On 27 January 1945 Soviet soldiers entered the gates of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex in

[malaise]

south-west Poland. The site had been evacuated by the Nazis just days earlier. Thus ended the largest mass murder in a single location in human history.

Precise numbers are still debated, but according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the German SS systematically killed at least 960,000 of the 1.1-1.3 million Jews deported to the camp. Other victims included approximately 74,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war and at least 10,000 from other nationalities. More people died at Auschwitz than at any other Nazi concentration camp and probably than at any death camp in history.

The Soviet troops found grisly evidence of the horror. About 7,000 starving prisoners were found alive in the camp. Millions of items of clothing that once belonged to men, women and children were discovered along with 6,350kg of human hair. The Auschwitz museum holds more than 100,000 pairs of shoes, 12,000 kitchen utensils, 3,800 suitcases and 350 striped camp garments.

Never forget

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/27/auschwitz-short-history-liberation-concentration-camp-holocaust

[Sunlei]

1. The soviets seemed most interested in loot, they 'exported' the many corp factories facilities.

Himmler ordered the evacuation of all camps in January 1945, charging camp commanders with "making sure that not a single prisoner from the concentration camps falls alive into the hands of the enemy."[62] On January 17, 58,000 Auschwitz detainees were evacuated under guard, largely on foot; thousands of them died in the subsequent death march west towards Wodzisław Śląski.[63] Approximately 20,000 Auschwitz prisoners made it to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, where they were liberated by the British in April 1945.[64]

Those too weak or sick to walk were left behind. When the 322nd Rifle Division of the Red Army arrived at the camp on January 27 they found around 7,500 prisoners and about 600 corpses had been left behind. Among the items found by the Soviet soldiers were 370,000 men's suits, 837,000 women's garments, and 7.7 tonnes (8.5 short tons) of human hair.[65]

The camp's liberation received little press attention at the time. Rees attributes this to three factors: the previous discovery of similar crimes at Majdanek concentration camp, competing news from the Allied summit at Yalta, and the Soviet Union's interest, for propaganda purposes, in minimizing attention to Jewish suffering.[66]

After liberation, parts of Auschwitz I served first as a hospital for liberated prisoners.[67] Soviet and Polish investigators worked in the initial months to document the war crimes of the SS.[68] In the two years that followed, the Soviets dismantled and exported the IG Farben factories, and the Birkenau barracks were looted by Polish civilians.[67][69] Area residents sifted the mass graves and ashes for gold.[70] Until 1947, some of the facilities were used as a prison camp of the Soviet NKVD.[71]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp

[ND-Dem]

10. The soviets liberated more concentration camps than the americans and british combined.

no doubt it was all for the 'loot'

[kydo]

16. Well, mostly because

The Soviets were moving in on Berlin from the east. There were more camps in the east to liberate. The Allies were closing in on the Germans from the west. Plus the Allies had already started dividing up Germany. If not then Patton would have taking the US 3rd Army right up to Berlin and even further east.

[gladium et scutum]

29. Patton's 3rd Army would have only gone to Berlin

if Ike had authorized that move. He and Bradley decided it was not worth loss of American lives, particularly if you have to turn the land your troops died for had to be turned over to the Soviets.

[kydo]

34. I believe I said that the Allies had already decided

how Germany was to be divided. So of course Ike nixed Patton moving further into Germany. Which is why more camps were liberated by the Soviets then the Americans.

[gladium et scutum]

35. That is Correct

Anything east of the Oder River was in to be in the Soviet Zone. Any Americans killed there would have be a total waste.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

18. "Liberated"? That's almost comical. One bunch of thugs took over territory previously controlled by

another bunch of thugs. You might as well be talking about mobsters liberating street blocks from each other.

[ND-Dem]

20. the people in the camps were freed, to the best of my recollection.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

23. An improvement but the Soviets were a brutal dictatorship that murdered tens of millions

and they proved to be anti-Semites in their own right. That the Soviets "liberated" the camps is more a matter of happenstance and their exploiting circumstances to their own benefit than any sense of humanity. They certainly had no compunctions about slaughtering any Poles and others that stood in the way of their conquests.

Imperialists suck.

[gladium et scutum]

31. So the average

person in the Soviet Army was nothing but a thug?

[Nuclear Unicorn]

33. They weren't liberators and considering the history of atrocities associated with their advance

one might as well ask, "So the average person in the Wehrmacht Army was nothing but a thug?"

[gladium et scutum]

36. Considering the thousand miles or so

of complete and utter desolation that some of those Soviet Army "thugs" marched across that was their country
I am really surprised they did not kill every German in their zone of operations.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

37. wow, apologia for mass murder, racism, rape and subjugation.

[gladium et scutum]

38. No

just an understanding of the motivations. I do not think that every man and women that served in the Soviet Army were murders racists and rapists. You seem to think so. Just like the right wingers think all Muslims are thugs, murders, racists, and rapists bent on subjugation the Christian world.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

40. Os that what you think about all right wingers?

[kwassa]

39. your analysis of the situation is more than a little simplistic.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

41. History has shown the Soviets were just as barbarous as the Nazis. If someone wants to play the

"Not every individual Soviet soldier" game they might as well say the same thing about German soldiers. I'm sure not every German soldier was a racist, raping, murderous thug but guess what -- it doesn't matter, does it?

[gladium et scutum]

42. I believe it does.

The broad brush branding every member of an organization as thugs, rapist, racists, etc. because some members of that organization are that way is no different then than broad brushing accusations of terrorism, murder, rape that are poured on the world's Muslim population because of the acts of some Muslims. It is no different than the broad brush accusations of all African Americans being murders, rapists, thieves, because some African Americans have done those things. This is the mind set and manner of thinking by some over on the Free Republic.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

43. ad hominems, false associations and bad analogies aside --

Is it your contention that because not every individual Soviet soldier was bad that this somehow imparts some virtue to the Soviet army as a whole?

[gladium et scutum]

44. Neve made that claim

The Soviet Army conduct in Eastern German certainly equals the brutality of the Imperial Japanese Army in China or the German Army in the Soviet Union.

[kwassa]

45. The chief virtue of the Soviet army is that they stopped Hitler

That is quite a virtue. The Soviets broke the back of the German Army on the Eastern Front.

They also, through their victories and conquests of eastern Europe stopped the mass extermination of the Jews, and others. Another huge virtue.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

46. The advancing Soviet army perpetrated rapes by the hundreds.of thousands

They committed mass murder of non-combatants to facilitate territorial conquest.They subjugated Eastern Europe with a dictatorship as bloody as anything the Nazis could muster. Tens of millions have been killed because of them. Millions more imprisoned, tortured and left in ruins.

They're as vile a blight upon human history as the Nazis.

[raccoon]

2. Thanks for posting. Good link. nt

[question everything]

3. And there are still who claim that this never happen

It would be nice if such news event were mentioned in an Arab country but I am not holding my breath.

[Javaman]

4. what is sad is...

as time stretches on, and those that experienced the horror pass away and those who liberated those in the camps pass away, the revision of history becomes the new sport of the ultra right, the bigots and racists.

We must fight that at every turn.

We live in a very fragile world and we are but one despot away from it happening yet again on that scale.

[malaise]

5. As is the case with revisionism related to the Atlantic slave trade

which was the greatest holocaust in human history

[panader0]

6. Yes

[zazen]

27. what are the numbers on this--was this larger than Roman slave trade?

I really don't know. I know historical demographers (is that the term?) have a hard time estimating population levels and migration numbers but certainly do much better than my ill-informed guesses.

I was just wondering whether we're defining holocaust a form of oppression and slaughter over an elongated historical period, because depending on the power/empire doing the oppression, that could extend out over a large period of time (Roman Late Republic-Empire-early Byzantium) to make comparisons complicated. Then there's the ratio of number of slaves/slaughter to the citizen/free population (free was relative for most females) during a lot of the Roman period, which I guess was higher from 100 BCE to 350 CE or so (e.g., probably 1:1 or 1:2), though the overall population then was lower than during the global African slave trade.

Some people refer to the witch hunts over the late Middle Ages through the end of the 17th century as a holocaust too.

It's all horrible. Just saw _Night Will Fall_ (borrowed an HBO account!) last night because of the recommendations of everyone here on DU and am still reeling from it.

[malaise]

32. Good post

Thoughtful

[pampango]

14. "We live in a very fragile world and we are but one despot away from it happening yet again

on that scale."

The return of the far-right to power is no longer a distant worry in Europe. The mentality of "Christians vs Jews" (now more commonly 'Christians vs Muslims') and hyper-nationalism (always a right-wing staple) is experiencing a resurgence in Europe and elsewhere.

We must fight that at every turn.

Well said. We cannot sit back and believe that 'things are different now. The horrors of the past cannot happen again. We are too evolved.'

[hifiguy]

30. Ike had it all filmed for a reason.

But paranoids and far right continue to exist it was all a hoax.

[marym625]

7. I'm surprised this isn't on the greatest page

It should be

Thank you for the post

[malaise]

8. The Cold War is still warm

[marym625]

9. evidently

And getting warmer. Or colder. How ever you want to look at it

[Rhinodawg]

11. NEVER AGAIN.

Thank you for posting.

Warning:

[KoKo]

12. Recommend...n/t

[oberliner]

13. Antisemitic gangs murdered approximately 1,500 Jewish survivors in the first month

Trying to return to Russia and Eastern Europe did not turn out to well for the survivors.

[ND-Dem]

21. link?

[oberliner]

25. From Yad Vashem: The Anguish of Liberation and the Surviving Remnants

The two million Jews who survived in the Soviet Union and the hundreds of thousands who somehow managed to survive the camps or in hiding desperately sought out surviving relatives. Usually their attempts were in vain. Many Jews who emerged from camps, forests and hideouts, or who returned from the Soviet Union under the repatriation agreement, received an enraged and hostile welcome. Many of the locals feared that the Jews would demand restitution of the property they had stolen. Antisemitic gangs murdered approximately 1,500 Jewish survivors in Poland alone, in the first months after the liberation.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/about/10/aftermath.asp

[ND-Dem]

26. Thanks for the link. I misunderstood your meaning.

[Octafish]

15. Never Forget.

Here's one place in Michigan that all in the world should visit:

http://www.holocaustcenter.org/

It's not just history.

[Rhinodawg]

19. Been there...a must see .

very moving

[Bluenorthwest]

17. And yet Russia continues to oppress many of the same minorities killed in those camps.

It is also interesting that the Soviets kept some of the Nazi Death Camps running as NKVD Special Camps, Buchenwald was Special Camp #2 and Sachsenhausen became Special Camp #7 for example. Under the Soviets, over 28,000 people were prisoners at the former Buchenwald between 1945 and 1950 and over 7,000 of them died there. Some facilities even at Auschwitz were used as prisons until 1947 by the NKVD although it was never made an official Special Camp.
Of course the US and Allies also kept all the gay prisoners and made them serve their terms and that sort of thing. Liberating, imprisoning, later, rinse, repeat.
So yeah. Mixed bag, as all great powers are at their best, liberating and imprisoning with a single stroke. History is a hell of a thing.

[KingCharlemagne]

22. Some of the Red Army troops who liberated Auschwitz have provided first-person testimony, as

evidenced in these extracts from the 2005 60th anniversary of the liberation (10 years ago):

When 60 years ago Anatoly Shapiro commanded his Red Army troops to secure a concentration camp complex in Auschwitz, he had no idea he was about to discover the biggest Nazi killing machine.

"We came upon groups of people in striped uniforms. They were no more than skeletons. They were unable to talk. They had a blank look in their eyes," the 92-year-old told Reuters.

"We told them we were the Red Army and had come to free them. They began to feel our uniforms as if they didn't believe us. We washed and clothed them and began to feed them," said Shapiro, whose speech will be aired in Krakow during Thursday's commemorations of the 60th anniversary of the camp's liberation.

. . . .

"We saw everything. The chambers used to gas the prisoners, ovens where the bodies were burned. We saw the piles of ash. Some of my men approached me and said 'Major, we cannot stand this. Let's move on.'," Shapiro said in a phone interview from his New York home.

~Article continues at link

http://isurvived.org/InTheNews/SovietArmy-Auschwitz.html

[cwydro]

24. Nobody here

wants to hear any "good guy" stories of the Russians.

But they're people too. Thanks for your post.

My parents knew a Russian soldier who was there. He was devastated by what he saw.

[moondust]

28. CNN: "Voices of Auschwitz"

An hour program that aired last night. Stories told by four survivors with footage.

One mentioned a Soviet soldier who stood before a group of women and beat his chest, saying "I am also a Jew!"

Another mentioned how gradual the dehumanization of the Jews was and few people knew what was happening. Maybe Steve "Cantaloupes" King and his friends should see that part. And what exactly did Lindsay Graham have in mind when he asked Loretta Lynch how much it would cost to deport 11 million people? (http://newspower.org/loretta-lynchs-attorney-general-confirmation-hearing-marked-by-immigration-debate/) Maybe herding them into cattle cars?

http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2015/01/26/voices-of-auschwitz-promo-wednesday-night.cnn-promos