gun squad of the 1087th rifle regiment, 322nd division, 60th army of the 1st Ukrainian Front. Those times are impossible to forget.

On that day in Auschwitz, in the very town of sustained combat, and before my company, with only 50 men remaining, we faced a challenge – to remove the Germans based in the areas adjacent to those inconceivable, fenced facilities.

I could not even fathom that here was the “death camp”. I remember – 27th January 1945, it was damp, wet snow was falling. When we approached the vicinity of the concentration camp, the first thing we saw were fences with rows of barbed wire. In the distance, a group of people. First, they did not understand what was happening. Then they started waving their hands, shouting something. To what we saw in the camp, we had an entirely different attitude. The whole month we were on the offensive, our division had numbers comparable to a regiment. All the time there was a feeling in the back of the throat that they can kill you, and it did not pass. What had we liberated, what was the camp for? Only afterwards did I understand. And I was terrified. 

At the stop in Auschwitz, we had no time, the next day we set off further. Sub-units, which came a bit later, and army doctors rescued the prisoners and organised food for them. When our soldiers saw the first group of the prisoners, they were afraid to even approach them – they were almost unlike any human-beings. Only after washing, shaving, dressing, and feeding the prisoners did look like human-beings.

Today, I am now almost 90 years old. This is a great age for a man who survived the war. And from the perspective of the years that I lived through, I would especially like to emphasise today the decisive role of Soviet troops in the liberation of Eastern Europe from Nazi occupation. The price of the mission of liberation of our armed forces is very high. More than 600,000 fallen heroes, commanders and soldiers of the Red Army, died on the battlefields of Poland. Thanks to their sacrifice, the concentration camp in Oświęcim was liberated and Kraków saved from destruction – one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. I notice with satisfaction that the authorities, society, organisations of the veterans of the Republic Of Poland lovingly cherish the memory of our fallen compatriots, maintaining the monuments, graves of soldiers in the proper condition.

Today's exhibition is a good pretext to remind people once again of the historical truth, the decisive contribution of the USSR to a joint victory over Nazism. This is of particular significance in view of the fact that certain forces are trying to write history anew, whitewash the Nazi accomplices and lessen the contribution of our country to the victory over fascism.

The tragedy of the concentration camp in Oświęcim, as the alarm bell, awakens in our hearts the desire to keep sacred the memory of those terrible times; it reminds people of the need for a resolute fight against national socialism, chauvinism, xenophobia, extremism.

The memory of the horrors of the fascist concentration camps, for those here who were torn from life and for those who survived the atrocities and are still with us, cannot be extinguished – it cannot remain only in manuals, books, films, monuments, museum pieces, but must always live in the hearts of the citizens of Russia, Poland, the other liberated countries of Europe, especially in the younger generation.