Auschwitz Anniversary
Today marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and associated local camps at the end of WWII.
The 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops is being marked on Monday at the site of the former death camp, a ceremony that is widely being treated as the last major observance that any notable number of survivors will be able to attend.
Among those who traveled to the site is 86-year-old Tova Friedman, who was 6 when she was among the 7,000 people liberated on Jan. 27, 1945. She believes it will the be last gathering of survivors at Auschwitz and she came from her home in New Jersey to add her voice to those warning about rising hatred and antisemitism.
Commemorations will culminate when world leaders and royalty will join with elderly camp survivors, the youngest of whom are in their 80s, at Birkenau, the part of Auschwitz where the mass murder of Jews took place.
Survivors were expected to be the focus of the ceremonies this year, rather than politicians’ speeches. Which is not to say various politicians won’t attend, with the notable exception of Russia who hasn’t been invited since their 2022 invasion. Unusually, the two highest German officials (their Chancellor and President) are both to attend. They were to be joined by France’s Macron, the UK’s King Charles II, and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.
We can expect many of these 80th anniversary events in the next 8 months marking the end of World War II.
Never forget.
Category: We Remember, WWII
Despots gonna despot…Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Fauci… When one gives up the right to defend one’s self, the despot will kill you.
Never forget.
You forgot Biden.
As well as the Clintons and 0bama.
Yep, those who beat their swords into plowshares usually end up farming for those who kept their swords…
“We can many of these 80th anniversary events in the next 8 months marking the end of World War II.”
Cabanatuan is later this week.
Never Forget.
Then:
And yet, some still say it never happened.
Never forget, never again.
In the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC there is an exhibit showing video of the liberation of Dachau, and a statement from Eisenhower why he mandated film units when we opened camps like that “because if we don’t, 50 years from now some son-of-a-bitch will claim it never happened.”
back in the 50’s, I was reading a copy of readers digest about some crew members of a downed B-17 that made it to the ground and were captured. The crew was on the line being checked into the Luftwaffe POW camp and the checking in guard says to one of the captured men, what are you doing here Mr.???, I forgot the guys name and it turns out that the guard was visiting family in Germany when war was declared and he got drafted into the German Army. the guard was the store owner in the states where the one crew member shopped. The guard said something to the other guards and turns out that they were treated pretty good.
That is a very powerful place.
We went through the Holocaust museum in DC, and not only was it sad and eye opening at the same time, but it also made one want to punch the first German you saw right in the pie hole. Repeatedly.
Right along with those who deny it….
When I was young, there was an older man who knew and helped my father. He helped liberate a few camps. I overheard him telling my father about it once.
The experience impacted him the rest of his life in a bad way.
When I was in third grade, we had a neighbor, a German Jew, whose family had immigrated to America right about the time Hitler came to power. Apparently, his father saw what was coming. He was about 8. He told me how wonderful it felt to see the Statue of Liberty from their ship, and feeling safe for the first time in his life. His story stuck with me.
We buried my Dad at Arlington the same day the WWII Memorial opened. Afterwards we went to the Holocaust Museum…my sister and I stopped at the spot where they were showing the film on Dachau. I should explain – Dad was at Dachau on its liberation day, entering the camp at the end where they ran into some SS resistance (not sure which unit – 42d? 45th) It was a very spooky experience to know we had just buried Dad… but might see him at just under 30 years old on film. He wasn’t (I suspect the lads filming weren’t interested in getting into an active firefight!) but was very unsettling nonetheless.
I had a chance to visit the Holocaust Museum in DC and it was a very memorable experience. I pray that nothing like this ever happens again.
Been there, seen that as well.
It happened. In Hanau (what’s now Campo Pond) Degusa built an AHA for finished product that looked like a slave labor enclosure next to its plant there so we wouldn’t bomb the place. (Thanks to precision bombing, scruplously avoided the AHA and still knocked out the production line.) Germans both knew and were aware we knew they were up to sh*t, so their claims to the contrary later are (of course) bull.
I have watched the episode in Band of Brothers when they stumble on a concentration camp. I watched the World at War, read the Time Life book series on WW2, and I’ve seen others documentaries, so I know what to expect. But to be confronted with the horror face-to-face is unimaginable. Only human being are inhumane to each other…
A co worker told me he was Army Engineer in WW2 and when they liberated a camp, he wore a hankerchief over his face while bulldozing remains into trenches.. Most of the old timers on my job were WW2 And Korean War Vets.
Belsen… YouTube age-restricts episode 20 of World at War showing this for being “too intense” for folk today:
https://collections.ushmm.org/iiif-b/assets/732618
Hardcore.
Never forget; never repeat.
Am Yisrael Chai!
Growing up, there was a gift shop a couple of doors down from my parents’s deli, run by a Polish Jew who had the bad luck of being Jewish and a member of the Polish Army on 1 September 1939. He survived Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau He wangled his way into the kitchens at Auschwitz, which probably saved him, and because of that knew scum like Mengele and Höss. He never told me horrifying stories of the camps. Instead, he told me how he fucked with the guards, smuggling food to the other prisoners. I’m sure he had plenty of horrible ones, but he spared me and probably himself.
When stationed in Germany, I visited Dachau and Mauthausen in Austria. Both are powerful places, but Mauthausen really made an impact on me.The stone quarries were unimaginable. I walked up the “Stairs of Death” without the huge burden of 100 lb stone on my back. I was exhausted after one time going up. And if you successfully made it to the top, you might be forced by scum SS guards to jump off “FallschirmjägerSprung”, the Parachutist’s Jump. Of course to your death.
Hell on earth.
By the time I got to the gas chamber, I was overwhelmed by the horror and fell to my knees to say a prayer for all those who died and those who survived and were condemned to live with those memories to the end of their lives.
God bless you, Mr. Shattan. Rest in peace. I will never forget, sir!
When TDY in Germany once I was partnered with an Air Force kid. On a day off we drove to Berchtesgarten and Obersalzburg (just below the Eagle’s Nest.) While admiring the view from the site of Bormann’s house, the kid said “maybe those Nazis weren’t all bad if they lived in a place like this.” Less than 2 hours later I had him at Dachau so he could see the truth.
Now THAT is proper parenting!
Anti-Semitism? Yes, it still spews forth from the D-rats, just look at it on college campuses!
I lived with anti semetism growing up in the 1950’s Big in the FDNY, Brink’s where I worked and the first Volly Fire Dept I was a member of in the early 70’s.
I’ve shared this here before …
I had the honor of meeting and getting to know, even if in only most perfunctory way, Frank “Vinny” Perconte of the 101st Band of Brothers.
A truly lovely, kind and funny man. We know what he saw, albeit in a sanitized version. From all reports, there was a sadness in him until the end of his days, but it never dimmed his kindness to others.
RIP Mr. Perconte. I thank God that such men lived.
Knowing what I do about Stalin and the Communists I am still somewhat surprised by the relative leniency and restraint the USSR showed in their treatment of Germany at the end of WWII. I myself would have been sorely tempted to treat Germany as the Romans did Carthage. Environmentalists would have been pleased– a vast tract of unspoiled nature unsullied by the presence of human beings; a memorial to the victims of German bestiality and a warning to others.