WHAT’S A FEW DEATH CAMPS AMONG FRIENDS?

 

LAST TUESDAY marked the 80^th anniversary of the liberation of the notorious Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland that from 1940-45 murdered 1.1 million people, including one-million Jews.  

Attendees  to the remembrance ceremonies included ambassadors, presidents, prime ministers, defense ministers, and representatives from international organizations including the UN, the EU and the Council of Europe. Of course, our erstwhile international gadfly and soon-to-be ex-prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau attended, and as did the guest-that-never-leaves, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.*

HOWEVER, ONE MEMBER of the Allied forces that fought against Nazi Germany in WWII was missing from this important anniversary: the actual liberators of Polish concentration camps where an estimated 3.1 million Jews and other minority groups were gassed. And that ally is Russia (formerly the USSR). January 27, 2025, is an important milestone marking the deaths of an estimated six-million European Jews at the hands of Germany’s Nazi regime.¹ Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies, held on the grounds of Auschwitz, with the laying of wreaths, prayer vigils, eulogies and commemorative speeches, was attended by numerous world delegates. The date is also an important time to honour the sacrifices made by the Allied armies in defeating Nazi Germany and its murderous regime, a feat done at a tremendous cost in men and materiel.

 

"Every year, this symbolic date urges the international community  to  remember  the  6  million Jews who were murdered alongside countless other victims of Nazi brutality. At a time when there are fewer and fewer direct witnesses of the Holocaust, marking the twilight of what historian  Annette  Wieviorka calls  "the  era  of  the  witness",  we  must  commit ourselves with ever greater gravity to the perpetuation of its memory." Audrey Azoulay Director General of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization)

 

FUN FACT: Did you know it was the Soviet "Red Army" that liberated the Nazi death camps in Poland where an industrialized system of mass slaughter was adopted and perfected? In occupied Europe, the Nazis set up upwards of 1,000 concentration camps which incarcerated political prisoners, Soviet and Allied POWs, dissident groups, communists, priests, marginalized and minority groups, Jews, and others deemed a threat to the state. Many camps had been operating since the mid-1930s in which inmates were dragooned into arduous forced labour routines, with the camps acting as ‘sub-contractors’ for major German firms like Bayer, I.G. Farben, and Krupp Steelworks. But the goal of incarcerating and eliminating Jews from German lands became the task of the Waffen-SS, the combat branch of the Nazi Party’s paramilitary Schutzstaffel (“protective echelon” or "SS") force. 

 

In 1941, after the decision was made to eradicate the Jewish population from occupied Europe (including from German-allied countries—Italy, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary Romania and Slovakia), the question was how were they to accomplish this enormous task. Purges, pogroms, and mass-killings had been occurring already in various locales and concentration camps using methods as varied as firing squads, forced (death) marches, even mobile gas chambers ("gaswagens"). But problems with inefficiency, volume of intake, secrecy and costs, like the use of precious ammunition in executions, made Hitler’s declared goal of eliminating an estimated eleven-million European Jews a daunting task.² The solution [the “Final Solution”] was in setting up dedicated “death camps” in German-occupied Poland, a decision  made during the infamous Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942 which finalized plans to concentrate the various execution programs there.

 

So, along with the creation of a special branch of the SS, the Waffen-SS, the death camp model was designed and tested in Poland. As noted, the streamlining of inputs (people) via dedicated rail lines; the adoption of segregation³ and execution protocols (Zyclon-B gas-filled showers); and cremation of the remains, ramped up considerably during Heinrich Himmler’s [the 4^th Reichsfuhrer of the Schutzstaffel.  Ed.] mass murder agenda. 

 

    Heinrich Himmler

IN ADDITION to Auschwitz, which was the largest extermination camp operated by the SS in Poland, there were other death camps: Majdenak, Chelmono, Belzac, Sobibor, and Treblinka operating in one capacity or another from 1941-45.

 

I WENT INTO A BIT OF DETAIL in the above “FUN FACT” just to point out the important military and humanitarian efforts the advancing Soviet army made as they liberated Poland from Nazi rule encountering, as they did, the unspeakable scenes of horror in the death camps. It should also be remembered that the USSR (United Soviet Socialist Republics) suffered huge losses during the war; death estimates for civilians and military are around 27 million! Their efforts on the Eastern Front from 1941-45 kept occupied 138 Wehrmacht divisions plus 38 divisions from German allies—over four-million men in the German invasion of the USSR, code-named “Operation Barbarossa”. The "Red Army" was critical in the ultimate defeat of Hitler’s regime, with the later June, 1944 Normandy Invasion, led by the Americans, succeeding in great part because of the ferocious Russian defense of their homeland and their capture of  Berlin in the waning days of the war in Europe .

 

THE PETULANT ATTITUDE of the current Polish government in NOT inviting representatives from Russia to participate in the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies at Auschwitz, last Tuesday, is another example of how far Western governance structures have fallen. If our leaders cannot even agree about basic historical facts concerning a monstrous evil and those who strove (and died) to end it, and are too blind or arrogant to see how such ceremonies like the January 27 anniversary are, in fact, vehicles to help unite us in these increasingly fractious times, then the divides between us will only widen and the language of diplomacy and good faith will become mere whispers in the wind. If we cannot show common cause with those who did a great good during one of the darkest times in human history, then we can only expect more  darkness in the future.⁴      

 

 

Cheers, Jake. ______________________________________________________

 

* RECALL that in WWII, Ukrainian nationalist militias worked in coordination with Nazi Waffen-SS to murder Jews and other minority groups in the Galician region of eastern Europe. Stephen Bandera was the Ukrainian militia leader whose thugs murdered tens of thousands of Jews and Poles. Today, statues of him can be found in parts of western Ukraine and the Nazi ideology he espoused can be found in Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Brigade currently fighting against Russia. 

1. Total civilian deaths in WWII are estimated to be between 50-55 million and total military deaths from all combatants are between 21-25 million.  

2. The skeletal remains following the cremation of murdered camp inmates were ground up and used as bone meal in various agricultural enterprises throughout Germany. In the film, “Zone of Interest” there is a scene where a worker sprinkles bone meal into the garden beds of the Auschwitz commandant, Ruldolf Hoss, a SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer (lieutenant colonel) whose house bordered the walls of the death camp.  FUN FACT: Hoss was arrested, tried and convicted of war crimes.  In 1947, he was executed by hanging on the grounds of Auschwitz while an audience of camp survivors look on.  

3. Another reason to isolate the mass killings into specialized death camps was because regular Wehrmacht troops began to suffer what we would today call PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) from carrying out duties involving the mass execution of civilians which began to cause dissension in the army ranks.

4. Like the genocide in Gaza that will start again in all probability. The Irony Gods who rain on our parades and shit in rose bushes are rolling on the floor in stitches these days when celebrations commemorating a genocide are attended by descendants and survivors of said genocide, while back home in Israel their government perpetuates a  genocide of its own against the Palestinians. Not quite the “Circle of Life” is it?

AS ONE WAG PUT IT: Invited to the ceremonies is the country that designed and instrumentalized the holocaust during WWII (Germany); the country that hosted the death camps and whose citizens built and policed the camps (Poland); the country that murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews and Slavs in coordination with Nazi forces, and currently abets neo-Nazi militias, and with a significant portion of its population endorsing and honoring Nazi culture (Ukraine) are all in attendance. 

👉But, the country that fought back the German invaders, liberated the Polish death camps, including Auschwitz, and arrived victorious in Berlin ahead of the other Allied armies (Russia) was not invited. YCMTSU! 😖

 

Main gate at Auschwitz. January 1945.