The Liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau -- Never Again

"[The Russian military has committed war crimes in Bucha and Mariupol comparable to Nazi crimes; inspired by a] similar sick megalomania [free people must not remain indifferent]."

"Being silent means giving voice to the perpetrators."

"Remaining indifferent is tantamount to condoning murder."

Piotr Cywinski, state museum director, Auschwitz

 

"Standing here today at this place of remembrance, Birkenau [Auschwitz-Birkenau], I follow with  horror the news from the east that the Russian army which liberated us here, is waging a war there in Ukraine."\

"Why? Why?"

Survivor Zdzislawa Wlodarezyk

Zvika Karavany, 72, a Yemeni-born Israeli, wipes his tears in front of the Death Wall in the former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz during ceremonies marking the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the camp in Oswiecim, Poland, Friday, Jan. 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Michal Dyjuk)

"So I was hiding out in the heap of dead bodies because in the last week when the crematoria didn’t function at all, the bodies were just building up higher and higher."

"So there I was at nighttime, in the daytime I was roaming around in the camp, and this is where I actually survived, January 27, I was one of the very first, Birkenau was one of the very first camps being liberated."

"This was my, my survival chance."

Bart Stern, Voices From Auschwitz,  United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The Liberation of Auschwitz, USHMM

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a horror, a dreadful example of a state under the control of a tyrannical aggressor hungry for power and prestige, willing to sacrifice Ukrainian and Russian lives to achieve his goal of the re-domination of Ukraine. The Russian military, under orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is committing war crimes. The indiscriminate bombing of civilian enclaves, hospitals, apartment blocks, theatres, shopping malls -- in the process killing civilian populations and destroying civil infrastructure, depriving millions of heat, light and water in the dead of winter, annexing territory and obliterating historical landmarks -- criminal acts of war.

Yet to compare the Holocaust, the systematic state annihilation through organized mass butchery of an ethnic-religious population is unparalled in the annals of modern history. What is happening to Ukraine is tragic, immoral and disgusting beyond words, but it is not a genocide, even while the nation's culture, tradition and heritage sites are threatened. Murder on a mass scale, the scheduled obliteration of a people, sparing none, remains unique to the German Nazi plans of the Final Solution.

Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff, left, visits the former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp KL Auschwitz during ceremonies marking the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the camp in Oswiecim, Poland, Friday, Jan. 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Michal Dyjuk)

The emotionally passionate recall of the genocide has no equal in Ukraine. Ukraine is a state, it is a vast country, it has a military which nations surrounding it and others from the Western world of democracy have trained and armed, in the process supporting an effective fighting force determined to save their nation, their heritage and their population from Russian vandals. Jews had no nation, they were a diaspora, a nation in ancient historical exile yearning to return to their ancestral lands. No military supported their right to live, no mass outrage rang through the corridors of power among the Allied nations.

And now that the Jewish nation has been restored to its legendary homeland by an act of universal remorse it remains continually challenged by the vicious intransigence of neighbours who violently dissented against the presence of a Jewish state and in the lifetime that followed Israel's return, deadly assaults have never ceased, and the international community's post-war sympathy has evaporated, left a cynical, critical, jaundiced eye unmoved by the ongoing plight of a tiny nation struggling to contain the hatred and violence still threatening its survival.

People place candles at the former crematorium as they attend a ceremony in the former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz during ceremonies marking the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the camp in Brzezinka, Poland, Friday, Jan. 27, 2023. (AP Photo/MiBchal Dyjuk)

Remembering and recalling the dread fate in numbers too steep for the human mind to cope with -- the death of Jews, Roma, Homosexuals, Mentally and Physically handicapped, political dissenters, Jehovah's Witnesses in staggering numbers, as fascist Germany focused on disinheriting the lives of those considered to be enemies of the Third Reich and unsuitable to live among Aryans -- still reels the mind. The vast complex of annihilation  took the lives of 1.1 million people, young and old, mostly Jews, during World War II.

The complex stands in ruins, a mute and grisly symbol of the most degraded stage of humanity's fall from grace, reeking of evil in the horrors that were perpetrated there. At the commemoration of the78th anniversary of its liberation, when the world could no longer avert its eyes to the mass tragedy, and was faced with the reality of living corpses in striped garb shuffling to meet their liberators, it represents the supreme irony that the very army that liberated the camps was that of the Soviet Union, once part of the Axis, then with the Allies when Germany turned on Russia, marking the turn of its fortunes.

The very country whose troops liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau was persona non grata at the memorial to the liberation it had achieved. Unlike previous years when a Russian delegation was present and honoured to pay its respects to the innumerable victims of Nazi ideology, the successor to the Soviet Union and its current president whose actions mirror in many respects that of the Nazis, received no invitation to attend. Russia's reputation is now as black in most people's estimation as their recall of Nazi Germany.

What is happening in Ukraine struck Bogdan Bartnikowski, a 91-year-old Pole, as he saw news coverage of Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russian troops invading their country, among them a small girl in a crowd of refugees, her mother holding her hand and the child holding her teddy bear, "It was literally a blow to the head for me because I suddenly saw, after almost 80 years, what I had seen in a freight car when I was being transported (at age 12) to Auschwitz. A little girl was sitting next to me, hugging a doll to her chest". 

People walk next to the ''Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Sets You Free) gate at the former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oswiecim, Poland, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023. Survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau are gathering to commemorate the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi German death camp in the final months of World War II, amid horror that yet another war has shattered the peace in Europe. The camp was liberated by Soviet troops on Jan. 27, 1945. (AP Photo/Michal Dyjuk)