Surviving Auschwitz (Replay)

HISTORY This Week

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History, Society & Culture

4.5 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 January 2022

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

History repeats itself this week with an episode from the HISTORY This Week archives: January 27, 1945. Four Russian soldiers arrive at Auschwitz, one of Nazi Germany's largest concentration and extermination camps. The soldiers have come to liberate the survivors inside, but they are not met with the celebration and rejoicing they expect. On this day, what did liberation actually mean for its survivors - and is the full story being forgotten?

Thank you to Mindu Hornick and Bill Harvey for sharing their personal story of surviving Auschwitz and to Fulwell 73 for helping make it happen. Thank you to Jeremy Dronfield, author of the Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz, and to the work of Robert Jan Van Pelt, curator for the international exhibit, "Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away."

Archival material accessed at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of The Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archives of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives & Records Administration and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Thomas P. Headen.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The History Channel, original podcast.
0:03.6	Hello, History this week listeners. It is Sally here. Before we start this episode,
0:07.7	we just have a quick update for you. We are hard at work on great new episodes for 2022.
0:13.2	And in the meantime, we wanted to bring you some of our favorite episodes from the past two years.
0:18.4	So this month, we will be visiting some history this week hits and be back on January 31st with
0:23.9	brand new episodes. We hope you enjoy.
0:37.9	January 27th, 1945.
0:42.5	Just east of a small town in Holent called Swenchim, four young men on horseback approach
0:48.4	enemy territory. They're Soviet soldiers, they wear a silver gray uniform, heavy fur hats,
0:56.4	rifles strapped across their bodies. They approach a barbed wire fence and flash it down.
1:03.6	Today, we go back 75 years to the liberation of Auschwitz.
1:19.3	We know now that it was one of the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camps of the
1:24.8	Holocaust. 1.3 million people entered its gates and 1.1 million of them never left. Today,
1:34.7	the camp has become a symbol for the Holocaust itself, synonymous with the Nazis, systematic,
1:40.7	state-sponsored mass murder. But back in early 1945, when Auschwitz was liberated,
1:47.8	the story only made page three of the New York Times. It was summarized in just two sentences,
1:54.1	and was overshadowed by other news. In 2018, a survey asked a random group of young Americans
2:04.5	about the Holocaust. Can you name one of the 40,000 Nazi-run camps or ghettos? And almost half of
2:13.5	the participants couldn't name a single one. This week marks the 75th anniversary of the Liberation
2:21.8	of Auschwitz, a day of remembering. But anniversaries are strange. They pick one day out of a huge
2:30.8	complicated story. In the story of the Holocaust, the liberation of camps like Auschwitz was neither
2:36.7	the beginning nor the end. The Holocaust didn't begin at Auschwitz and it didn't begin with gas chambers.
	...

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