On Jan. 27, 1945, the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland was liberated from Nazi control by the Soviet Red Army.

The United Nations designates every Jan. 27, the day of liberation at Auschwitz, as International Holocaust Remembrance Day to memorialize the six million Jews and millions of other victims of Nazi persecution. This day was chosen not to commemorate the liberation. It was chosen because that was the day on which the horrors of the Holocaust became inescapable for the Allies. And the horrors are magnified because Jan. 27 was not a day of liberation for too many, even for those who were alive the day before, on Jan. 26.

Why wasn’t this a day to celebrate liberation? It was because of the depths of evil that humanity is capable of – and that evil became brutally obvious on that day.

Auschwitz is perhaps the most notorious of all the concentration camps, which numbered 42,500 throughout occupied Europe: camps for transit, slave labor and death. Auschwitz was one of six camps built solely to exterminate innocent people.

Between 1940 and 1945, more than 1.3 million Jews and others were deported to Auschwitz and at least 1.1 million Jews were murdered – men, women and children.

What did it mean to be “liberated”?

When we think of the liberation of all those concentration camps, many people have an image of gates being unlocked and prisoners joyfully streaming out to return to their homes and their villages.

This is not true.

As Allied forces were approaching, the Germans and their collaborators began another step in persecution – death marches. They wanted to obliterate any traces of what they had done in these hell-like places. Death marches were massive forced transfers of prisoners from one camp to other locations. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, were moved to camps inside Germany, away from the oncoming Allied forces.

The largest death march took place in January 1945 at Auschwitz. Nine days before the Soviet Army arrived at Auschwitz, the Germans marched 56,000 of the prisoners toward a train station 35 miles away to be transported to other camps. Fully 15,000 prisoners died along the way.

When the Soviet Army arrived at Auschwitz, only 7,000 prisoners remained at the camp, mostly those who were too weak, ill, and too near death to leave. Another 600 had been shot by the fleeing SS soldiers.

The Red Army troops were shocked at the extent of the atrocities that they discovered.

About 232,000 children had been sent to Auschwitz, 216,000 of them Jewish children. Only 700 were alive there in January 1945.

Prisoners at Auschwitz were tattooed with an ID number. This tattooing happened only at Auschwitz – and even children had permanent numbers inked onto their small forearms.

A photo in a CNN archive shows the rescue of a 15-year-old boy who became insane from the conditions he was forced to endure.

Most of the liberated child prisoners were sent to charitable institutions or orphanages. Only a few were able to be reunited with their parents, nearly all of whom were dead. The majority of the children, who were Jewish, spent many years – usually until they reached age 18 – in orphanages, children’s homes and children’s villages in various countries.

The very first transport of Jews to Auschwitz was 997 teenage girls. Few of the girls survived. Female prisoners at Auschwitz survived only half as long as male prisoners because they were subjected to brutal medical experiments, particularly forced sterilization and to sexual violence.

The liberators found huge warehouses of prisoners’ personal belongings. Everything was taken from them to be shipped back to Germany – glasses, clothing, prosthetic devices, even 1,500 pounds of human hair from 140,000 exterminated people, to be used as an industrial material.

The liberators found mass graves at Auschwitz.

There were many trials after the war to prosecute those who were most responsible for the horrors at Auschwitz. The Auschwitz museum documents, however, that only 789 individuals of the approximately 8,200 surviving SS personnel who served at Auschwitz were ever tried. Only 750 received sentences. That’s 9%.

Many of the Auschwitz survivors had nowhere to go because they were the only ones remaining in their entire extended family. Survivors who returned to their villages often encountered rabid antisemitism. Their homes and belongings had been stolen, and many were beaten and even killed in local outbreaks of antisemitic violence.

Survivors were sent to Displaced Persons (DP) camps, which were temporary facilities in Germany, Austria, and Italy. DP camps were frequently located in former concentration camps and conditions were generally deplorable. Many survivors spent years in these camps until they were able to emigrate.

For many survivors, liberation wasn’t freedom; it was the beginning of a life-long journey to reclaim the humanity that had been stripped from them. And for those who had endured the horrors of the Holocaust, most of them never became fully liberated from traumas that haunted the rest of their lives. In many cases, those traumas were passed on to their children and their grandchildren.

For the liberators as well, the images and horrors of what they had seen remained indelible throughout their lifetimes.

The pathway from victim to survivor to thriver depends on many factors, most of which are not within any individual’s control.

 We wish and hope for strength to be liberated from past terrors to a present and a future of peace and safety for all people, everywhere.

 World Without Genocide will hold a public webinar, “The International Criminal Court: Cases and Policies,” tomorrow from 7 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. The program will also commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Continuing education credits are available for Minnesota lawyers, teachers, nurses, and social workers. Register at www.worldwithoutgenocide.org/briefing.

Ellen J. Kennedy, Ph.D., is founder and executive director of World Without Genocide. Anantanand Rambachan is Professor Emeritus of Religion, Philosophy, and Asian Studies at St. Olaf College. Rabbi Adam Stock Spilker is the senior rabbi at Mount Zion Temple in St. Paul, where he has served since 1997.

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