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Auschwitz Liberation Memorial

Survivors, world leaders commemorate liberation of Auschwitz death camp

January 27 1945

Soviet troops liberate the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps in Nazi occupied Poland.

January 28, 2005
AFP

Under bleak winter skies, world leaders joined Auschwitz survivors in an emotional ceremony marking the liberation 60 years ago of the Nazi death camp, making a plea for the horrors of the Holocaust never to be forgotten.

Some 1,000 survivors, many wearing their prisoners' armbands and numbers, sat in sub-zero temperatures at the open-air memorial as some of the 44 world leaders and fellow former prisoners paid tribute to those who were killed here, most of them Jews.

Under softly falling snow, a train pulling along the tracks once used to herd people in cattle trucks to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in southern Poland gave a mournful whistle, kicking off the ceremony.

Records show 1.1 million died.

But because many of the victims were "selected" by the SS for immediate extermination in specially built gas chambers and were never registered at Auschwitz, it is impossible for historians to say precisely how many people were killed. The actual death toll is believed to be as high as two million.

In front of the stark stone memorial built between the rubble of camp's two gas chambers, the elderly survivors listened as world leaders and fellow prisoners paid tribute to those who still live with their brutal memories and those who did not survive.

Many wore the prisoner number they were given by the Nazis when they arrived at the camp, the first step in a calculated process to humiliate and dehumanise them.

"I'm No 4662," one elderly woman said as she filed into the camp.

"We had no names here, and I have a hard time calling myself with my real name here. It's too painful."

Zakhar Tarasevich arrived at the death camp when he was five years old.

"Let us remember that we are on the site of the most gigantic cemetery in the world, a cemetery where there are no graves, no stones, but where the ashes of more than one million people lie," Polish Culture Minister Waldemar Dabrowski said.

Former Polish foreign minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski -- Auschwitz prisoner number 4427 -- gave a moving address on behalf of Poles, the first prisoners of the most notorious of Nazi death camps.

"Back in September 1940 when I first stood on the assembly ground in Auschwitz, in the crowd of five and a half thousand other Poles, I never imagined I would outlive Hitler or survive World War II," said Bartoszewski, now 82.

"In the first 15 months of existence of this awful place, we, the Polish inmates, were all alone. The free world was not interested in our suffering or in our death," he added.

Speaking after Bartoszewski, former European Parliament president Simone Veil -- Auschwitz prisoner number 78651 -- made an emotional appeal here for world unity against racism and anti-Semitism,

"Today, 60 years after, a new commitment must be made so that men unite at least to fight against hatred of the other, against anti-Semitism, against racism, against intolerance," the former French health minister said .

The leader of Germany's Central Council of Sinti and Roma, Romani Rose, meanwhile reminded the world that Auschwitz was synonymous with the state-organised genocide of half a million gypsies in Nazi-occupied Europe.

"Thousands of Sinti and Roma were deported here from the Third Reich and from almost all Nazi-occupied European countries. They were subjected to humiliation, torture and brutally murdered," he said.

And speaking at a forum in Krakow, Poland, to commemorate the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp by Soviet troops, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged nations to consider the lessons of the Holocaust and warned against racism and xenophobia worldwide, including in his country.

"We have to learn from the cruel mistakes of the past, understand what caused them and do everything to make sure that they are not repeated," he said.

Putin said the world still had reason to be ashamed today, saying that even in Russia, "which has done the most to defeat fascism, to liberate Jews, we see frequent signs of this disease (anti-Semitism) and we are embarrassed of this".

Putin also recalled the role of Soviet troops in liberating Europe from the German Nazi regime.

"The first to witness these bestial crimes were Soviet soldiers," he said. "They are the ones who turned off the ovens (crematoria) at Auschwitz and Birkenau."

In a message to the participants to the Auschwitz commmemoration, Pope John Paul II, said that the Nazi bid to exterminate the Jewish people had for ever darkened the history of mankind and left a "shadow on the history of Europe".

"No one is permitted to pass by the tragedy of the Shoah. That attempt at the systematic destruction of an entire people falls like a shadow on the history of Europe and the whole world," he said in a message read out by the papal nuncio in Poland, Jozef Kowalczyk.

"Today, 60 years on we still cannot comprehend how and why, in the 20th century, the world was able to remain silent about the Holocaust," said Israeli President Moshe Katsav.

He urged participants at a Krakow forum held before the main ceremony not to allow the story of the Holocaust to be distorted by revisionists who seek to deny it ever happened.

The forum of some 400 young people, survivors and politicians marked the start of a poignant day of remembrance at which Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski called for "future generations never (to) forget".

US Vice President Dick Cheney also urged future generations to take heed of the message of evil embodied in Auschwitz and the Nazi regime. "The story of the camp reminds us that evil is real. It must be called by its name and must be confronted.

Meanwhile, French President Jacques Chirac urged his countrymen to shoulder their responsibility for the deportations of 80,000 Jews rounded up in French towns and cities during the Nazi occupation.

Chirac was speaking as he inaugurated an exhibit in a renovated prisoner block at Auschwitz in honour of 80,000 French nationals -- virtually all of them Jewish -- who were deported to this death camp in southern Poland and others in Nazi-occupied Europe

Note: Since the end of World War II, storms of controversy have swirled around the numbers of Jewish dead at the hands of the Germans. Some declared figures are in excess of 6 million while others are stated to be 1 million. The reason for this confusion is that records for the German concentration camp system in German and US archives are spotty at best, many having been destroyed by the Germans at the end of the war.

Fortunately for historical accuracy, the Soviet Army captured, intact, the complete records of the camp system in April of 1945. These records run to tens of thousands of microfilmed pages and to hundreds of rolls. Here is a very accurate compilation of the records of the Auschwitz camp from its opening in 1940 until its closing in late 1944.

The main reason why there is so great a discrepancy between the actual figures and the generally accepted current ones is that the gaps in documents now in German records are large enough to permit wild extrapolations, suppositions and great inaccuracies to creep in. Reliance upon the memories of very old camp inmates has not proven to be helpful or accurate but the actual camp records themselves are a much more reliable source.

It should be noted that in the U.S. National Archives is a 4,000+ page official German Gestapo file that very clearly sets forth the killing of hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews from June 1941 onwards.

While the existence of the concentration camp file outrages the Jewish sector, the existence of the Einsatzgruppen files equally outrages the revisionists.

In the interests of civility, both sides ought to explore every side to this issue but like the Arab/Israeli conflicts, the fanatics of both sides have held sway for too long to allow for any attempt at negotiation and resolution.

As a matter of fairness, we have published the contents of both sets of archival material

Official German Record of all Prisoners in Auschwitz Concentration Camp from May of 1940 through December of 1944

Prisoner records of Auschwitz camp from May, 1940 through December 1944 from the Glücks complete Concentration Camp microfilm records now located in the Russian Central Archives[1]

(Note: The attached statistical tables concerning prisoners in Auschwitz camp from its inception to its closing are taken directly from Soviet archival material, now on microfilm from the former Soviet Central Archives. Also, a good deal of corroborative material from the German Archives concerning the German State Railways has been located in the German State Archives (Bundesarchiv) and utilized. The railroad was responsible for the transportation of inmates to and from concentration camps in the figures from the Russian files is accurately reflected in the Reichsbahn documents.)

Non Jewish Prisoners Entering Auschwitz

1940 May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec		70 1225 147 1156 1873 471 637 1190	1941 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec		1691 1339 221 4051 1793 731 1925 473 785 7191 1215 1217	1942 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec		843 1508 1071 1817 1881 2583 3493 3106 1628 2952 2507 3172
	6669			22632			26561
1943 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec		9474 4065 15618 7346 4868 3368 4942 5282 4531 8179 3676 4961	1944 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec		1767 1052 573 5971 2097 1412 1368 6890 4604 674 1854 1251
	76310			29513

Total non-Jews in Auschwitz, 1940-1944: 161,685

Sources: CSA No. 187603: Roll 281-1940: Frames 107-869-Roll 282-1940-41: Frames 001-875-Roll 283-1941-42:Frames 001-872-Roll 284-1942-43: Frames 003-862-Roll 285-1943-44: Frames 019-852- Roll 286-1945: Frames 001-329.

Jewish Prisoners Entering Auschwitz 1941-1944

1941 July Nov Dec		171 1 6	1942 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec		1166 6762 1000 3004 9736 3518 3419 5990 4146 4742	1943 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec	6076 2507 9037 5054 2453 2520 4201 13382 7990 1624 3921 7180
	178			43483			65945
1944 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct		1445 1299 1178 3175 18927 8438 12924 12705 2126 1177
	63394

Total Jews in Auschwitz, 1941-1944: 173,000

Total number of inmates in Auschwitz, 1940-1944

334,785

Sources: CSA No. 187603: -Roll 282-1940-41: Frames 001-875-Roll 283-1941-42:Frames 001-872-Roll 284-1942-43: Frames 003-862-Roll 285-1943-44: Frames 019-852.

Total Typhus Deaths in Auschwitz, 1941-1944

1941 Oct Nov Dec		2128 5084 2585	1942 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec		1776 1515 3018 1392 2911 3688 4124 4968 1497 6092 103 1023	1943 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec		2123 2979 4604 2835 2378 2980 3438 2633 2901 3549 4621 4679
		9797		32107			39720
1944 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec		2801 1933 2321 1771 981 1575 1121 1847 3313 3095 927 120
	21805

Total deaths by typhus in Auschwitz, 1941-1944

103,447

Sources: CSA No. 187603: 1940-41: Frames 001-875-Roll 283-1941-42:Frames 001-872-Roll 284-1942-43: Frames 003-862-Roll 285-1943-44: Frames 019-852- Roll 286.

Jewish Typhus Deaths in Auschwitz, 1942-1944

1942 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec		875 906 1789 875 1991 2406 3090 3271 919 4789 29 621	1943 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec		1502 1729 3981 895 1721 1990 2017 968 1803 2705 3219 2842	1944 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec		1429 876 1312 632 407 884 455 1129 1871 1294 927 91
	21561			25372			11307

Total Jewish deaths by typhus in Auschwitz, 1942-1944

58,240

Total non-Jewish deaths by typhus in Auschwitz, 1940-1944

45,207

Sources: CSA No. 187603: Roll 283-1941-42:Frames 001-872-Roll 284-1942-43: Frames 003-862-Roll 285-1943-44: Frames 019-852.

Deaths by natural causes (other than typhus) in Auschwitz, 1940-1944

1940 May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec	6 23 15 35 9 21 34 30	1941 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec	142 175 165 9 47 19 5 11 23 2 39 48	1942 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec	120 77 42 39 23 21 16 5 19 25 49 61
	173		685		497
1943 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec	103 221 198 89 62 56 31 38 96 102 235 197	1944 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec	120 191 178 167 155 151 98 65 54 67 94 17
	1428		1357

Death by natural causes (other than typhus), 1940-1944

4,140

Sources: CSA No. 187603: Roll 281-1940: Frames 107-869-Roll 282-1940-41: Frames 001-875-Roll 283-1941-42:Frames 001-872-Roll 284-1942-43: Frames 003-862-Roll 285-1943-44: Frames 019-852- Roll 286.

Death by natural causes (other than typhus), Jews, Auschwitz, 1941-1944

1941 Dec			7	1942 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec		62 39 32 26 11 5 9 1 11 19 37 48	1943 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec		62 117 120 43 37 41 16 24 61 81 104 130
	7				300			836
1944 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec		98 127 111 140 90 107 49 32 41 39 81 6
	921

Total Jewish deaths by natural causes (other than typhus), 1941-1944

2,064

Sources: CSA No. 187603: 1940-41: Frames 001-875-Roll 283-1941-42:Frames 001-872-Roll 284-1942-43: Frames 003-862-Roll 285-1943-44: Frames 019-852- Roll 286.

Transfers from Auschwitz, 1940-1944

1940 Oct				11		1941 Jan Feb April May June			657 8 1002 36 4	1942 Feb Mar Apr May June July		196 275 158 423 1845 753
		11					1707				3650
1943 Mar Apr Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec			3001 1024 3195 600 4544 3500 333		1944 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec			612 2060 881 2500 7923 9228 15628 8957 9091 33244 8309 1455
	16197						99888

Total transferred from Auschwitz, 1940-1944

121,453

Sources: CSA No. 187603: Roll 281-1940: Frames 107-869-Roll 282-1940-41: Frames 001-875-Roll 283-1941-42:Frames 001-872-Roll 284-1942-43: Frames 003-862-Roll 285-1943-44: Frames 019-852.

Transfers of Jews from Auschwitz, 1941-1944

1941 Jan Apr May	271 459 17	1942 Feb Mar Apr May June July	120 37 30 112 873 120	1943 Mar Apr Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec		1572 630 2871 395 3201 3264 173
	747		1292		12106
1944 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec	409 1843 410 1927 7540 8109 13765 7501 8502 28509 7322 761
	86598

Total number of Jews transferred from Auschwitz, 1941-1944

100,743

Sources: CSA No. 187603: 1940-41: Frames 001-875-Roll 283-1941-42:Frames 001-872-Roll 284-1942-43: Frames 003-862-Roll 285-1943-44: Frames 019-852- Roll 286.

Administrative Executions at Auschwitz, 1940-1943

1940 Nov 22		40 Poles	1941 Jan 3 July 3 Aug 1 Nov 14 Dec 1 Dec 20		1 Pole 80 Poles 1 Jew 151 Poles 1 Pole 5 Poles
		Poles 40 Jews 0			Poles 238 Jews 1

1942			1942 cont.
Jan 24 Apr 3 May 27 May 28 June 4 June 9 June 10 June 11 June 12 June 13 June 15 June 16 June 18 June 19 June 20 June 22 June 23 June 25	1 Russian 11 Poles 150 Poles 1 Jew 3 Jews 3 Jews 13 Poles 3 Jews 60 Poles, 2 Jews 6 Jews 200 Poles 2 Poles, 2 Jews 8 Jews 50 Poles, 4 Jews 4 Czechs 4 Jews 3 Jews 3 Jews		June 26 June 27 June 29 July 1 July 2 July 14 July 16 July 20 July 23 July 29 Aug 11 Aug 13 Aug 18 Aug 21 Sept 5 Sept 25 Nov 9 Nov 14 Nov 17 Dec 4	40 Poles, 1 Jew 4 Jews 2 Poles, 3 Jews 15 Jews 9 Jews 10 Poles, 2 Jews 9 Poles 50 Poles 2 Jews 14 Poles 11 Jews 1 Pole 60 Poles 57 Poles 1 Jew 3 Poles 3 Poles 1 Pole 1 Pole 9 Poles, 2 Russians
Poles Jews Russians Czechs						737 91 3 4

1943 Jan 6 Jan 14 Jan 25 Jan 26 Feb 7 Feb 9 Feb 13 Feb 19 Mar 17 Apr 3 Apr 13 May 22 May 31 June 10 June 25 June 28 July 24 July 28 Aug 20 Sept 4 Sept 21 Sept 28 Oct 11 Nov 9	9 Poles, 5 Jews 6 Poles 22 Poles 7 Poles, 2 Jews 2 Poles 2 Poles, 1 Jew 16 Poles 11 Poles, 3 Jews 1 Pole 26 Poles 2 Gypsies 13 Poles, 6 Jews, 5 Gypsies 1 Gypsy 20 Poles 68 Poles 30 Poles 1 Pole 4 Poles 38 Poles 45 Poles, 8 Russians 2 Poles 9 Poles, 6 Jews, 12 Gypsies, 1 Czech 54 Poles 50 Poles
Poles Jews Russians Gypsies Czechs		436 23 8 19 2

1944

Feb 1

Mar 24
Sept 15

19 Poles
8 Russians
4 Poles
3 Jews
2 Poles

Poles
Jews
Russians

25
3
8

Sources: CSA No. 187603: Roll 281-1940: Frames 107-869-Roll 282-1940-41: Frames 001-875-Roll 283-1941-42:Frames 001-872-Roll 284-1942-43: Frames 003-862-Roll 285-1943-44: Frames 019-852- Roll 286.

Total number of inmates executed: 1359 Total Russians executed: 19

Total Gypsies executed: 19 Total Poles executed: 1208

Total Jews executed: 117 Total Czechs executed: 6

Total of Hungarian Jews sent to Auschwitz, May, 1944-October, 1944

1944 May June July Aug Sept Oct	8548 3981 6543 3881 163 1
	23,117

Sources: CSA No. 187603: Roll 285-1943-44: Frames 019-852- Roll 286-1945: Frames 001-329.

Total number of Hungarian Jews sent to Auschwitz, May-October, 1944: 23,117

Note: Number of Hungarian Jews claimed sent to Auschwitz, May-October, 1944:

Lucy Dawidowicz. The War Against the Jews, New York, 1975.: 450,000

Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, New York, 1985. 180,000

Hungarian Jews transferred from Auschwitz, May-October, 1944

1944 May June July Aug Sept Oct	2963 5934 9630 1500 1300 200
	21,527

Total number of Hungarian Jews entering Auschwitz, May-October, 1944: 23,117

Total number of Hungarian Jews transferred from Auschwitz, May-October, 1944: 21,527

Total number of Hungarian Jews remaining in Auschwitz after October, 1944: 1,590

Sources: CSA No. 187603: Roll 285-1943-44: Frames 019-852- Roll 286-1945: Frames 001-329

When the SS evacuated the Auschwitz work camp complex in the middle of January 1945, they left a large number of prisoners behind. Many of these were too old or too sick to travel and they were left in their barracks, guarded by a Polish militia that had been raised earlier by Hans Frank, the head of the Government General (as occupied Poland was termed by the Germans.) With the approach of the Soviet army in early 1945, these Polish guards indiscriminately attacked the barracks, with the prisoners inside, using hand grenades and machine guns.

The violent animosity of the Catholic Poles to their huge Jewish community is certainly well known. When the Russians invaded Poland in 1920, one of the greatest fears of the Polish leadership and the government was that the 500,000 Jewish residents of Warsaw’s Nalevski district would rise up against them in support of the advancing Bolshevik armies. Many Polish Jews fled after the failure of the Soviet attack and a number of those left behind were promptly massacred by Poles when the central government collapsed after the German invasion of 1939.

Although exact figures of the dead among the remaining Auschwitz inmates in 1945 are not available, several existing Soviet military reports put the death toll between 7,000 and 10,000. Former members of the Polish militia have subsequently claimed that many of the dead were shot down by Russian troops as they attempted to exit the liberated camp.

The Russians did not like Jews either, remembering their savagery against them during the salad days of Josef Stalin.

The truth of this matter will never be known but at least this is an atrocity that cannot be blamed on the Germans who were hundreds of miles away at the time.

How many of the 1,590 Hungarian Jewish deportees remaining in Auschwitz died in this Slavic holocaust is not known.

Playing the Holocaust Card

by Ami Eden
January 29, 2005
The New York Times

The 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, which was be marked by ceremonies in Poland this week, is a painful reminder of how little has been learned since the Holocaust. Most obviously, bigotry and religious and ethnic violence have not been eradicated, but seem to be sharply on the rise, from Darfur to Tikrit to Tibet.

As for the Jews, the main targets of Nazi racism, they face a very different sort of problem today, one that is partly of their own making. Jewish organizations have pursued an effective campaign to combat bigotry through a combination of protest and education, hoping to shame wrongdoers and encourage the next generation to shed old prejudices. And yet, as they look around, they see a world increasingly hostile to them and to Israel. It is time Jews recognize that the old strategies no longer work.

Jewish organizations and advocates of Israel fail to grasp that they are no longer viewed as the voice of the disenfranchised. Rather, they are seen as a global Goliath, close to the seats of power and capable of influencing policies and damaging reputations. As such, their efforts to raise the alarm increasingly appear as bullying.

The most recent example came earlier this month, after Prince Harry of Britain was photographed attending a private masquerade party in a World War II-era German uniform and Nazi armband. His appearance touched off a frenzy in the news media. The prince was called insensitive to Jewish suffering, with some suggesting that he was infected with anti-Jewish bigotry lurking in the genes of the royal family. One protester, Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, called on the prince to make amends by traveling to Poland for the Auschwitz ceremony.

This is exactly the wrong approach. By playing the Holocaust card against Harry, Jewish critics deflected attention from how Harry had insulted the memory of the millions of Britons who suffered during World War II; they also risked squandering a diminishing supply of hard-won moral capital better spent in the fight against terrorism and the rise in Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism.

The condemnations of Prince Harry were hardly a new phenomenon. In recent decades, a long list of religious, political and cultural luminaries, from Jesse Jackson to Marlon Brando to Dolly Parton, have found themselves forced to apologize for thoughtless remarks that were taken to be anti-Semitic. No doubt, some calls for contrition were justified. But the eagerness of Jewish civil-rights groups to play watchdog, and their tendency to err on the side of zealousness, leads them all too frequently to blur distinctions between real bigotry and the verbal blunders by well-meaning individuals.Take the case of Mr. Brando, who in 1996 broke into tears in a news conference as he tried to quell the uproar over his on-air comments to Larry King that "Hollywood is run by Jews" who "should have a greater sensitivity about the issue of people who are suffering." Lost in the brouhaha was the actor's long commitment to opposing anti-Semitism and his support of Israel, which dated back to his involvement in "A Flag Is Born," the 1946 play that served as an impassioned plea for a Jewish homeland.

In Prince Harry's case, the miscalculation is all the more egregious because it comes after a bruising year in which the bankruptcy of the old strategy has become glaringly apparent. In several recent controversies - including the debates over Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ," the role of neoconservatives in promoting the invasion of Iraq war, and the public celebration of Christmas - we have seen a new willingness, whether by borderline bigots, respected celebrities or policymakers, to express aloud ideas about Jews and Israel that until recently were taboo. The protests by anti-Semitism watchdogs did nothing but embolden these people.

This trend would only have been reinforced by the spectacle of a bullied prince roaming the grounds of a former concentration camp, doing his best to appear suitably remorseful. (Fortunately, Prince Harry decided against attending the ceremony, though a future visit to the death camp is apparently under consideration.)

For more than half a century, Auschwitz has rightly stood at the heart of virtually every moral argument put forth by spokesmen for the Jewish community, a powerful testament to the consequences of otherwise decent people remaining silent in the face of evil. Yet this legacy is in peril, threatened by an increasing reliance on raw political muscle over appeals to conscience.

As the world recalls the horrors and liberation of Auschwitz, Jewish organizations and advocates for Israel should remember that "speaking truth to power" does not work when you are seen as the powerful one.

Ami Eden is the national editor of The Forward.

[1] Central State Archives No 187603, Rolls 281-286 (Auschwitz)