Sunday, January 27, 2008
This Day in the History of Sad Discoveries
On this day in 1945, Soviet forces advancing through Poland towards Germany captured the town Oświęcim and liberated the three nearly empty main camps (Konzentrationslager) nearby; the administrative center, called Auschwitz by the Germans, which had originally served as a prisoner of war camp for Polish and Soviet soldiers, the workcamp named Monowitz and the deathcamp named Birkenau, where the Nazis murdered, mainly with poisonous gas, at least 1.5 million men, women and children, including more than a million Jews.
Labels: WWII history; European theater