April 29, Rick Halperin, director of SMU Human Rights Program, for a piece reminding us to reflect on the liberation of World War II concentration camps in Europe 75 years ago. Published in Inside Sources and History News Network: https://bit.ly/2Wd05Uf
On January 27 this year (2020), much of the world came to a collective pause to remember that on that date 75 years earlier, in 1945, the Soviet army arrived at the gates of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Poland.
The Soviets were seen as the “liberators” of the camp even though they had not planned to do so. Saving the Jews or liberating the camps was never a specific military war aim of any of the Allied nations fighting German forces.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, which had been operating since 1940, had arguably become the epicenter of the Nazi plan of its Final Solution, an effort to rid the world, during World War II, of Jews and other designated groups such as Roma/Sinti, homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
It is believed that approximately 1.1 million individuals, including the disabled, women and children, were murdered, many upon arrival, at Auschwitz-Birkenau. . .
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