Three men who stood in the same line in Auschwitz have nearly consecutive numbers: From left, Menachem Shulovitz, 80, bears B14594; Anshel Udd Sharezky, 81, was B14595; and Jacob Zabetzky, 83, was B14597.
“We were strangers standing in line in Auschwitz, we all survived different paths of hell, and we met in Israel,” Mr. Sharezky said. “We stand here together now after 65 years. Do you realize the magnitude of the miracle?”
(via nataliakuczenska)
Audio of the first Jewish service to take place at Belsen-Bergen concentration camp following its liberation by British forces on April 15, 1945.
January 27, 1945: Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz concentration camp.
The Auschwitz concentration camp network, which included Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Auschwitz III-Monowitz, and dozens of smaller satellite camps, collectively made up the largest concentration camp run by the Third Reich over the course of the war. The first prisoners arrived at Auschwitz in May of 1940; by 1945 millions of people had passed through - and died - in Auschwitz, with Rudolf Höss estimating a total death toll at 3,000,000 Jews, plus hundreds of thousands of Poles, Roma, prisoners of war, and any other social and political “undesirables”. Because the Nazis destroyed records and many of the camp facilities in an attempt to mask the extent of their crimes as Red Army forces approached, exact numbers are difficult to ascertain, but the generally accepted death toll is around 1.3 million people, who died from gassing, sickness, and starvation.
The original camp, Auschwitz, served a variety of purposes: a prison to hold enemies of the Third Reich/General Government; a steady source of enslaved laborers; a relatively small-scale extermination camp. Medical (in the loosest sense of the word) experimentation was also performed on prisoners at Auschwitz I, including those conducted by the notorious “Angel of Death”, Josef Mengele. Construction began on Auschwitz-Birkenau in late 1941 in preparation for the implementation of the “Final Solution”. Although it was referred to as a prisoner-of-war camp, there was no hiding what purpose this second camp would serve, thanks to the gas chambers and crematoria that made up the tools of Auschwitz-Birkenau’s murder machine. There was even a separate “Gypsy camp” where thousands of Roma and Sinti prisoners were sent to be exterminated.
When liberation by oncoming Soviet forces became imminent (which it seemed by late 1944), orders were sent out to blow up the camp’s facilities, along with orders to exterminate the remainder of its prisoners. The latter orders were never carried out, but evacuations (i.e. death marches) to other camps did take place. Sadly, the only prisoners the 322nd Rifle Division of the Red Army managed to free by the time they arrived on January 27, 1945, were those too sick to walk with the rest. They numbered around 7,500, compared to the 50,000 plus who had been forced on the march. One Russian officer describes the scene of the liberation:
They [the prisoners] began rushing towards us, in a big crowd. They were weeping, embracing us and kissing us. I felt a grievance on behalf of mankind that these fascists had made such a mockery of us. It roused me and all the soldiers to go and quickly destroy them and send them to hell.
A child survivor, only ten years old at the time, describes his own experience:
We ran up to them and they gave us hugs, cookies, and chocolate. Being so alone a hug meant more than anybody could imagine because that replaced the human worth that we were starving for. We were not only starved for food but we were starved for human kindness. And the Soviet Army did provide some of that.
In 1947, Rudolf Höss was hanged near Crematorium I of the original Auschwitz camp.
Scenes from World War II Photoshopped Onto Today’s Streets
“It is a bit like painting with history,” Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse says of her project “Ghosts of History.”
She got the idea a few years ago when she found some old negatives at a flea market in Amsterdam, where she lives. “I was very curious about these mysterious photos and wanted to find out who took them and where. So I started to walk around Amsterdam and made photos in the same spot where the old photos were made and combined them on the computer.”
See more. [Images: Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse, Unknown, Tom Timmermans]
There was a tradition in the German army of taking a photo of the shortest and tallest soldiers next to each other.
When Buchenwald was liberated, the prisoners mocked this tradition and posed for a photo of the tallest and shortest prisoner.
![“Studio portrait of Istvan Reiner, half-brother of the donor [Janos Kovasc], taken shortly before he was killed in Auschwitz.”
Janos did not know at the time what became of his mother and half-brother. Both were deported to Auschwitz.
Upon arrival other prisoners told Livia [his mother] to give Istvan to his grandmother and to go through the selection alone. Livia told the SS men that she was four years younger than she really was and was selected for forced labor…She was liberated in either Bergen-Belsen or Mannheim. Istvan, then only four years old, was murdered together with his grandmother.
(USHMM)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_maf3stUmM21r18o95o1_500.jpg)
“Studio portrait of Istvan Reiner, half-brother of the donor [Janos Kovasc], taken shortly before he was killed in Auschwitz.”
Janos did not know at the time what became of his mother and half-brother. Both were deported to Auschwitz.
Upon arrival other prisoners told Livia [his mother] to give Istvan to his grandmother and to go through the selection alone. Livia told the SS men that she was four years younger than she really was and was selected for forced labor…She was liberated in either Bergen-Belsen or Mannheim. Istvan, then only four years old, was murdered together with his grandmother.
Happy birthday Anne Frank (12 June 1929 - March 1945)
This is also the day that she received her diary for her 13th birthday in 1942.
Suspected war criminals in Germany.
Third from the left is Juana Bormann, a guard at multiple concentration camps who was executed in 1945. (via Yad Vashem)
Family members say goodbye to a child through a fence at the Lodz ghetto’s central prison where children, the sick, and the elderly were held before deportation to Chelmno during the “Gehsperre” action. Lodz, Poland, September 1942.
(via ushmm)
An orchestra escorts prisoners destined for execution at Mauthausen.
