80 Years of Liberation of Auschwitz – Has the World Learnt Its Lessons?

“The act of remembering the evils of the past remains a vital task, and in so doing we inform our present and shape our future,” King Charles said in his address on the occasion of commemorations marking 80 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp

In the Nazi campaign to eradicate Europe’s Jewish population, Auschwitz extermination camp was at the centre of that genocide. The former Nazi death camp Auschwitz is in Poland. Auschwitz is in fact not one camp, but two. Auschwitz Birkenau or Auschwitz II, a much bigger complex was built 3 KM away from Auschwitz I, to expedite the Nazi’s Final Solution. More than 1.1 million people were massacred by Nazis at Auschwitz mostly Jews, but the victims also included Poles, Roma and Soviet Prisoners of War. 80 years ago, on January 27, 1945, the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz in the German occupied Poland. When the Soviets liberated the Camp, they found about 7,000 of sick and starving survivors. Auschwitz registers a record number of visitors, some two million visitors each year.

After the start of World War II, Adolf Hitler, the chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, implemented a policy that came to be known as the “Final Solution.” Hitler was determined not just to isolate Jews in Germany and countries annexed by the Nazis, subjecting them to dehumanizing regulations and random acts of violence. Instead, he became convinced that his “Jewish problem” would be solved only with the elimination of every Jew in his domain, along with artists, educators, Romas, communists, homosexuals, the mentally and physically handicapped and others deemed unfit for survival in Nazi Germany.

To complete this mission, Hitler ordered the construction of death camps. Unlike concentration camps, which had existed in Germany since 1933 and were detention centers for Jews, political prisoners and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state, death camps existed for the sole purpose of killing Jews and other “undesirables,” in what became known as the Holocaust.

Auschwitz was arguably the largest and deadliest of all the Nazi death camps or extermination camps. It was opened in the spring of 1940. Auschwitz was located on a former military base outside Oswiecim, a town in German-occupied Poland situated near Krakow, one of the country’s largest cities. Auschwitz was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp in Oswiecim, Auschwitz II in Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp built with several gas chambers, Auschwitz III in Monowitz, a labor camp created to staff a factory for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben and several other sub-camps. 

Auschwitz- I ‘s notorious main gate contains the infamous Nazi slogan written above the entrance “Arbeit Macht Frei” in German – meaning work will set you free. Prisoners arrived to Auschwitz in windowless, cramped goods trains. On arrival at the camp, the Nazis selected those whom they could use as forced labourers. Others – old people, infirm, many women and children were gassed to death soon after their arrival. Such ‘unfit to work people’ were ordered to take showers immediately on arrival at the camp. However, the bathhouses to which they marched were disguised gas chambers. Once inside, the prisoners were exposed to Zyklon-B poison gas. Individuals marked as unfit for work were never officially registered as Auschwitz inmates. For this reason, it is impossible to calculate the exact number of lives lost in the camp.

For those ‘fit’ prisoners who initially escaped the gas chambers, an undetermined number died from overwork, disease, insufficient nutrition or the daily struggle for survival in brutal living conditions. Arbitrary executions, torture and retribution happened daily, in front of the other prisoners. Some Auschwitz prisoners were subjected to inhumane medical experimentation. The chief perpetrator of this barbaric research was Josef Mengele , a German physician who began working at Auschwitz in 1943. Mengele, who came to be known as the “Angel of Death,” performed a range of cruel medical experiments on detainees.

Nazi commanders experimented with ways to kill en masse. They feared that shooting people was too stressful for their soldiers, and so came up with more efficient means of murder. Experimental gas vans had been used to kill mentally disabled people in Poland as early as 1939. Poisonous fumes were pumped into a sealed compartment to suffocate those inside. By the winter of 1941, the Nazis had constructed gas chambers at Auschwitz. The first people to be gassed were a group of Polish and Soviet prisoners in September 1941. German chemicals company IG Farben built and operated a synthetic rubber factory at Auschwitz III. Other private companies like Krupp and Siemens-Schuckert also ran factories nearby, to use the prisoners as slave labour.

Jews from all across Nazi-controlled Europe made up the vast majority of the victims. Almost one million Jewish people were murdered at Auschwitz. Some 75,000 Polish civilians, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, 25,000 Roma and Sinti, as well as Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and political prisoners were also put to death by Hitler’s German state at the Auschwitz complex. 

In the Holocaust between 1941 and 1945, across German-occupied Europe, Nazis and their collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews, around two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population.

Hopefully, the world has learnt a thing or two, after the terrible Holocaust. “I hope I’m wrong,” says the Holocaust survivor Ivor Perl, 93. “But there’s a saying that if one doesn’t learn from history, you’re cursed to live through it again.”

The legal term “genocide” was coined and recognised as an international crime, following the Nazi mass murder. It refers to acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. The 80 years anniversary on Jan. 27 is a time for the humanity to reflect on racism and intolerance, and to put a stop to all kinds of “genocide”, small or big.

[Photo by Alexandre Lepage QC, via Wikimedia Commons]

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.