VARIOUS-FILE: PREVIEW TO 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ CONCENTRATION CAMP

Record ID: 394671

  • Title: VARIOUS-FILE: PREVIEW TO 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ CONCENTRATION CAMP
  • Date: 21st January 2005
  • Summary: (BM11) UNKNOWN LOCATION (FILE)(REUTERS) 1. VARIOUS OF ADOLF HITLER, LEADER OF THE NAZI PARTY TRAVELLING IN MOTORCADE (2 SHOTS) 0.06 2. NAZI RALLY 0.09 3. HITLER SALUTING AT RALLY/ MORE OF RALLY (2 SHOTS) 0.14 (BM11) WARSAW, POLAND (FILE - 1943)(REUTERS) 4. VARIOUS JEWS EXPELLED FROM WARSAW GHETTOS BEING LOADED ONTO TRAIN
  • Embargoed: 5th February 2005 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: VARIOUS LOCATIONS
  • City:
  • Country: Belgium Poland Germany Russia
  • Reuters ID: LVAET87FQA3RX1F1YPILB1WBMLOW
  • Story Text: 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz
    camp where about 1.5 million people died.


    On Jan. 27, hundreds of survivors and dozens of
    world leaders will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the
    camp's liberation by the Soviet army and pay homage to the
    estimated 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, murdered there
    by the Nazis.

    Set up in 1940 by occupying Nazi forces near the town
    of Oswiecim in southern Poland as a labour camp for Poles,
    Auschwitz gradually became the centrepiece in Nazi dictator
    Adolf Hitler's "final solution" plan to exterminate Jews.

    The scale of the industrialised killing at the camp,
    the cruelty of the guards and the pseudo-medical
    experiments conducted on prisoners by Nazi doctors have
    made Auschwitz synonymous with a coldly efficient genocide
    and total degradation of humanity.

    Men, women and children, mostly Jewish, but Gypsies,
    Russians and Poles too from Nazi-occupied Europe were taken
    to Auschwitz in overcrowded cattle trains. Many died of
    hunger and suffocation during the journey which usually
    lasted days.

    Terrified, foul-smelling and starving, those who made
    the trip were often relieved at the prospect of fresh air
    and food. They did not know that the smoke from nearby
    chimneys was coming from crematoria burning the bodies of
    earlier arrivals.

    Illusions were quickly dispelled as the guards
    separated those capable of hard work from the elderly and
    children who were sent straight to the gas chambers -- the
    process known in the camp as "selection."
    Families were divided and many women who did not want
    to part with their small children were shot on the spot.

    Those who survived the "selection", not knowing what happened to
    fa
    mily and friends, were stripped of their
    clothes, belongings and identity. A number was tattooed on
    their arm and they were given a soup bowl and spoon.

    Dressed in characteristic striped uniforms, the
    prisoners were then marched towards the labour camp under
    the gate adorned with giant inscription "Arbeit Macht Frei"
    (work sets one free) that came to symbolise the depth of
    Nazi cynicism.

    The smell of burning corpses confirmed their worst
    suspicions as they gradually realised what fate met the
    others.

    Crammed in bare wooden or brick barracks, prisoners
    worked 12-hour days in construction and factories. Better
    jobs were found in the kitchens or offices. They offered a
    chance to "organise" , steal food and thus survive.

    After sleepless nights and long hours of backbreaking
    work, the prisoners were forced outside to attend
    roll-calls which lasted for hours. Those who died were
    piled up next to the standing to be counted.

    In the evening, drastic punishment for the slightest
    failure or simply a wrong gesture was meted out in what
    historians called a deliberate attempt to strip the inmates
    of their humanity.

    Compounded by epidemics, the death rate of prisoners
    was 19-25 percent a month in 1942-43.

    Some prisoners were subjected to experiments by Nazi
    doctors, led by the notorious Dr Josef Mengele who killed
    hundreds, seeking to prove theories of Ayryan supremacy.

    And yet, among the misery, death and the struggle for
    survival, some inmates found the strength to help not just
    themselves. Stolen food would be shared and prisoners on
    their last legs hidden from further selections for the gas
    chambers.

    A dark, macabre humour existed, said Myriam Nick, a Jew
    who survived several camps before arriving in Auschwitz in
    1944.

    Many in the camp believed the Nazis were using human
    fat to produce soap and Nick said friends would joke with
    each other when saying goodbye - "Maybe one day, we'll meet
    again lying side by side as two bars of soap."
    With the "final solution" accelerating just as the
    Nazis began to realise they could lose the war, the death
    factory at Auschwitz ran out of capacity in mid-1944.

    The crematoria could not cope with the volume of bodies
    so pits were dug to burn them.

    Auschwitz was not the end for all prisoners. Some were
    moved to new camps, others escaped and survived the war.

    Among 60,000 who were marched out of Auschwitz just two
    weeks before liberation. The majority died, their corpses
    lining the roads near the camp.

    When stunned Red Army soldiers arrived at Auschwitz,
    they were greeted by the sight of 7,000 emaciated inmates
    who had been left behind by fleeing Nazis.




    dw/vr




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