By Scott Ritter, Columnist, SPUTNIK INTERNATIONAL
The SS guards abandoned the guard posts surrounding Auschwitz during the night of 20-21 January 1945.<
At its height, in the summer of 1944, the Auschwitz complex, which comprised three basic camps — the main camp, Birkenau and Monowitz — and another 40 sub-camps, housed over 105,000 registered prisoners, mostly Jews, and around 30,000 unregistered Jewish inmates of so-called transit camps.
By January 20, 1945, there were approximately 9,000 prisoners remaining. In the days that followed the evacuation, SS guards would patrol the camps, shooting 400 prisoners to death, and burning another 300 alive in their barracks. On January 25, the SS gathered approximately 150 prisoners from Birkenau and marched them out of the camp. The next day the SS blew up some warehouses and abandoned the facility altogether.
Most of the surviving prisoners were starving, sick, and on the verge of death. The camp medical staff, assisted by the healthier prisoners, did their best to care for the bedridden patients. The camp was besieged by a howling winter storm, with temperatures well below zero and snow drifting around the camp. The survivors were afraid to move around too much — regular German troops, falling back in the face of an advancing Soviet Army, made their way through the camp, pillaging as they went, and everyone feared the return of the SS.
Auschwitz had been in existence since 1940, when it was used as a concentration camp for Polish prisoners. By 1942 the camp was converted into a combination labor and extermination facility, and Jewish prisoners began to arrive in larger numbers.Historians estimate that around 1,1 million people perished in Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945, nearly a million of the Jews, the rest comprising Poles (some 75,000), Gypsies (20,000), Soviet prisoners of war (15,000), and 10,000-15,000 others from different ethnicities.
World
Deliverance From Evil: 78 Years Ago Soviet Troops Liberated Auschwitz
Yesterday
The soldiers of the advancing Soviet Army, however, had no knowledge of the existence of Auschwitz — for them, the death camp was simply marked as a “barracks” on the maps they used to plan their advance. General Kurochkin’s 60th Army, fresh off the liberation of the Polish city of Krakow, some 45 kilometers to the west of the camp, began pursuing the defeated German Army out of the city on January 25. Their goal was to take Katowice, an industrial city about 25 miles to the northwest of Auschwitz.<
Trudging through knee-deep snow, the Soviet infantrymen of the three divisions comprising the 60th Army — the 107th, the 100th, and the 322nd — repeatedly battled German troops dug in along the way. On the morning of January 27, while the 107th division skirted around the northern edge Polish town of Oswiecim, adjacent to the Auschwitz camp, troops from the 100th divisionentered the Monowitz camp, three miles kilometers to the east of Oswiecim. Primo Levi, one of the surviving prisoners, recalled that the first Soviet soldiers who entered the camp had no idea what they had walked into.
“They did not greet us, nor did they smile,” Levi recalled. “They seemed oppressed not only by compassion but by a confused restraint, which sealed their lips and bound their eyes to the funeral scene.”
To the left of the 100th division were the troops of the 322nd division, with the 472nd infantry regiment in the lead. After crossing the Sola River, the men of the 472nd regiment reached Oswiecim, sweeping aside light resistance from the German defenders, before pushing west, toward the railway station. Here the German resistance stiffened, and the Soviets troops had to work hard to dislodge the dug in Germans. Once the Germans had been either killed or retreated, the Soviets resumed their advance, pushing scouts forward to find a way forward.
One of the Soviet soldiers, Senior Lieutenant Ivan Martynushkin, recalled that his troops had just defeated the Germans in Oswiecim when, after passing through the village, they “came out onto some kind of enormous field almost completely surrounded by electrified barbed-wire fences and watchtowers.”
“We saw buildings beyond the barbed wire,” Martynushkin noted. “And as we got closer, we began to see there were people.”
Martynushkin and his men had no idea who these people, who appeared “very thin, tired, with blackened skin,” were.
“At first there was wariness, on both our part and theirs,” he recalled. “But then they apparently figured out who we were and began to welcome us, to signal that they knew who we were and that we shouldn’t be afraid of them — that there were no guards or Germans behind the barbed wire. Only prisoners.”
Martynushkin and his men had just liberated the Birkenau camp.
Anna Polshchikova, a Russian prisoner who worked at the camp medical facility, recalled her joy in seeing the Soviet soldiers — and their confusion. “They looked at us with surprise and in dismay. ‘Who are you?’ they asked. ‘What is this place?’ ‘We are Russians,’ I replied, ‘and this is Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.’ ‘And what are you doing here?’ they inquired in an unfriendly manner. We were baffled and did not know what to say. We looked wretched and pathetic, so they relented and asked again, in a kinder tone. ‘And what is over there?’ they said, pointing northwards. ‘Also a concentration camp.’ ‘And beyond that?’ ‘Also a camp.’ ‘And beyond the camp?’ ‘Over there in, the forest, are the crematoria, and beyond the crematoria, we don’t know.’”
The horror of the reality of what they had just discovered only then began to register in the minds of the Soviet liberators.
About 7,000 emaciated prisoners were in the Auschwitz main camp, Birkenau, and Monowitz. Another 500 prisoners were discovered in the Auschwitz sub-camps in Stara Ku?nia, Blachownia ?l?ska, ?wi?toch?owice, Weso?a, Libi??, Jawiszowice, and Jaworzno. But inside the camps the Soviets found 1.2 million pieces of clothing, 7.7 tons of human hair and other personal items stripped from murdered prisoners, evidence of the horrors that had transpired there. More than 600 decaying corpses were scattered throughout the grounds, the mortal remains of those prisoners gunned down by the murderous SS guards before they abandoned the camps.
Russia
‘Nazi Crimes Should Never be Forgotten’: Putin on Eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day
26 January, 14:47 GMT
But in this nightmare, the humanity of the Soviet soldier shown through. Ten-year-old Eva Mozes Kor, a survivor of Nazi Dr. Joseph Mengele’s demented medical experiments, recalled the kindness the Soviets showed to the children of the camp.
“They gave us hugs, cookies, and chocolate,” she said. “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.”
Some 231 Soviet soldiers lost their lives in the fighting in and around the town of Oswiecim that occurred during the liberation of Auschwitz, including the commander of the 472nd regiment, Colonel Siemen Lvovich Besprozvanny. Their bodies are buried in the Oswiecim municipal cemetery, a permanent reminder of the sacrifice made in liberating the 7,500 survivors of the Auschwitz death camps.
On January 27, 2023, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum will commemorate the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz camps by the Soviet Army. This year, however, Russia won’t be invited. “Because of the attack on free and independent Ukraine,” Pawel Sawicki, a press officer for the museum, told the media, “representatives of the Russian Federation have not been invited to participate in this year’s commemoration event of the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.”
This decision was attacked by Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, who posted the following reply on her Telegram channel: “No matter how our European ‘non-partners’ contrived in their attempts to rewrite history in a new way, the memory of the Soviet heroes-liberators and horrors of Nazism cannot be erased.”
Russian Diplomats Banned From Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony in Amsterdam, Embassy Says
Yesterday
Given that the Russian Army is, today, engaged in a life and death struggle inside Ukraine with the progeny of the murderous SS prison guards of Nazi Germany, the decision of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum to prohibit Russia from attending the liberation commemoration is deeply disturbing. One can be rest assured that the descendants of Eva Mozes Kor, Anna Polshchikova, Primo Levi, and the other roughly 7,500 survivors of the death camps whose lives were saved by the sacrifice of Colonel Besprozvanny and the other Soviet soldiers who were killed in the fighting to liberate the camps will never forget who it was who allowed their ancestors to survive that unspeakable horror.
Nor should anyone who reads this article. What the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum has done in denying the representatives of Russia their rightful role as the saviors of Auschwitz in the 78th anniversary commemoration of the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz is an abomination. But no matter how hard they might try, Pawel Sawicki and the staff of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum cannot make history disappear.
“Never forget” are words that have meaning. It is a shame that this mantra no longer resonates with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum.
Reader, really????
@peloni
This statement (proverb) means that if someone says he can’t do something, it means that they really have no desire to do what they say they CAN’T do.
You argument about the “incompetence” of the US forces in fighting the German army in WWII clearly points to a lack of desire or motivation on their part to do so.
In fact, the greatest concern of the US government (we are talking the very top functionaries) during the war was how the world would look and function AFTER the war, and that included Germany as a postwar ally of the US.
Therefore, the US did everything possible to ensure that the Germans think well of the US – this includes shipping almost a million of the German POWs to the US on the returning Lend-Lease ships (instead of the Jewish children for whom no transportation could be found), treating them well in the camps, the Marshall Plan for Germany, and the rest – there are books written about the “former” Nazis working for the US, in the US, while being spared punishment both in the US and in West Germany, I don’t want to write another book here.
As far as carpet bombing Dresden, etc. it was intimidation like in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and just as inhumane (we are talking about civilians here.)
I am suggesting no such thing but the fact that it took the Americans almost a year get through France to Germany (but still be in Berlin a day earlier than the Russkies to make sure that the Americans were the first to whom Germany would be forced to capitulate), and it took them a year to get through 1/2 of Italy’s “boot” tells me that:
a) they didn’t really try hard enough;
b) their pace was probably determined in advance and tailored to the events.
The example I gave of the former Nazi pilot and of the top Nazis turning to the Western “Allies” when they realized that Germany had lost the war shows that the Germans viewed the British and the Americans as friends rather than enemies or, at least, that the enmity was very unfortunate and temporary.
This would be impossible if they didn’t realize that the feeling was, to a great extent, mutual.
Let me make it as simple as I can:
a) The USSR (or Russia, as everyone prefers to call it, which shows that it doesn’t matter to them what that “Russia” is or does) fought against Germany pretty much on its own if you don’t count the Lend-Lease assistance which was 1/3 of that given to Britain.This was done by the “allies” of the Soviet Union on purpose to ensure either the Soviet Union’s defeat by Nazi Germany or, at least its significant destruction and weakening. I already mentioned that the heads of the American military in June of 1941 were convinced that the USSR will fold within three months and it didn’t cause them any anxiety.
b) the allies of the USSR were it allies in name only, in fact, they were its enemies who didn’t mind at all if “Russia” lost the war to the Germans (BTW, think about the consequences to all the Jews of the Diaspora and Palestine in this case) – this means they were, in reality, allied together with Germany and with the rest of Europe against the USSR, aka “Russia”;
c) Why wouldn’t they “mind at all if “Russia” lost the war to the Germans”? Because the common goals of the real (and not fake) Western allies (the goals remain the same today today) was to conquer the so-called Eurasia which at the time almost completely belonged to the USSR and to take over its land and resources – this was being done under the guise of fighting against “Bolshevizm”. The war in Ukraine has the same goals but it is done a lot more “cleverly” without sacrificing the lives of the “civilized people” in combat, and it is fought under the guise of “freedom, democracy, rules-based order, saving the poor, suffering Ukrainians”, etc. – a “just war” like the ones that the Ancient Rome fought “to bring the Roman civilization to the barbarians” but really to conquer and rob them.
d) Why were they (the US and Great Britain, especially) so mad that “Russia” defeated Nazi Germany? Because (just like in this Ukrainian proxy war with the thousands of sanctions, etc.) the proxy war using Germany didn’t end quite as they expected – while the USSR had experienced huge losses and destruction, it wasn’t destroyed and weakened the extent desired and, to make this even more annoying, the Soviet Union ended up taking over the whole of Eastern Europe and almost half of Germany creating its own military bloc to oppose NATO.
The goals are several hundred years old, the invasions haven’t worked so far but hope is the last to die.
I think this should answer your questions.
If it doesn’t, it’s too bad.
Focus should remain on the Six Million of blessed memory. Who did you lose, Reader?
@Reader The Jews who fled to Russia were Polish Jews fleeing from the half of Poland that the Soviet Union had gobbled up as a result of the Hitler Stalin Pact and was now abandoning in the face of the German onslaught reports of which Stalin had chosen to ignore. Russia did nothing for those who stayed behind. Russia didn’t bomb the camps either.Jewish resistance groups like the Bielsky Brigade that allied with the Red army were badly treated, not like allies. Lot of antisemitism. Jews who did ok were those who fled ro Azerbaijan which has no history of antisemitism and flourishing Jewish communities.
It’s regrettable that this event was politicixed and the Russskies kept out but the focus should remain on the million.
@Reader There is no evidence the Cold War began during WWII apart from the Soviets kidnapping Wallenberg in 1945. The Soviets were the bad guys. If Jews who fled there survived, so what? They were mistreated and it’s not like they went out of their way to save them. Tbey were just treated like any other Soviet citizens. They just behaved like a normal nation in that regard. All this Communist propaganda. . You are living in a time warp. When are you going to bang your shoe on the table?. 😀
@Reader
Sorry, I am not sure what this statement is referencing as I didn’t say can’t.
I am not sure of your knowledge of the Italian campaign, but if you are suggesting that the Americans purposefully launched an invasion of Italy and then purposefully goofed up their advantage in doing so, well color me silly, but that is a pretty absurd suggestion for which you will find no support in reading on the details of the Italian campaign. Again, not sure if this WAS what you meant, but if it is, it’s ridiculous. If it isn’t, well, please clarify as to what you mean and why it is relevant to the Ukraine War today.
As to the Germans liking the British better than the Russians, the German hatred of the Slavic people was a major theme of Mein Kampf, but it still doesn’t explain why you think that Russia’s part in winning WWII led to today’s events.
@peloni
CAN’T MEANS WON’T.
I read some reminiscences of a former German pilot about the Germans bombing London in WWII.
He said that the pilots’ hearts were bleeding for the poor British “They are just like us!” and they couldn’t wait for the bombing campaign to be over.
Do you think their hearts were bleeding when they were bombing the Untermenschen?
@Sebastien Zorn
The cities that the US and Great Britain carpet bombed were those which were expected to end up under the Soviet occupation after the end of the war.
Standard Oil, IBM and other corporations were working for Germany in WWII.
As far as Lend-Lease is concerned – read here who fought the most against the Nazis and who got the most “help”:
On top of that, the US brought in almost a million of the German POWs on the returning Lend-Lease ships, so that they wouldn’t return without a cargo but the US “had no transportation for the million and a half of the Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust.
There is a difference between mindlessly recounting zillions of facts and making conclusions based on these facts, i.e., connecting the dots.
If the US didn’t want the USSR taking over the Eastern Europe, then why support the 3rd Reich so it could attack the USSR – they never thought that the USSR could win?
@Reader
The dots don’t connect unless you ignore a good many dots – as Sebastien stated, there is a lot of history you ignore in order to showcase your claim here.
Additionally, the US would never have mounted an invasion of Europe in ’41 as they weren’t in the war til Dec ’41. They did enter the war in ’42 and were soundly defeated at Casserine Pass in Nov ’42. It wasn’t til mid ’43 that the US demonstrated an ability to show their quality on the battlefield in North Africa and Sicily, and let’s face it, they were fighting the Italians at the time, not the Germans. It wasn’t until after the Anzio landing which the Americans met up with the Germans and the result was so unsuccessful that they chose to create a new second front rather than pushing further up the boot of Italy [this was in large part due to the gross incompetence of Mark Clark, but let’s not digress].
It wasn’t in the interest of the Russians to have the Americans launch a massive invasion of Europe if it would have been defeated, any more than it was in the interest of the Americans to have the Russians defeated and then have to face the Nazi battle hardened crack troops of the Eastern Front.
The answer is that the Germans were a defeated nation which did not offer the slightest geopolitical threat to the US after the war. After Roosevelt and Churchill betrayed the Poles and western Europe at Yalta, it left the Soviets with a very strong position to threaten the West, which they wasted no time in doing as seen during the events leading upto the Berlin air lift. The threats being exploited by the Soviets after WWII were in fact the very reason why the Americans, really the West, lost their appetite for even the limited punishments which they had initially sought at the end of the War – recall the Nuremberg Trials, the sentences became lighter, guilty judgements were fewer with time, and later the life sentences handed down were all reversed except that of Hess.
As to the war plans, every military prepares war plans for every possible contingency. Following WWII, Old Joe was unfortunately now in control of an enormous land mass, with a hardened army, a war time economy in place, an extended reach across half of Europe and demonstrating the interest in extending that reach further which led to the Berlin Air Lift. If the US did not have such plans, it would have been a point of great negligence, which was not something which I would suggest would be characteristic of the US armed forces at the end of WWII. You will note that the plan was never enacted, even as Russia had not the means to respond if the plans had been carried out – which only further supports what I have suggested about the military making contingency plans.
@Reader The US and Great Britain carpet bombed German cities, fire-bombed Dresden. American companies built the Soviet industrial infrastructure. The US supported Russia with lend lease. Hollywood was very sympathetic. Rembember Mission to Moscow ambassador Davies. There have been periods of alliance, and of tension or acrimony. Who cares? Is it good for the Jews?God, you’re sentimental.
@peloni
Connect the dots.
You yourself said that the civilized world
WHY?
When Germany started losing the war to the USSR, the major figures in the military started reaching out to the Western “Allies”.
The USSR begged the US to start the 2nd front already in July of 1941 but the US waited ’til June of 1944 and left the bulk of the fighting against Germany to the Soviet Union.
In June 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the American military was convinced that the USSR would lose the war within the 1st 3 months – why wasn’t the American government worried about this outcome?
Why was the US so mad at the USSR right when the war ended that it was making plans to destroy it completely (see below) while it was planning to help rebuild Germany which had just committed the worst crimes against humanity known to history at that time – the answer “Because it was a communist country!” doesn’t work because the hatred was there during the Russian monarchy, and it continued when the USSR self-destructed and became a capitalist Russian Federation (much reduced in size and power)?
@Reader
I am not sure what you mean by this. I would suggest that Russia is being punished for having ended the Cold War without being conquered by the West. It left a sense of unfinished business among both the political class in the West as well as far too many of the general public. Not sure how you are relating Russia’s role in defeating the Nazi’s to her current plight, if I am reading your comment correctly.
By the way, as to this comment
instead of applying sanctions, they did the opposite, they funded the rise of the Third Reich. Just an observation.
@FelixQuigley
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Brest-Litovsk
Why should anyone care about those murderers’ moods?!
BTW, invoking pity and compassion is the oldest trick of German diplomacy (I read about it a few years ago), even the Goths who sacked Rome allegedly did it because they were poorly treated by Byzantium which hired them to protect the borders (they probably just got deathly bored sitting in the barracks and got an uncontrolled desire to sack something.)
@Sebastien Zorn
You know exactly what I mean.
Germany started 2 world wars, the bloodiest and most cruel in human history within a 35 year period killing 100 or more million people and maiming countless others, and yet the country has never even been truly punished and is still considered to be a valuable or even precious part of the “civilized world”, while Russia which was continually invaded by the West for hundreds of years (I wish I knew who was the first to come up with this East/West division (not Kipling, I am pretty sure)) and treated like the most evil and barbaric country in the world who has no right to any of the land or the resources it has – these have to be handed over to the “civilized world” – and now Russia is being punished for actually defeating Nazi Germany!
I wish the “civilized world” applied at least a couple of sanctions to Hitler’s Germany rather than lining up to kiss Hitler’s boots.
@Felix
Both statements are counterfactual.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036166/
Reader
“If the West has never hated Germany but has always hated Russia, what does it tell you”
An answer to this central question cannot be avoided. It is very engrained.
But I notice many of the statements on twitter obviously from younger are now filled with extreme deep going hatred of the American elites.
Many are filled with that American humour, Joni Mitchell from Canada or Bob Dylan, who I grew up with.
They say “I voted Biden to escape from Trump. But never again ” is a common theme. THEY the American youth ARE DESPERATE.
But no this hatred for Russia only goes to one place…October 2017
By the way it didn’t help the German generals mood that who were they negotiations with at Brest Livosk……JEWS!!!
@FelixQuigley
Felix, you are talking about Americans who have been taught that Russia is evil no matter what and that the reason Germany started WWII is that the Versailles Treaty hurt their pride and dignity (after them having killed directly or indirectly ~20 million people in WWI which Germany started for some reason – who knows, their dignity was probably hurt, too), so it is really not surprising that the Germans went on to slaughter anywhere from 70 to 85 million people in WWII, thus deserving a slap on the wrist and the Marshall Plan.
If the West has never hated Germany but has always hated Russia, what does it tell you?
@leonkushner
Maybe you should correct this sentence to SOME European Jews survived the war in Russia.
6 million dead out of the pre-war European Jewish population of 9.5 million means about 1/3 of them survived, and not all in Russia (the USSR).
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-population-of-europe-before-the-holocaust-map
Most of the deaths, in fact, occurred on the territory of Poland and the Soviet territories occupied by Germans.
So now the Dutch want to ban Russians from the Auschwitz remembrance day? The Dutch (most of them) were no different from the nazis. Somehow the Dutch got a pass from the world over their part in the Shoah.
More importantly than liberating Auschwitz is the fact that most European Jews survived the war in Russia. It wasn’t a picnic for sure. My father a Polish Jew joined the Russian army and got his head blown open but survived. My mother also a Polish Jew and her family were sent to work in a gulag in Siberia and also survived. Millions survived. In the Diaspora (and Gentiles too), we forget our history quickly. It’s not taught at schools and if our parents and grandparents don’t teach us what happened, then it’s gone. Unlike us, the Russian’s didn’t forget what the nazis did to them. It’s also taught at school. When Putin said he wants to de-nazify Ukraine, he wasn’t kidding. Any Jewish survivor from Eastern Europe would agree with what my parents said about Ukraine. Los em brennen!
Russia definitely should have been invited. To exclude them is unconscionable. Their contribution to liberating Auschwitz and the Allies winning WW2 far exceeded that of the other countries involved.
@Felix “We have no eternal allies, we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual and it is those interests we must follow.” Lord Palmerston
@Felix I said that I think Russia should have been invited. Whaddyou want, tears? It’s not that important, This is supposed to be about us, remember?
What utter nonsense, preventing the Russians from attendance when their contribution was so great.
Sebastien
Another diversion. We are talking on this Scott Ritter post on serious issue of cutting Russia off from Auschwitz Commemorative event. You simply refuse to comment, YOU cover for Michael who abused me while HE refusing to acknowledge that the Maidan Coup is an issue.
Meanwhile I see nobody on this site except Peloni states their position.
And what position are the main ISRAELI leaders taking up on this existential struggle towards Russia.
I am looking at Caroline Glick and her lies against Russia on Bucha
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-47-russias-war-plan-in-ukraine-and-bidens/id1565690431?i=1000556500786
@Felix
C’mon man. Seriously? 😀
I think Felix has been smokin’ some bad weed, man and is sorely in need of an intervention. 😀
Or a time machine.
The excellent Scott Ritter study has this paragraph
“Some 231 Soviet soldiers lost their lives in the fighting in and around the town of Oswiecim that occurred during the liberation of Auschwitz, including the commander of the 472nd regiment, Colonel Siemen Lvovich Besprozvanny. Their bodies are buried in the Oswiecim municipal cemetery, a permanent reminder of the sacrifice made in liberating the 7,500 survivors of the Auschwitz death camps.”
How many times have Jewish elites mentioned the above facts?
Not many and the reasons being ???
“in this nightmare, the humanity of the Soviet soldier shown through. Ten-year-old Eva Mozes Kor, a survivor of Nazi Dr. Joseph Mengele’s demented medical experiments, recalled the kindness the Soviets showed to the children of the camp.
“They gave us hugs, cookies, and chocolate,” she said. “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.”. ”
I remember telling a very similar content here on Israpundit and I remember also very well the cold response
This is also why I was fighting so hard here on Israpundit AND against a grifter going by the name of MICHAEL
Who was slandering Russia at THIS time
To total silence from everyone on Israpundit
And I still have no real answer as to why I was fighting on my own
Ritter does an excellent job providing the context in which the Russians were prevented from attending this event at Auschwitz which was a memorial of the sacrifices and victims of both those who were rescued and those who died while conducting the unforeseen rescue. It is simply outrageous that the solemnity of this memorial event was soiled with the political concerns of the day, and the complete silence from around the world regarding the the use of this memorial event as political theater is quite disturbing.
I had three uncles who served in the war, two of them in Europe – one of which was wounded and the other was with the units involved in freeing the camps in Western Europe. All three of them hated the Soviets with a sound passion. Despite this, however, the idea that anyone would prevent the Russians, even at the height of the Cold War, from participating in this event would have had each of my Red hating uncles screaming for the head (not literally of course) of this political hack parading as a museum director at a memorial event. The fact that there is no resounding condemnation of this outrage around the world, or at least very little, is an outrage of its own.