Holocaust Memorial Day

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day, as it is the 62nd anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz/Birkenau in present-day southern Poland by Russian forces moving against Nazi Germany. Auschwitz was not the first concentration camp to be liberated, but it has achieved extreme notoriety.

Auschwitz ended up being a slaughterhouse for human beings, set up specifically to kill and destroy on an industrial scale. During the early 1940s, the Nazi regimes in Germany and countries occupied during pushes in 1940 and 1941 had a policy of isolating those sections of society that were deemed to be inferior. A special focus was on the Jews, but the nefarious race laws meant that anyone who did not fit the description of the Aryan race was liable to be removed.

Following a period of social isolation, Jews and others would be rounded up in pogroms (raids, in some places referred to as razzias) and taken to the railway station. From there, trains would take them to concentration camps. This is not a Nazi invention; they were first conceived by the British during the Boer Wars in South Africa around the turn of the 19th/20th century. Apart from Auschwitz/Birkenau, there were hundreds of concentration camps across occupied Europe. Infamous names include Dachau, near Munich, Mauthausen in Austria, Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbrück to name but a few in Germany; Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia; Westerbork in Holland.

At the concentration camps, people would be stowed on board cattle trucks, box cars, without any facilities whatsoever. Water, toilets, food were all NOT provided. The journey could take days. The train would carry an armed guard, and anyone trying to abscond was liable to be shot on sight.

On arrival at Auschwitz, people would be hounded off the train like animals. Men, women and children would be lined up and brought in front of an SS officer [SS were the elite soldiers of the Nazis; the letters stand for Schutz Staffel, Adolf Hitler's Lifeguard]. He would decide for anyone to go right or left. One direction meant imminent death; the other meant survival in a labour camp. Those sent to the wrong direction would be directed into a changing room for the purpose of de-lousing. They were ordered to remove all their clothes, and everyone would be crammed into a small chamber with showerheads dangling from the ceiling. The last to leave was an SS officer who would throw some Zyklon-B crystals into the room. These would release hydrogen cyanide gas, which can kill in minutes.

After half an hour, the room would be opened and all inside were dead. The bodies were propped up into the walls as high as they would get to escape the gas which was at its densest nearest the floor. None would escape its deadly effects. The bodies were removed and any gold teeth extracted. The belongings would be meticulously sorted and logged. The bodies were then taken to furnaces and incinerated. This was done at an industrial scale. One to two million people were killed in this fashion at Auschwitz alone.

When Russian forces approached the camps, the Nazis tried to obliterate all traces of their evil work by blowing up the ovens. Sufficient evidence remained though. Auschwitz remains today as it was found 62 years ago. The gate with the euphemistic quote "Arbeit macht frei" [Labour Liberates], and the barbed wire fences, which were electrified. The sheds, housing those working in the camp. For the Nazi soldiers couldn't operate this death factory on their own. It was inmates that fed the ovens.

People visit Auschwitz to this day, and find it an overwhelming experience, to visit a place where so many died - because of sheer malice. Personally, I have not been there, and am not likely to visit.

This entry is dedicated to Holocaust Memorial Day, to those that died at the hands of the Nazi doctrine. There is plenty of further, detailed reading on this subject; I suggest this link.

Technorati Tags: holocaust, memorial, day, 27, january