DEATH CONVEYOR WAS STOPPED BY THE RUSSIAN SOLDIERS.
Part I. 65 years ago squads of the 1st Ukrainian front liberated the Auschwitz

Auschwitz... Name of a small town in the south of Poland became a synonym of all the terrors and inhumanity that appeared because of bringing the Nazi ideology to life. More than a half of the Hitler’s concentration camps victims are related to Auschwitz. It became not just a camp but really the "megalopolis of death".

Russian soldiers were shocked by the Nazi atrocities

Auschwitz...Name of a small town in the south of Poland became a synonym of all the terrors and inhumanity that appeared because of bringing the Nazi ideology to life. More than a half of the Hitler’s concentration camps victims are related to Auschwitz. It became not just a camp but really the "megalopolis of death". On the 20th of May, 1940 Nazi set up the first camp — "Auschwitz-I" — in the tenantless quarters of the Polish army. First part of the prisoners — consisting of 728 Polish political convicts — arrived to the camp on the 14th of June. In October of 1941 construction of the main part of the death camp (according to the number of victims) has started in Brzezinka (Birkenau) — later it was called "Auschwitz-II". And finally, 40 more small camps created by the plants and mines were united as a single complex called "Auschwitz-III". Monowitz (Monowice) was the biggest of those camps — it started its work in May, 1942.

First mentioning of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in the Soviet press media was in April of 1943 when the "Pravda" newspaper printed a short article enumerating the German concentration camps. Liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army troops was a part of the Vistula-Oder operation that was carried out since 12th of January until 3rd of February, 1945. This goal has been solved by the left wing of the 1st Ukrainian front and particularly by the 60th army, commanded by General P. A. Kurochkin. The aim of the operation was to invade the Upper Silesia moving from the south-east and occupy the important German defensive outposts at Vistula — Chrzanów, Bieruń and Auschwitz (Oświęcim).



On the 24th and 25th of January two branches of the Auschwitz concentration camp — Monowitz and Zarače — were liberated at once; after that command has set the goal to occupy the Bieruń and without further delays attack Auschwitz. In the same days Germans were particularly fiercely resisting near the Birkenau and between the 23rd and 25th of January they even tried to counterattack — though using the troops just of a single regiment.

Soviet soldiers who have already seen enough of the fascist atrocities at the occupied territories were still shocked by what they’ve seen there. Here’s one of the memorandums written on the 26th of January, 1941 by the head of political department of the 60th army, General-Major Grishaev addressed to the head of the political department of the 1st Ukrainian front General-Major Yashechkin: "We’ve discovered branch of the Auschwitz concentration camp at the Lebionj station, to the south-west from Chrzanуw — there were still some survived prisoners there. There were 30 Jews among them, rest of the prisoners were Hungarians, Frenchmen, Czechs, Poles and Russians — everyone who managed to hide at the coal mines, where they used to work. All the rest were slaughtered by the Germans. All in all it was 920 prisoners in this camp at the Lebionj station. One of them, Jew named Lever told us that he used to be contained in Auschwitz prior to that. There were 25-30 thousand Jews from all over the Europe at the same time. They were continuously brought there during four years. Those who were unable to work — women, elder people, children and the sick ones — were separated from the healthy men and exterminated at once. They were brought to the special barracks in the southern part of the camp where they were undressed and then killed with gas at the special chambers; after that the corpses were burned in the crematoriums. All in all there 12 stoves established for this — part of them was using electricity and part of them — coal."

Lever believes the number of the Jewish victims to be about 400.000 people. During the last two years men were being killed as well. Prisoners were fed very poorly: watered-down pottage and 150-200 grams of bread once a day. People were starving to death, exhausted and died from the backbreaking toil. Doctors were examining the prisoners three times a week and those incapable of work were sent to the gas chambers...In December of 1944 stoves were exploded by the Germans". Jaworzno — another Auschwitz branch was seemingly liberated by the 286th infantry division on the 27th of January. Lieutenant-colonel A. Lushnikov, head of its political department wrote the following in his "Political memorandum" dated the 28th of January: While liberating the town of Jaworzno, German concentration camp was discovered at the highway that led to Dobrow — fascists used to contain Russian, French, Czech and Jewish prisoners of war there. It was found out that this camp was set up in 1942 and from time to time about 3-4 thousand prisoners were detained there. While retreating, Germans have evacuated the camp but about 300 of injured people were left there — during the battle they’ve ran away and later spread across the liberated villages nearby. While searching the basements of the buildings and the rest of the territory a lot of corpses were found. I’ve created a commission to investigate the heinous crimes of the German fascists — having summarized its work the inspection statement was made up — the one, I’ve sent you earlier".

At about 3 o’clock in the afternoon on 27th of January 100th infantry division commanded by General F. M. Krasavin liberated Auschwitz and Birkenau. An assault squad of the 106th infantry division commanded by major Anatoly Pavlovich Shapiro was one of the first who broke into the city and into the camp. That was his squad that has cleared the approaches to the camp from the mines — after that major Shapiro has personally opened the gates of the Auschwitz-I camp and took part in suppressing the SS resistance. Birkenau camp was liberated on the 28th of January by the 107th infantry division commanded by colonel V. Y. Petrenko who used to visit Krasavin at the Auschwitz-I the day before that. About 650 corpses of the prisoners were lying around its territory, inside the barracks and near them — mostly it were women who died of exhaustion or were shot by the SS members the night before. About 9 thousand prisoners lived long enough to be liberated, 7 thousand of them were contained in three main camps — Birkenau, Auschwitz and Monowitz.

Terrible numbers

On the 9th of February, 1945 deputy chief of the Main political department of the Red Army of Peasants and Workers Shikin has reported to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Bolshevik Party member G. F. Aleksandrova the content of the dispatch, which was sent by the head of the political department of the 1st Ukrainian front General-major Yashechkin: "The Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated."

^{Inside of the residential barrack. Auschwitz-II (Birkenau)}

Reports that were made after the liberation of Auschwitz itself and its branches in the end of January, 1945 have contributed little to this picture. Different numbers of possible victims were given in the different reports — from 400 thousands up to 4-4.5 million people. An Emergency State Commission message "About the heinous crimes of the German government in the Auschwitz" became the final accord of this story — it was published in the "Krasnaya Zvezda" newspaper the day before the Victory Day — on the 8th of May, 1945. This message said that "...during the time of the Auschwitz camp existence German hangmen have slaughtered about 4 million citizens of the USSR, Poland, France, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Holland, Belgium and other countries there". Modern Western historians perceive the number of 4 millions quite skeptically and they express the opinion that from 1.1 up to 1.6 million people were killed in Auschwitz. But the Nazi themselves — personified by Rudolf Hцss (don’t mix him up with Rudolf Hess, NSDAP functionary), Auschwitz commandant in 1940-1943 — have estimated the number of perished people to be about 2.5 million people. And that was the "decent" and approximate count of Rudolf Hцss — at the Nuremberg process he stated that he wasn’t aware of the exact number victims as long as he wasn’t making any records. This war criminal who knew that he was in danger of the death penalty would hardly tell the lies about himself, ascribing another million of innocent victims on his own account!

Red Army soldiers were shocked by what they’ve seen at Auschwitz. When it became well-known that there is a terrible concentration camp in Auschwitz, two correspondents of the 28th army division newspaper "For our victory" Usher Margulis and Gennady Savin were sent there. "Head of the political department told us that our goal was to enter the camp side by side with the advancing troops — group of scouts was guiding us — said Usher Margulis. — We were to talk to the prisoners, take the photos of the stoves. But we didn’t manage to do all of that: prisoners could only speak French so we’ve just exchanged a few words in Polish and German with them. It turned out that the stoves were exploded by the Germans beforehand. But we’ve met a woman in the striped clothes who turned out to be Polish — I knew Polish — and she agreed to show us the camp. We’ve entered the brick building, two or three storey high and looked into the rooms as long as the doors were unlocked. There were boxes in one of the rooms — just the usual boxes for the goods, about a meter wide and meter and a half high — filled with the tooth crowns and golden prosthesis’. The room was crowded up with the boxes with jaws. It was a terrifying picture. There were boxes with the women hair in the next room — in turned out that even they had some application. And finally this woman brought us to the room filled with the graceful women purses, lampshades, wallets and the other leather goods. She said: "All of it is produced from the human skin". That was the moment when we felt rooted to the spot, we’ve lost our tongues".

By Alla Eroshkina, Alexey Vovchenko

To be continued