Today marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Located in Nazi-occupied Poland—Auschwitz is the German name for Oświęcim, a small town 25 miles west of Kraków—the deathcamp didn’t crawl, fully firmed, into the world. It grew—metastasized really—over a period of years, emerging in embryonic form from the Hitlerian racist and nationalist ambition in April 1940, it expanded like a fetid yeast until it made manifest every horror of the Nazi blood and soil fever dream before, finally, eight decades ago today, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz and the nightmare was over.
The largest concentration camp in the German lager system, Auschwitz was really a constellation of camps: Auschwitz I, the main camp, with the cynical Arbeit Macht Frei gate; Auschwitz II—Birkenau—the vast estate marked by the hated, brickwork rail entrance, and Auschwitz III, a web of some 40 sub-camps.
Read Full Article »