80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz

27 January marks the 80th anniversary of the day the Red Army broke through the gates of Auschwitz, liberated the thousands still held captive and alerted the world to the site of the single largest mass murder in history.

[Originally published in Swedish at marxist.se]

Eva Schloss, 95, described the day she was liberated:

“At the gate we saw this huge creature covered in icicles and wrapped in fur. It was terribly, terribly cold. [...] At first we really thought it was a bear, but when we looked closer we realised it was a man. It was the first Russian soldier who had come to the camp. I took him to show him the barracks, and this big man who must have seen terrible things had tears running down his cheeks.”

The Red Army lost 231 soldiers as they advanced towards the concentration camp that day. By the time they arrived, most of the SS soldiers and the majority of the living prisoners had left the camp.

In June 1944, the Red Army liberated a concentration camp for the first time: Majdanek, in south-eastern Poland. Their rapid advance prevented the Nazis from destroying evidence, and the Soviet Union recorded film evidence and turned the camp, where 78,000 were murdered, into a museum before the autumn was over.

The Nazis at Auschwitz desperately needed to destroy the evidence of their greatest crimes before these too were revealed. They began moving or murdering prisoners, dismantling equipment and blowing up the gas chambers.

By the end of 1944, there were ‘only’ 67,000 prisoners left in Auschwitz (at its peak, the camp held 135,000 prisoners). Killing so many people without the gas chambers was a logistical nightmare for the SS soldiers. Instead, from 17 January, everyone who could walk was led on a death march west towards Germany. 15,000 prisoners died on the march.

The last SS soldiers left in the camp burned down barracks and destroyed evidence. On 27 January, when the Soviet soldiers arrived at the gates, the camp was still burning. What they witnessed was unprecedented in history.

8,000 prisoners too weak or sick to march had been left behind. Mountains of dead bodies that could not be buried in the frozen ground were piled up. Prisoners that looked like corpses walked around or lay in the barracks. The Red Army set up field hospitals and soldiers gave them their clothes and food. Thousands survived, but for some it was too late. However, for every day that Auschwitz was liberated, instead of in the hands of the Nazis, thousands of lives were spared.

For every day that Auschwitz was liberated, instead of in the hands of the Nazis, thousands of lives were spared / Image: public domain

Several times the prisoners of Auschwitz had rebelled and fought back. The most famous example is the Sonderkommando revolt in October 1944. When the prisoners who were forced to keep the gas chambers and crematoria running got wind that the Nazis were planning to murder them to hide evidence, they rebelled. It failed, and the majority of Sonderkommando prisoners were murdered.

Earlier, in cooperation with Polish partisans, camp inmates managed to smuggle in a camera, take pictures, and smuggle it out again. These are the only pictures left showing people being executed and burned at Auschwitz.

Four months after liberation, the Red Army had advanced as far as Berlin, and Nazi Germany surrendered. Contrary to what the majority of Hollywood films show, it was not the United States, Britain or any other capitalist country that defeated Nazism, but the workers' state of the Soviet Union.

Of the 13 million Nazi soldiers killed during the war, 10.7 million were killed fighting the Soviet Union. Thanks to its planned economy, the Soviet Union was able to produce more than the whole of German-occupied Europe in 1943 – which eventually enabled it to win the war. By then, around 27 million Soviet citizens had died fighting fascism.

Auschwitz was a complex of 40 extermination camps and slave labour sites, the ultimate symbol of the Holocaust. From 1942 to 1945, people were gassed to death on this site. In this camp alone, over 1,100,000 people were killed by gas, shooting, hanging, starvation, disease and exhaustion. The majority were European Jews.

The words ‘never again’ have been repeated millions of times since the Holocaust. But history can easily be exploited. Today, the memory of the Holocaust is used by Benjamin Netanyahu and others to justify Israel's genocidal policies against the Palestinians. Many Holocaust survivors, many with links to Auschwitz, have protested in statements and participated in demonstrations against the genocide in Gaza. They refuse to allow their experiences to be hijacked by the Zionists. On their side are today's communists.