Oswiecim, Poland: On January 27, 1945, the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz death camp in German-occupied Poland. The Germans had already fled westward, leaving behind the bodies of prisoners who had been shot and thousands of sick and starving survivors.
The Soviet troops also found gas chambers and crematoria that the Germans had blown up before fleeing in an attempt to hide evidence of their mass killings.
But the genocide was too massive to hide. Now, the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau endures as the leading symbol of the terror of the Holocaust. Its iconic status is such that every year it registers a record number of visitors — 2.3 million last year alone.
Auschwitz today is many things at once: an emblem of evil, a site of historical remembrance and a vast cemetery. It is a place where Jews make pilgrimages to pay tribute to ancestors whose ashes and bones remain part of the earth.
Auschwitz is in fact not one camp, but two: Auschwitz I, built in an abandoned Polish military base, and Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, a much bigger complex that went up later about two miles (three kilomers) away to expedite the Nazis’ Final Solution.
Early on, Auschwitz I operated as a camp for Polish prisoners, including Catholic priests and members of the nation’s underground resistance again the German occupation. Later in the war Birkenau was created for the mass killing of Jews and others who were transported there from across Europe.
Prisoners arrived in cramped, windowless cattle trains. At the infamous ramp at Auschwitz, the Nazis selected those they could use as forced laborers. The others — old people, many women and especially children and babies, were gassed to death soon after their arrival.
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It is Birkenau that shocks more profoundly, a flat, vast space still ringed by the silver birch trees (Birken in German) that gave the place its name. Crematoria lie in rubble but still intact are the rail tracks and watchtowers and some of the barracks where prisoners slept in cold, cramped conditions.
Schreiber’s photos show the notorious main gate with the cynical Nazi slogan “Arbeit Macht Frei” — a German phrase meaning “work will set you free.”
Today, visitors can also see the suitcases, eyeglasses and other items they brought on their journeys. Especially haunting are the prosthetic limbs: Many of the Jews who were murdered had fought for their homelands, including Germany, in World War I.
At some parts of Auschwitz-Birkenau, only dozens of brick chimneys remain on a vast field where once the barracks for detainees stood.
More than 1.1 million people were murdered by the Nazis and their henchmen in Auschwitz. Most who were killed were Jews, but the victims also included Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, and others. In all, about 6 million European Jews died during the Holocaust. When the Soviets liberated the camp, they found about 7,000 survivors.
Holocaust survivors gather 75 years after liberation
Survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp gathered on Monday for commemorations marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camp, using the testimony of survivors to warn about the signs of rising anti-Semitism and hatred in the world today.
In all, more than 200 survivors of the camp are expected, many of them elderly Jews who have travelled far from homes in Israel, the United States, Australia, Peru, Russia, Slovenia and elsewhere. Many lost parents and grandparents in Auschwitz or other Nazi death camps, but today were being joined in their journey back by children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.
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