Auschwitz was liberated 77 years ago

Snickers Man

Important for perspective:

Who liberated Auschwitz in 1945? The Soviet Union.

Who murdered more than 20,000 Polish prisoners of war at Katyn? The Allies.

Puts a different spin on things, doesn't it?

Cyclingtourist

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118577803#Comment_118577803

"Who murdered more than 20,000 Polish prisoners of war at Katyn? The Allies."

Not true.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118577185#Comment_118577185

What a bizarre post.

Look, if you are interested in discussing the war or any facet of it, I'm all ears. I'll be happy to talk about it all day long. If all you want to do is bicker, then you can take it elsewhere.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118577803#Comment_118577803

What "spin" is being spun here exactly?

Cyclingtourist

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118579559#Comment_118579559

Seems to be a pro-soviet anti-western spin but fails by showing total ignorance of basic historical facts.

Cyclingtourist

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118577245#Comment_118577245

Not quite ancient history but they will become what the Bolsheviks are now and then be just another historical aberration of the past. A lot of people even western society already have only a vague idea of what they stood for.

Mecanudo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118579554#Comment_118579554

A quote I came upon recently on someone who tried something similar. I think it may be relevant

"And as for you, today, Jean, I know of another type of terrible human cowardice and weakness, namely when a person is unable to admit that his ideas fail to stand up to reality"

Markus Antonius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118580540#Comment_118580540

No it won't. The only reason the horrors of the Bolsheviks aren't remembered is because of the role of the Jews in the revolution. An inconvenient history.

Amnesty International's recent comments on apartheid in Israel is a welcome change to the nauseating pro-Israel stance of many over the last number of decades. We may see the holocaust as a political tool begin to falter hopefully.

Snickers Man

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118580486#Comment_118580486

It's not at all. It's just commenting on the fact that I have so often seen the story of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army as being credited to "The Allies", which is fair enough. They were part of the Allied Forces.

But the massacre of Katyn is ALWAYS attributed to "The Soviets" (well apart from the era pre glasnost when the Soviets tried to blame it on the Nazis, but nobody, least of all the Poles was buying that). It has certainly never been credited to the Allies.

Now, you might split hairs to accuse me of "total ignorance of basic historical facts" by pointing out that the Soviets were not allied with Britain or the USA in 1940 when the Katyn killings occurred. In fact the USA were not even in the war at that point. But is it really fair to suggest that the Soviets underwent a complete personality change after Operation Barbarossa and were never nasty to the Poles ever again?

To claim THAT would require "a total ignorance of basic historical facts" or at least a strong willingness to discount them.

Essentially what I'm saying is that the same people who liberated Auschwitz carried out the smaller but no less brutal genocide at Katyn. That was a deliberate attempt to wipe out a generation of Polish intelligentsia--the officer corps, intellectuals, people who worked with brain rather than hand, It was futile of course but some 20,000 prisoners died as part of the effort.

How is pointing that out pro-soviet?

Hoop66

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118580726#Comment_118580726

Please take your nauseating, anti-semitic bullshit somewhere else.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118580638#Comment_118580638

It suits you. 😉

Mecanudo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118580838#Comment_118580838

^^ This

Markus Antonius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118580838#Comment_118580838

Please take your historical ignorance and pro-Israel bullshit somewhere else. Accusations of anti-semitism has been used to death and frankly has lost all power at this stage.

Hoop66

I'm not pro-Israel by any means, I assure you.

"It's the Jews", however, is anti-semitic bullshit.

Mecanudo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118580540#Comment_118580540

I think not only the idea that recorded history may be forgotten over time, but where many of those whom we hear screaming the loudest about the history of the holocaust, are in effect the David Irvings of this world.

The same who hold out that what is known to have happened under the Nazis in general and Hitler in particular is in their view a product of propaganda or similar.

Unfortunately social media whilst being perhaps the greatest modern resource for the dissemination of knowledge, has in some respects become a boon for those like Irving who seek to rewrite history to suit their own prejudices .

indioblack

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118580784#Comment_118580784

Most of the accounts I've read state that it was the Russian army that liberated Auschwitz. Accounts that state that it was the Allies who liberated the camp would have been correct. At the time of the Katyn massacre Russia was in a different position.

Cyclingtourist

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118580784#Comment_118580784

"But is it really fair to suggest that the Soviets underwent a complete personality change after Operation Barbarossa and were never nasty to the Poles ever again?"

No it isn't fair. If you go back to my first post in this thread I think you will find I pointed out that it was the Red Army that 'liberated' Auschwitz. I have repeatedly pointed out the murderous policies of the Soviet regime "before and during WW2".

It was the Soviets who were responsible for the Katyn massacre (something I've also pointed out previously in this thread) and it is also fair to point out that if they were allied to anyone in May 1940 it was to Nazi Germany having about nine months earlier coordinated their invasion of eastern Poland with Germany's invasion from the west with agreed demarcation lines and minor adjustments of occupied territories.

If you try to make points by false assertions, such as 'it was the allies who were responsible' for Katyn, don't be surprised if people misinterpret what you are trying to do.

If you have a point to make, just go ahead and make it.

Tony EH

^

Further on this point, who has ever actually said that "...the Soviets underwent a complete personality change after Operation Barbarossa and were never nasty to the Poles ever again?"

That line of thinking sounds more like an attempt at a straw man, rather than a legitimate POV based on a reading of history.

Plus, I'm having genuine trouble trying to recall anyone making the claim that Auschwitz was an "allied" discovery, as opposed to a Russian one. Certainly not in the last few decades. They're might have been the odd person who made that case during the Cold War for political reasons when the Russians were reverted back to the status of "enemy" after their usefulness in WWII came to an end. But I don't think any historian worth their salt would neglect to make the distinction that it was a Russian discovery. And any that would would soon be forced to clarify their statement. There may indeed be the odd person who'll erroneously say that "the allies liberated Auschwitz", but they would generally be few and far between.

I have seen such phrases as "the allies liberated the camps" before, and that's an ok, if rather vague, take on things. But when talking about specific camps, the distinction is always made with regards to whom it was that was walking through the gates when coming from a serious commentator.

And like Cyclingtourist, I am at a lost as to what the actual point is in this particular tangent.

Cyclingtourist

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118589311#Comment_118589311

"And like Cyclingtourist, I am at a lost as to what the actual point is in this particular tangent."

I think what Snickers Man was trying to say in a rather convoluted manner was what I posted in my first (#76) post in this thread.

Cyclingtourist quote:

"Auschwitz was 'liberated' by the Red Army which was the army of the Soviet Union, a state that practiced murder on a comparable scale."

The allied campaign in WW2 was primarily one to defeat Nazi Germany (and Imperial Japan) militarily and restore sovereignty (this meant something different to Stalin) to the occupied nations. In this it succeeded in doing in the West but in the East, most notably in Poland, the liberation took an extra 45 years.

The liberation of the camps wasn't a military aim just an accidental biproduct of a victory that included the mass aerial bombing of German cities.

MontgomeryClift

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118575767#Comment_118575767

There is no proof that the solution being discussed related to anything other than separation of Jews and Gentiles, nor is there any proof that the phrase related to mass extermination or genocide.

Cyclingtourist

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118589888#Comment_118589888

On the contrary there is considerable proof both documentary and witness that from June 1942 on 'The Final Solution' related to the direct relocation (transport to actual extermination camps) rather than the previous practice of using Polish ghettoes as temporary processing stages. This marked merely a stepping up of a policy that was already well established.

For example Himmler visited Auschwitz on the 17 July 1942 where he witnessed the arrival of 2,000 Dutch Jews, after the selection of 1,531 workers on the ramp (an unusually high number) he then witnessed the gassing of the remaining 449 in bunker 2 and the burning of their remains. This was almost exactly 11 months after he had witnessed the shooting of Jews at Minsk. ref 'The Auschwitz Chronicle 1939-45 Auschwitz Chronicle, 1939-1945: From the Archives of the Auschwitz Memorial and the Gorman Federal Archives: Amazon.co.uk: Czech, Danuta: 9780805009385: Books

You could also read 'Life and Death in the Third Reich' by Peter Fritzsche for a more comprehensive account of the evolution of Nazi racial policy between 1933 and 1945.

Mecanudo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118589888#Comment_118589888

Wow that some high flying level of holocaust denial right there.

I guess you would argue that the Nazi run death camps of Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau simply sprung into existence of their own volition and without any reference whasover to the annihilation/extermination of the Jewish race as variously cited by Hitler and his sycophants?

Whilst the Nazis may indeed have encouraged Jewish people to leave Germany in the early years of the the Nazi state, it is accepted by historians that the decision-making process which led to there was prolonged and incremental.

From documented sources, it is evident that the Endlösung der Judenfrage took its final shape between 1941-1942 when the sites of extermination camps were selected, different methods of mass murder tested, Jewish emigration was forbidden and millions of men, women and children were rounded up by the Nazis and sent to their deaths.

indioblack

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118589688#Comment_118589688

Is it the word 'liberated' in inverted commas that is the problem? It's reasonable to claim that for most of the remaing inmates in Auschwitz it was liberation when the Russians arrived. I read an account recently of an SS unit that re-entered the complex and removed several hundred inmates and marched them westwards. A survivor of this event stated that the fate of those who could not keep up was death at the hands of their guards. The woman who related this story escaped the forced march and returned to the camp. For her, and others, the arrival of the Russians was seen as deliverance.

Not sure of the relevance of including the bombing of German cities in your post.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118589888#Comment_118589888

Hmmmm...

While "Endlosung", in and of itself, is certainly not the definative discriptor or even a smoking gun, as it were, of Nazi intent, it's certainly beyond reasonable doubt that their "final solution" incorporated a genocidal mechanisim in one fashion or another.

It is generally accepted that the future of the "Jewish question" eventually involved more than just a mere "separation" from gentiles.

Cyclingtourist

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118591176#Comment_118591176

I used inverted commas because firstly the Germans had largely evacuated the surviving inmates and only about 7,500 remained. Also the NKVD instituted its own camp system (Poznan, Krakow, Lodz, Danzig, etc.) and deported many Poles to Siberia including members of the Polish Home Army (AK) who had been fighting the Nazis since the twin (German & Russian) invasions of Poland in September-October 1939. I think the use of inverted commas is appropriate.

I mentioned the mass bombing of German cities in the context of the 'victory which wasn't to liberate camps' because it resulted in the mass killing of German and other civilians. It's my opinion that this bombing, while legitimate, did continue beyond a point where it was morally justified especially in the last few months of the war. I felt it was relevant.

indioblack

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118592057#Comment_118592057

Thanks for your reply. As regards Auschwitz, in the broader context, I take your point. I looked at it from the perspective the inmates would have had.

As regards the strategic bombing of German cities - it's still a contentious issue. My opinion is that it continued beyond the point of any significant strategic advantage. It was a moral issue for a few at the time and has remained controversial ever since.

MontgomeryClift

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118590142#Comment_118590142

Himmler's diary records having observed no such mass execution. The source of that claim is the testimony of Rudolf Höss, which is discredited by internal contradictions and blatant impossibilities.

Cyclingtourist

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118606088#Comment_118606088

So are you claiming that Himmler didn't visit Auschwitz-Birkenau or just that he didn't witness the gassing?

MontgomeryClift

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118606436#Comment_118606436

He visited Auschwitz but, given his itinerary and the records of his engagements, he couldn't have witnessed any gassing.

Cyclingtourist

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118611462#Comment_118611462

My understanding is that he visited over a two day period 17 & 18 July 1942. While accepting that Auschwitz-Birkenau was a large complex why couldn't he have witnessed gassing of Jews that had been among the first to be despatched from Westerbork transit camp?

Himmler also visited Sobibor in March 1943, do you dispute this visit occurred or that he witnessed the extermination process while there?