Meanwhile, the Soviets were progressing toward Oświęcim-but they had no idea the camp existed. A small group of healthier prisoners attended to the sick. Some prisoners scavenged among the possessions the SS had not managed to destroy. Conditions were appalling-there was no food, no fuel, no water. Others had hidden in the hopes they could escape. Most of the 9,000 prisoners who remained at Auschwitz were in dire health. By January 21, most SS officers had left for good. The guards who remained continued to cover up evidence, including burning warehouses full of plundered possessions. Those who remained were forced into open freight cars and shipped further into the Reich, where they were relocated to various camps still under German control. The death marches, which occurred in extremely cold conditions, killed up to 15,000 prisoners. Only those in good health (a relative term in camps racked with malnutrition and disease) could participate, and those who fell were shot and left behind. Starting on January 17, prisoners were forced into long columns and told to walk westward toward territory still held by Germany. They planned what prisoners thought of as death marches-lengthy, forced journeys from Auschwitz toward other concentration and death camps. As the Red Army marched closer and closer, the SS decided it was time to evacuate. Then, the Soviets broke through German defenses and began to approach Krakow. Nazis Evacuate Camp, Force Prisoners on Death Marches They also took steps to move much of the material they had looted from the Jews they murdered elsewhere. The destruction didn’t end there: The Germans ordered prisoners to tear down many buildings and systematically destroyed many of their meticulous records of camp life. They murdered most of the Jews who had worked in Auschwitz’s gas chambers and crematoria, then destroyed most of the killing sites. As they waited, they moved forward with a preliminary evacuation, even founding a new sub-camp at a steel mill.Įven as they waited to determine if a mass evacuation was needed, the Germans began to destroy evidence of their crimes. By late 1944, they were still unsure if the Allies would make it to Oświęcim. The Germans had long known they might have to abandon Auschwitz, but they planned to use it as long as possible, further exploiting the workers whose slave labor they rented to companies that produced chemicals, armaments and other materials. WATCH: Liberators: Why We Fought on HISTORY Vault After five years of hell, Auschwitz was liberated at last. “They rushed toward us shouting, fell on their knees, kissed the flaps of our overcoats, and threw their arms around our legs,” remembered Georgii Elisavetskii, one of the first Red Army soldiers to step into Auschwitz. As they saw the soldiers, the emaciated prisoners hugged, kissed and cried. Most of the people who owned them were already dead, murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust’s largest extermination and concentration camp.īut though the camps that made up Auschwitz seemed silent and abandoned at first, soldiers soon realized they were filled with people-thousands of them, left to die by SS guards who evacuated the camps after trying to cover up their crimes. When Soviet soldiers poured into Auschwitz in January 1945, they encountered warehouses filled with massive quantities of other people’s belongings. He immigrated to Canada in 1949 and then moved to the United States in 1959.Eighty-eight pounds of eyeglasses. They got to the village of Gern just as a US tank appeared.Īfter the war Abraham lived in Bavaria for three years. Shots were fired Abraham threw himself down. Pushing through the farmhouse gates, he ran into the woods. When one guard went to the kitchen and the other took men to look for food, Abraham seized his chance. By spring 1945 he was in a group of 500 taken to a farm area in Bavaria. The invading Germans reached Krasnik in September 1939.ġ940-45: In 1942 Abraham was deported to the Budzyn, Majdanek, and Auschwitz camps in Poland, and then Oranienburg and Flossenbürg in Germany. They waited until after school, so no one could tell the teacher, and then beat up the Jewish kids. The Christian children often yelled at the Jews, "You killed our God." One year, on the day before Christmas break, some kids brought ropes tied to iron weights to school. At the age of 7, Abraham started public school.ġ933-39: Abraham liked school but found it difficult. When Abraham was 2, his mother died and he was raised by his grandmother. Abraham was born to a Jewish family in Krasnik, a town in the Lublin district of Poland.
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