AUSCHWITZ VICTIMS CALL TO END POLITICAL GAMES AROUND HISTORY
Yuriy RUBTSOV
en.fondsk
26.01.2010
Can it be true that – after endless attempts – Moscow managed to
convince Polish President L. KaczyÅ~Dski to leave historical issues
to specialists and not to let the past cast shadows over the current
relations between Russia and Poland? This is what one would like to
believe in reading the president KaczyÅ~Dski’s letter to Russian
President D. Medvedev with an invitation to visit the January 27
celebration of the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Though critical exchanges are an integral part of politics, endlessly
invoking past grievances and exploiting the memories of victims –
those of Auschwitz or Katyn – really makes no sense.
In the context of the lessons of Auschwitz, one can’t avoid recalling
the April, 2007 attempt to capitalize politically on the memory of
the victims of the most terrible of the Nazi concentration camps. At
that time, the Russian exposition opened in 1961 was closed by the
administration and Moscow’s admitting to the occupation of Polish
territories by the Soviet Union was set as a prerequisite for its
reopening. The Polish side said the prisoners who were from West
Ukraine and West Belarus, which the USSR got following the signing of
the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, had to be mentioned as Polish, not
Soviet citizens. Poland also insisted on marking up the territories
on a map at the memorial which the USSR "annexed" as the result of
the Pact and on revising the exhibited statistical data accordingly.
Russia brushed off the demands as an unsavory political gesture.
Evidently, Poland sought to make the victims of Auschwitz hostages
to unsettled issues in the current relations between Moscow and Warsaw.
Wasn’t discussing the nationalities of the dead six decades after
the tragedy sacrilegious? There are no nationalities in heaven. Any
disagreements could be resolved without the public scandal, but
certain forces deliberately gave the problem the international status
and essentially presented an ultimatum on the occasion.
Though the problems were eventually removed, further developments
showed that the situation was deeply rooted. Paying tribute to
the soldiers who sacrificed their lives in World War II at the
September 1, 2009 mourning assembly of European leaders in Gdansk,
President KaczyÅ~Dski mentioned "a war against German Nazism and
Bolshevist totalitarianism". When Russian Prime Minister V. Putin who
attended the ceremony called for overcoming the legacy of mistrust
in bilateral relations and rising above the past grievances without
imposing visions on each other and for moving on together, his words
were simply ignored.
What do we have now? It will be sad if the Polish administration choses
to replay the allegations against Russia on January 27. In this case,
the inescapable conclusion will be that Warsaw can only see in history
what it wants to see at the moment. Fortunately, it is not up to
Poland to define the perception of World War II globally. It is not
forgotten who and under what circumstances set free the survivors
of Auschwitz and dealt the final blow to fascism in Berlin several
months afterwards.
Auschwitz-Birkenau (built 70 km away from Krakow) was the largest
mass extermination camp in World War II. It received the first trains
carrying prisoners in 1940. The complex comprised three camps with
the total of over 100,000 prisoners by 1944.
The concentration camp was a site of mass extermination of people,
mostly Jews, from Poland, the USSR, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark,
France, Greece, Holland, Yugoslavia, Norway, Romania, Italy,
and Hungary, where the death toll reached at least 1.1 mln. Four
crematoriums with gas chambers and two provisional gas chambers were
operated at the site. The first experiments with the Zyklon B gas were
carried out with Soviet POWs and prisoners unfit for forced labor
in the spring of 1942. Initially corpses were buried, and later –
burned in crematoriums and special trenches. Prisoners were also
subjected to medical experiments.
The Soviet leadership was aware of the existence of the death factory.
A September, 1944 letter from Deputy People’s Commissar for the
Interior S. Kruglov to Deputy Foreign Minister A. Vyshinsky read:
"We have been identified and interrogated the captives who knew
about the German concentration camp in Auschwitz and the mass
extermination of prisoners in it. According to the testimony, the
concentration camp in Auschwitz was organized by Germany in 1940 in
former military barracks. Initially, the camp was used to concentrate
Jews. In 1941-1943 large numbers of Russians, Poles, Frenchmen,
and Hollanders were brought to the camp. The testimony revealing
mass extermination of prisoners by the Germans, tortures, beatings,
etc. characterizes the camp as being similar to Majdanek. Until 1943,
Germans burned the corpses of victims in two special furnaces. There
were 8 such furnaces in 1943. Thus, the people were exterminated in
the camp on a mass scale… Captives say Germans have killed several
hundred thousand prisoners at the camp".
Based on the information, the Red Army Headquarters ordered the forces
of the 1st Ukrainian front to liberate Auschwitz as a part of the
Vistula-Oder offensive. The 10th Infantry Division led by Gen. F.M.
Krasavin liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945 and set free the
7,000 camp survivors.
In 1947 the Polish parliament converted the Auschwitz territory into
a memorial of the martyrdom of the Polish and other peoples and opened
the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum. National expositions set up in various
barracks feature documents and personal belongings of prisoners from
over 30 countries. In 1979 the museum was included in the UNESCO
World Heritage List. It is attended by over 1 mln visitors annually.
A sacrilegious episode attracted the media attention to Auschwitz
last December. The sign â~@~^Arbeit macht frei" over the gate of
Auschwitz was stolen and cut into three parts. Luckily, the police
promptly found the perpetrators and the item was recovered, but the
very act demonstrated that for some people the memory of the victims
of fascism is no longer sacred. This must be perceived as a signal to
peoples and governments to confront historical nihilism. Attempts to
distort the past or to erase it from the memory carry the risk that
inhumane Nazi experiments on nations such as concentration camps
would again become possible. The view was expressed in Moscow last
year by the members of The International Auschwitz Committee where
historical revisionism was the key theme of discussions. These days,
not only individual politicians but also governments and international
organizations like the PACE are willing to rewrite the past in accord
with their current interests. The truth about millions of victims of
Nazism is being concealed, the verdicts of the Nuremberg Trial are
called into question, and the Soviet Union is denied credit for the
role it played in defeating the fascist Germany and liberating Europe.
Leader of the Israeli center of Holocaust survivors Noah Flug said Jews
remember that 65 years ago Majdanek and Auschwitz were liberated by
Soviet soldiers and the Red Army. In ghettos and concentration camps,
the Red Army was the people’s last hope, it saved them, defeated
Hitler, and saved Europe. Recently, there has been a tendency to liken
the Soviet and the Nazi regimes and to call the epoch of World War
II the time of dictatorships – in Flug’s words, "this is unacceptable".
Polish Ambassador to Russia Jerzy Bar pinpointed a paradox which
should have attracted broader attention. He said: "Top priority
should be given to passing the memories of survivors to the coming
generations. The work is being done in Auschwitz, but there is a
paradox – greater opportunities are opening to learn the truth,
historical studies are published and are available in bookstores,
but younger people don’t seem to read them. Hopefully, the 65th
anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz will stimulate interest
in the theme among the young generation".
Absolutely! Now that tribute is paid in Auschwitz to the prisoners who
died at the camp and to the Soviet soldiers who were killed taking it,
the victims of Nazism are calling: there must be no political games
around the memory of the the historical past.
From: Baghdasarian