27 January 1945: Auschwitz is Liberated by the Soviet Red Army

The Soviet army obtained detailed information about Auschwitz only after the liberation of Cracow, hence the delay in reaching the gates of Auschwitz until 27 January 1945. Over 230 Soviet soldiers, including the commander of the 472nd regiment, Col. Siemen Lvovich Besprozvanny, died in combat while liberating the Main Camp, Birkenau, Monowitz, and the town of Oświęcim. They are buried at the municipal cemetery in Oświęcim.

When the Soviet soldiers arrived at Auschwitz, what they witnessed was unimaginable. The camp authorities had murdered over 1.1 million people, almost all of them Jews, and housed them in inhumane conditions. Soviet soldiers discovered the corpses of about 600 prisoners who had been shot by the withdrawing SS or who had succumbed to exhaustion in the Main Camp and Birkenau.

The survivors were mainly middle-aged adults or children younger than 15. Soviet soldiers also found 370,000 men's suits, 837,000 articles of women's clothing, and seven tons of human hair. The discoveries were a poignant reminder of the atrocities that had taken place within the camp walls.

Additionally, at Monowitz camp, there were about 800 survivors, who were also liberated on 27 January 1945, by the Soviet 60th Army, part of the 1st Ukrainian Front. Battle-hardened Russian soldiers, who were used to seeing death in battle, were shocked by the Nazi's treatment of prisoners at Auschwitz. Red Army general Vasily Petrenko remarked, "I, who saw people dying every day, was shocked by the Nazis' indescribable hatred toward the inmates who had turned into living skeletons."

Death Camp Auschwitz - Jewish Virtual Library |

Reichsführer-SS Heinrich *Himmler acquired responsibility for the redevelopment of eastern Upper Silesia, as well as of the other annexed territories (Wartheland, Danzig-West Prussia) in his role of Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of the German Nation. Himmler initiated a policy of ethnic cleansing in the annexed territories, deporting Poles and Jews and bringing in ethnic Germans from the Baltic countries, the part of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union, and Romania.

Population transfers proceeded smoothly in the predominantly rural areas of the Wartheland and Danzig-West Prussia, but proved more difficult in eastern Upper Silesia. This area was heavily industrialized, and its mainly Polish workers could not be deported without crippling production in the area. Aiming to intimidate the hostile population, Himmler decided (April 27, 1940) to transform a former Polish military base, located in the Zasole suburb of Auschwitz, into a concentration camp. He appointed SS-Captain Rudolf *Hoess as its first Kommandant, and sent him off to Auschwitz to build the camp.

Hoess chose five SS men to assist him, obtained 15 SS men stationed in Krakow to serve as guards, and selected 30 German common criminals imprisoned in Sachsenhausen to be transferred to Auschwitz as prisoner functionaries and 40 Polish inmates from Dachau as a construction crew.

Poland Spinning the Shoah - Anti-Semitism | 12 Nov 2019 |

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From sacrifice for Victory to a struggle for Glory
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This relatively short distance was a great motivator for the Red Army men and women, as Marshal Konev recalled, quite the same as the comment mentioned earlier by General Chuikov: "The troops were in very high fighting spirits. The soldiers and officers had to surmount incredible difficulties, but their stamina was literally doubled because they realised that, as a result of this last enormous physical and moral effort, we could finally achieve complete victory over the enemy. They were firmly convinced that this time we would at last bring the war to an end.

While Zhukov's and Konev's men were withstanding German attacks on the Oder-Neisse line (the latter being the river - a tributary of the Oder - where Konev's bridgeheads were located), the Soviet High Command started planning the upcoming storming of Berlin. Between January and April 1945, the Germans were able to reorganise their armies on the approaches of Berlin and drain whatever source of manpower they could find - thus creating a force of over 800.000 men (including the ill-equipped and ill-prepared Volkssturm) in and around Berlin.

The Soviets were able to amass over 2.5 million troops for the offensive, supported by over 6.000 tanks and 41.600 pieces of artillery. Although there were no more major rivers to be crossed during the assault on Berlin, a new natural barrier would prove to be disastrous to the planning on Zhukov's front: the Seelow Heights. With the final chapter of the war in sight, Soviet soldiers could look forward to a life after the war. But in order to gain peace - and complete destruction of the German resistance - they would have to fight their blood-soaked way into Berlin itself.

The English sources concerning the massive Berlin battle do not do any justice to its scale. In an era of an almost constant stream of Hitler-documentaries, 'World War Two Apocalypse' episodes and other often-broadcasted shows, one would expect a wild variety of popular works on the battle. This expectation is not met when visiting for example, the `75 Years Liberation' website of main Dutch news agency NOS. Although the website claims to cover all major events during the last months of World War Two - and especially the events concerning the liberation of The Netherlands - it does so without including the broader historical scope.

The website claims to 'report' on events in the same spirit as newspapers did 'back then'. Contemporary Dutch resistance newspapers like 'Trouw' and `Het Parool' were jubilantly reporting on the Soviet advance on the Reich's capital. Apparently, the modern news-agenda wishes not to reflect the 'mood of those days' in relation to the fall of Berlin. While Dutch or other `Western' topics are treated in line with contemporary attitudes, here, it seems choices are made to reflect modern-day attitudes on the Eastern Front, by for instance using Anthony Beevor's Berlin publication as its only source, while refraining from using contemporary Soviet sources. The NOS however, considers the liberation of Coevorden (where two Canadian soldiers perished) a more epic event than the fall of Berlin.

As mentioned, even in the year 2020, expectations of Western news coverage or publications on the battle of Berlin itself are not met. The same can be said for studies into the commemoration of the Great Patriotic War (the Soviet/Russian name for their struggle against the Germans). One notable exception is Nina Tumarkin's The Living & the Dead - The rise & fall of the cult of World War II in Russia. This study was published in 1994 and therefor covers the post war Soviet. In her own words, the study: 'Tells the story of the development, career, and eventual demise of the organized public veneration of a legendary wartime experience.'