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mahatmakanejeeves

(57,675 posts)
Mon Jan 27, 2020, 11:48 AM Jan 2020

On this day, January 27, 1945, Auschwitz was liberated.

Kevin M. Kruse Retweeted

Today marks 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. This letter was written by Vilma Grunwald, who gave it to a guard moments before she entered the gas chamber with her disabled son, John. It was addressed to her husband, Kurt, who'd been put to work elsewhere at the camp.



Previously at DU:

Moncay, May 20, 2019: 79 Years Ago Today; Opening Day at Auschwitz concentration camp
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On this day, January 27, 1945, Auschwitz was liberated. (Original Post) mahatmakanejeeves Jan 2020 OP
Recommended - thank you for posting Dennis Donovan Jan 2020 #1
Kick dalton99a Jan 2020 #2
Fucking Nazis. NEVER AGAIN!!! PCIntern Jan 2020 #3
I remember. Behind the Aegis Jan 2020 #4
Weird to think that these days we're not only normalizing Nazis Blue_Tires Jan 2020 #5
"Conspiracy" moondust Jan 2020 #6
K&R smirkymonkey Jan 2020 #7
Auschwitz survivors warn of rising anti-Semitism 75 years on Behind the Aegis Jan 2020 #8
The Auschwitz Protocol Behind the Aegis Jan 2020 #9

Behind the Aegis

(54,029 posts)
4. I remember.
Mon Jan 27, 2020, 05:07 PM
Jan 2020

75 years ago, Auschwitz is liberated. The liberation came and the world would soon discover 11 million people were systematically murdered, including over half, about 6 million, who all had one thing in common, they were Jews. With the rise in Holocaust denial, revisionism, and minimization, it is important to remember the gravity of what happened to Jews. It is important for all those who were affected by this systematic bigotry and genocide.

The number of Jews, around 6 million, were murdered. It was about 2/3rds of the Jewish population of Europe and 1/3rd the worldwide population of Jews who ceased to live. The population prior to WWII was believed to be about 17 million; in 75 years, Jews are just now back to that number. For some perspective, imagine the entire population of Jews in the US...gone! There are about 6 million of us here, 2.2% of the total population. It might not seem a big percentage; it isn't, but it would mean no Schiff, Nadler, Sanders, and about 30 other members of Congress; never mind the effect it would have on just about every industry in the US.

The combined populations of Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Rhode Island, and half of Montana...gone! Or the entire population of Maryland...gone! Or, the entire population of Missouri...gone! Or, the cities of Chicago and Los Angeles, gone!!

There is only one...ONE...country in the world, where Jews are a majority, Israel. It is also the only other country to have more than a million Jews within its borders, the other is the United States, where as mentioned above, we only make up 2.2% of the population. Over half of the entire Jewish population, worldwide, live in one of these two countries. Only seven countries have a population of less than half a million but above 100K Jews. Nineteen countries have between 10,000 and 100,000 Jews.

Hate crimes against Jews are on the rise. Anti-Semitism is flaring up, sometimes in the most unlikely of places. Anti-Semitism is a real form of bigotry, leveled against JEWS. Anti-Semitism is not dependent on anything other than a hate, dislike, or prejudice against JEWS.

Today, the world remembers the liberation of one of the worst factories of human genocide, but do they remember how it happened? WHY it happened? It was "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". Seems many are still struggling with that "question."

moondust

(20,017 posts)
6. "Conspiracy"
Mon Jan 27, 2020, 06:26 PM
Jan 2020

is a 2001 BBC/HBO war film which dramatizes the 1942 Wannsee Conference where the Final Solution to the "Jewish question" was hatched.

The full film can be seen online at this .ru link:
https://putlocker9.ru/film/conspiracy-2001-1080p/watching.html

The Wannsee Conference was held in this villa by the lake in Berlin:



The building is now a memorial and museum.

Behind the Aegis

(54,029 posts)
8. Auschwitz survivors warn of rising anti-Semitism 75 years on
Mon Jan 27, 2020, 09:34 PM
Jan 2020
Survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp recalled their suffering as they marked the 75th anniversary of its liberation, returning to the place where they lost entire families and warning about the ominous growth of anti-Semitism and hatred in the world.

“We have with us the last living survivors, the last among those who saw the Holocaust with their own eyes,” Polish President Andrzej Duda told the dignitaries at the commemoration, which included the German president as well as Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders.

“The magnitude of the crime perpetrated in this place is terrifying but we must not look away from it and we must never forget it,” Duda said.

About 200 camp survivors attended, many of them elderly Jews and non-Jews who have traveled from Israel, the United States, Australia, Peru, Russia, Slovenia and elsewhere. Many lost parents and grandparents in Auschwitz or other Nazi death camps, but were joined by children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.


more...

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142424596

Behind the Aegis

(54,029 posts)
9. The Auschwitz Protocol
Tue Jan 28, 2020, 01:12 AM
Jan 2020

ON THE 13TH April, 1942 our group, consisting of 1,000 men, was
loaded into railroad cars at the assembly camp of SERED. The doors
were shut so that nothing would reveal the direction of the journey, and
when they were opened after a long while we realized that we had
crossed the Slovak frontier and were in ZWARDON.

The train had until then been guarded by Hlinka men, but was now
taken over by SS guards. After a few of the cars had been uncoupled
from our convoy, we continued on our way arriving at night at
AUSCHWITZ, where we stopped on a sidetrack.

The reason the other cars were left behind was appar-ently the lack of
room at AUSCHWITZ. They joined us, how-ever, a few days later. Upon
arrival we were placed in rows of five and counted. There were 643 of us.
After a walk of about 20 minutes with our heavy packs (we had left
Slovakia well equipped), we reached the concentration camp of
AUSCHWITZ.

We were at once led into a huge barrack where on the one side we had
to deposit all our luggage and on the other side completely undress and
valuables behind. Naked, we then proceeded to an adjoining barrack
where our heads and bodies were shaved and disinfected with Lysol. At
the exit every man was given a number which began with 28,600 in
consecutive order

With this number in hand we were then herded to a third barrack where
so-called registration took place. This consisted of tattooing the
numbers we had received in the second barrack on the left side of our
chests. The extreme brutality with which this was effected made many
of us faint. The particulars of our identity were" also recorded.

Read: http://vrbawetzler.eu/img/static/Prilohy/The-Auschwitz-Protocol.pdf

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Auschwitz Protocols, also known as the Auschwitz Reports, and originally published as The Extermination Camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau, is a collection of three eyewitness accounts from 1943–1944 about the mass murder that was taking place inside the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland during the Second World War.[1][2] The eyewitness accounts are individually known as the Vrba-Wetzler report, Polish Major's report, and Rosin-Mordowicz report.[3]

The reports were compiled by prisoners who had escaped from the camp and presented in their order of importance from the Western Allies' perspective, rather than in chronological order.[3] The escapees who authored the reports were Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler (the Vrba-Wetzler report); Arnost Rosin and Czesław Mordowicz (the Rosin-Mordowicz report); and Jerzy Tabeau (the "Polish Major's report" ).[3]

The Vrba-Wetzler report was widely disseminated by the Bratislava Working Group in April 1944, and with help of the Romanian diplomat Florian Manoliu, the report or a summary reached—with much unfortunate delay—George Mantello (Mandel), El Salvador Embassy First Secretary in Switzerland, via Swiss Vice-Consul Carl Lutz in Budapest[4]. Mantello immediately publicized it. This triggered large-scale demonstrations in Switzerland, sermons in Swiss churches about the tragic plight of Jews and a Swiss press campaign of about 400 headlines protesting the atrocities against Jews. The events in Switzerland and possibly other considerations led to threats of retribution against Hungary's Regent Miklós Horthy by President Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and others. This was one of the main factors which convinced Horthy to stop the Hungarian death camp transports.[5] The full reports were published by the United States War Refugee Board on 26 November 1944 under the title The Extermination Camps of Auschwitz (Oświęcim) and Birkenau in Upper Silesia.[1][6] They were submitted in evidence at the Nuremberg Trials as document number 022-L, and are held in the War Refugee Board archives in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York.[6]

It is not known when they were first called the Auschwitz Protocols, but Randolph L. Braham may have been the first to do so. He used that term for the document in The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (1981).[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_Protocols

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