Today I happen to read in ‘The Week’ magazine ...
‘The 5m-long-sign with the words Arbeit Macht Frei[work liberates] over the gates of Auschwitz concentration camp was stolen on December 18,2009. Emergency was declared in Poland, but the sign was found cut in three pieces within four days.’
We had been to Poland in July 2008.From Krakow,like other seven lakh annual visitors, we did a day trip to visit ‘death factories’ of Auschwitz and Birkenau, . It was quite a painful experience to walk under that signage and explore the premises with the pictures and the exhibits which unfolded the worst ever genocide in human history.
The largest Vernichtungslager [extermination camp] complex, Auschwitz was established in April 1940 by Heinrich Himmler. Trains with Jews, gypsies and prisoners came every day, from all over Europe. In September 1941, Zyklon-B gassing began. Worse was the arrival of the Angel of death, Dr, Joseph Mengele. Onkel Mengele’s horrific experiments on children included attempts to create Siamese twins, change eye colour and sex, and incestuous impregnations. He solved lice epidemics by gassing thousands.
Sixty five years ago, one cold morning, 60,000 prisoners woke up not to reveille, but to evacuation orders.Records were burnt and crematoria blown up. Because five days earlier, on January 12,Soviet troops had captured Warsaw. The red Army’s 322nd Rifle division walked into Auschwitz-birkenau on January 27,1945, to find 7,000 prisoners,3,50,000 men’s garments and 8,25,000 women’s apparel- belongings of victims of Hitler’s Final Solution. Over a million perished in the camp. In 2005, the UN designated January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
It was equally nostalgic to walk and drive around Kazimierz- a Jew district in Krakow, where the movie –Schindler’s List [1993] was shot by Steven Spielberg. The story was about Oscar Schindler and his heroic efforts to save and ship out about 1100 Jews from the camp right under the SS’s eyes.
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