By: Elena Kingsbury, FSWC Senior Educator

Strand B.3.5- Canadian government response to the Holocaust, acts of hate and human rights violations. Learning on the impact that global changes in understanding and legislation around human rights since World War II have had on the development of Canada’s responses to acts of hate and human rights violations.

The 80^th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz: January 27, 2025

January 27, 2025, will mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet troops. Since then, more than any other Holocaust site, Auschwitz-Birkenau has become the main symbol of the horrors of the Nazi plan to exterminate European Jews. The evidence left behind, in combination with the courage of surviving witnesses to recount their excruciating experiences in Auschwitz has given future generations the critical ability to center Jewish voices and experiences when learning about this history.

Between 1940 and 1945, the Nazis and their collaborators deported about 1.3 million people to Auschwitz, of which more than 1.1 million were murdered, the vast majority of them Jewish. Other victims included Poles, Roma, and Soviet prisoners of war. In August 1944, there were more than 135,000 prisoners across the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex. In January 1945, as the Soviet Red Army approached the camp situated in Poland, almost 60,000 prisoners were forced to leave on a death march westward.

When the Soviet Army's 322nd Rifle Division entered Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, they found a hellish landscape of destruction. About 7,000 prisoners had been left behind, most of whom were seriously ill, including many children under the age of 15. Former Polish prisoner, Wanda Dramińska, recalled the moment of liberation: “At some point in the distance, we noticed the silhouettes of white-clad men who were walking towards the camp. We were not sure who these men were, and we even feared that it might be the Germans who wanted to eliminate us. (...) Immediately there were shouts of “hello comrades.” The Soviet soldiers told us not to be afraid, because “the Germans are gone.”

Regina Grimberg, a Jewish member of the French Resistance, remembered the emotional scene that followed: “It is impossible to describe in human words the meeting of the imprisoned, saved from certain death, with their liberators. Soviet officers and soldiers in rags, exhausted, freezing cold, but victorious, cried like little children at the sight of piles of corpses in front of barracks and people in agony, resembling skeletons, stacked on bunks. The female prisoners screamed, sobbed, and lovingly touched the clothes of their liberators to find out that these people were real, and kissed their hands."

The large number of children imprisoned in the camp made the largest impression on liberators. Soviet lieutenant Yuri Ilinsky described his shock at seeing “Children… children behind the wires… A whole crowd of children. From tiny two or three-year-olds to teenagers. Skinny, ragged, sick, hungry. We gave them everything that was in our backpacks."

Polish doctor Tadeusz Chowaniec shared his own observations while tending to the survivors, stating, “The children make a terrifying sight. Prematurely devastated organisms, aged, with sunken eyes. And yet these children screamed and played.”

In the main camp and Birkenau, Soviet soldiers discovered the corpses of about 600 prisoners who had been shot by the withdrawing SS or who had succumbed to exhaustion. They also found 370,000 men's suits, 837,000 articles of women's clothing, and more than seven tonnes of human hair. These terrible artefacts were a testament to the humanity of the people to whom they belonged and helped convey the all-encompassing totality of the “Final Solution” as a central, soul-crushing part of the Second World War.

Sources:

https://www.auschwitz.org/en/history/liberation/day-of-liberation/

https://www.jhi.pl/en/articles/impossible-to-describe-liberation-auschwitz-january-27-1945,4900