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Survivors return as world remembers Auschwitz 80 years after liberation
BBC ^ | Jan 26 | Paul Kirby

Posted on 01/26/2025 1:36:24 PM PST by RandFan

About 50 survivors of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau will return to the site on Monday to remember the day it was finally liberated on 27 January 1945.

They will be joined by heads of state including King Charles and other European royalty, Emmanuel Macron of France and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

But it will be the survivors - most in their late 80s and 90s - not the dignitaries, whose voices will be heard during the commemorations at the camp, where 1.1 million people were murdered, most of them Jews.

Their message is to tell the world what happened here and ensure that it never happens again.

"Every soul on this earth has the right to live," says Jona Laks, who is now 94 and arrived with her twin and elder sisters in 1944. "Auschwitz was a laboratory for killing people. This was its task and it proved itself: few survived Auschwitz."

...

Laks was saved only because her elder sister shouted out that she should not be separated from her twin and word reached the infamous Nazi "Angel of Death" at the camp, Josef Mengele, who used part of Birkenau for often deadly medical experiments on twins.

(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; History
KEYWORDS:
Crazy to think 80 years ago (within a life time) what went on.
1 posted on 01/26/2025 1:36:24 PM PST by RandFan
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To: RandFan

And that’s what DemoKKKrats want for conservatives.

What conservatives want is to just be left alone.


2 posted on 01/26/2025 2:16:57 PM PST by ro_dreaming (Who knew "Idiocracy", "1984", "Enemy of the State", and "Person of Interest" would be non-fiction?)
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To: RandFan

I could have sworn it was over 6,000,000 who were killed.


3 posted on 01/26/2025 3:08:33 PM PST by Racketeer
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To: Racketeer

I think it means at this specific camp.


4 posted on 01/26/2025 3:21:00 PM PST by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: ifinnegan

Correct, the 6 million total includes other camps, shootings by the Einsatzgruppen, and deaths in ghettos and forced marches.


5 posted on 01/26/2025 3:23:57 PM PST by Tijeras_Slim
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To: RandFan

Yup. If you were 20 in 1945 you’d be 100 this year. Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army in January, 1945. Not many left of a generation that wanted us to never forget.


6 posted on 01/26/2025 3:35:54 PM PST by Billthedrill
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To: RandFan

If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend “The Zone Of Interest”.


7 posted on 01/26/2025 3:36:40 PM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: Billthedrill

My grandfather fought in the Pacific. Unfortunately, he died before I was born, and my mom said he never talked about it. I believe he also served in Korea.

It was always a war that fascinated me. “How could people do such terrible things to each other? Why didn’t good people do anything?” Questions my naïve child brain thought at the time.

I’ve learned a lot in the last 30 years. Sadly, people claim it never happened. Flat-Earthers have more logic. The whole notion makes me sick.


8 posted on 01/27/2025 2:40:36 AM PST by Tacrolimus1mg (Do no harm, but take no sh!t.)
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To: RandFan

“Their message is to tell the world what happened here and ensure that it never happens again.”

My one daughter read “The Diary of Anne Frank” very young and then went on a quest for other similar books. She gave an oral report about it all to her class (4th grade??). It was before they had been taught about it, and the kids in her class didn’t believe her. The teacher had to step in and tell them it was true, and that they would learn more about it in a couple of years.

But I told my daughter that the part about “so it will never happen again” is mistaken. It continues to happen - Pol Pot, Tutus and Hutus, Mao’s “cultural revolution”, etc. Not the numbers reached during the Holocaust, but still....


9 posted on 01/27/2025 2:49:45 AM PST by 21twelve (Ever Vigilant - Never Fearful)
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To: Tijeras_Slim; All
Why is it difficult to quantify how many people died at Auschwitz?

SS guards sought to hide their crimes as Soviet troops closed in, and tried to destroy their extensive prisoner records - making it hard to fully quantify the number of victims.

Academic studies since agree that in total close to 1.3 million people arrived at Auschwitz. About 1.1 million of them died there.

Jews from all across Nazi-controlled Europe made up the vast majority of the victims. Almost one million Jewish people were murdered at Auschwitz.

One specific example was Hungary's Jewish population. In the space of just two months, between May and July 1944, Hungary transported 420,000 of the 437,000 Jewish people it sent to Auschwitz.
10 posted on 01/27/2025 4:25:26 AM PST by RandFan
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To: Billthedrill

“ Not many left of a generation that wanted us to never forget.”

It’s up to us to make sure people don’t forget.
I have been around 30 something’s who think we talk about WWII too much.
They need to know why we talk about it.
The horrors of the Nazis were a unique part of history that happened very recently .
We must never forget.


11 posted on 01/27/2025 4:34:38 AM PST by HereInTheHeartland (Have you seen Joe Biden's picture on a milk carton?)
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