On the recordJanuary 27, 2015
today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating the genocide that resulted in the murder of nearly 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime. On this day in 1945, the allied forces entered Auschwitz, a complex of concentration and death camps in Nazi-occupied Poland. They liberated more than 7,000 prisoners. Auschwitz was made up of 3 main camps and more than 40 subcamps covering over 15 square miles. Between 1940 and 1945 nearly 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz and at least 1.1 million were murdered. By January 1945 the allied forces were closing in. To eliminate witnesses to their crimes, thousands of prisoners were killed at Auschwitz, and 60,000 were forced to march west days before the liberation. During these marches SS guards shot anyone who fell behind or could not continue. More than 15,000 died in that march. In the months prior to the liberation, an elderly French inmate urged a young Jewish prisoner named Olga to watch everything she saw, and when the war was over, to tell the world what she had seen. Olga wrote her memoirs in the years that followed and gave voice to those who could no longer speak. Yesterday, the Washington Post featured the horrific stories of four Auschwitz survivors, including those who suffered under the sadistic Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, known as the Angel of Death. GEN Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the allied forces in Europe also understood the importance of documenting what he saw.…
