With chilling efficiency , the architects of the Holocaust orchestrated processes of deportation, detention, experimentation, enslavement and murder. Between and , approximately 1. Now, as Soviet troops marched westward through occupied Poland, the SS sought to dismantle their killing machine.
But what came after the murders finally stopped? Leaving Auschwitz, however, did not mean the end of their ordeal. Instead, the SS ordered their charges into columns and marched them into the miserable winter.
At first, the prisoners went on foot, monitored by officers who shot those who fell behind or tried to stay behind. Malnourished and inadequately clothed, the marchers were subject to random massacre. Eventually, they were shipped back toward Germany in open train cars.
Up to 15, of the former camp inhabitants died on the death march. Back at Auschwitz, where by some estimates 9, prisoners remained, only a few SS guards maintained their watch. Most of the prisoners were too sick to move. Among the last acts of the SS were to set fire to huge piles of camp documents, a last-ditch effort to hide the evidence. A surreal quiet fell on Auschwitz in late January, a period filled with confusion and suffering.
Then, Soviet scouts stumbled into Auschwitz-Birkenau. The liberators had not intended to go toward the camp; though Soviet premier Joseph Stalin had heard about its existence in intelligence communications and conversations with other Allied leaders, Red Army commanders had no idea it existed.
The Soviets had liberated Majdanek, a Nazi concentration and extermination camp, in July There, they found a working camp that had been only partially destroyed during its hasty evacuation.
It was the first Allied concentration camp liberation, and in the months to follow, the Allies would encounter many more camps as they squeezed the German army from the West and the East. As Soviet scouts, then troops, arrived at the Auschwitz complex, bewildered prisoners greeted them with tears and embraces.
Sixty years after the war ended, Henri published a memoir of his life in the camps, which means his voice will still be heard when he is gone. His daughter, Irene, who helped him with the book, stresses the importance of listening to survivors like Henri who lived through history's darkest chapter as they tell their own stories. You never forget. Henri Kichka despairs of the way anti-Semitism survived into the modern world in spite of the Holocaust.
I don't understand why people hate us so much. As I leave, I apologise for taking him back one more time through his suffering, and for a moment, there is a distant look in his eyes as though he is seeing the past. But he is happy, he says, to talk about the things he would prefer to forget if it means that the rest of us remember. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Image source, Courtesy of Henri Kichka. Henri Kichka's parents had moved to Belgium to escape anti-Semitism. Image source, Bettmann. This August aerial picture shows the Auschwitz II Birkenau camp while mass murder there was still taking place. Henri Kichka's old ID card spells out the time he spent in Nazi concentration camps from September to April Image source, Getty Images. More than , Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz.
Image source, Courtesy of Kichka family. Henri Kichka sits surrounded by his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Find out more about Auschwitz and the Holocaust:. Netanyahu warns of Iran threat at Holocaust forum. Related Topics. Only one survived, but he died shortly after the war.
In the fall of , the local AK organization took care of seven escaped Soviet POWs, accepting two of them in its Sosienki partisan unit and smuggling the others to resistance units in the mountains. They left the camp in a horse cart, with one of them wearing an SS uniform and posing as a guard.
From Auschwitz, before being led across the border into the General Government. In disguise, they drove away in a vehicle that they stole from the SS motor pool, and reached the General Government. Jaster carried a report that Witold Pilecki had written for AK headquarters. The former joined the unit and fought in its ranks.
At night from 26 to 27 April co-founder of camp conspiracy Witold Pilecki escaped from the camp. Jan Redzej and Edward Ciesielski escaped with him. Pilecki presented the Home Army his plan of attacking the camp which however was not approved by the leadership. He described his activities in conspiration movement and the situation in the camp in special reports.
Pilecki continued his underground activity. He fought in Warsaw Uprising in After its collapse he was arrested in a POWs camp in Murnau. At the end of he come back to Poland. In he was arrested by the communist regime.
He was sentenced to death for alleged espionage. He was rehabilitated in In Zylina, they met secretly with officials from the Slovakia Jewish Council and gave them a secret report on Auschwitz. An in-depth report was drawn up in Slovak and German. After reaching Slovakia, they reported secretly to officials from the Slovakia Jewish Council on the Auschwitz events of April-May , especially in regard to the Jews from Hungary.
This report was also sent to the West.
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