Holocaust Remembrance Day

At 3 PM, on January 27th, 1945, the Red Army arrived at the gates of Auschwitz concentration camp. Inside they encountered horrors on an unprecedented scale: thousands of prisoners covered in human excrement, starving to death; children who had been victimised in nefarious medical experiments; and piles of prisoners’ stolen belongings, including 7.7 tons of human hair.

Six million Jews perished in the Holocaust between 1939 and 1945, many of them in the gas chambers at Auschwitz and other Nazi killing centres. In November 2005, to commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz and the millions who died at the hands of the Nazis, the UN General Assembly officially recognised January 27th as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day we are reminded of the importance of learning about the Holocaust; to understand the extent of its atrocities and the prejudice, extremism, and hate that inspired them.

We are also reminded, though, of the humanity, solidarity, and resistance of those who perished in the Holocaust and its aftermath. Here we share three of those stories.

The Martyrdom of Saint Kolbe

Saint Maximilian Kolbe.

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/248688/80-years-ago-st-maximilian-kolbe-gave-his-life-in-auschwitz-to-save-a-father-of-a-family

Saint Maximilian Kolbe was a Catholic priest living in Poland during WWII. A member of the Niepokalanów monastery, he was a devout critic of the Nazis and helped to hide, feed, and clothe 3000 Polish refugees, 1500 of whom were Jews. Following the monastery’s release of an anti-Nazi publication in February 1941, Kolbe was arrested and sent to the work camp at Auschwitz, where he was forced to carry heavy blocks of stone used to build the crematoria. Despite the daily horrors he endured, Kolbe continued his work as a priest among his fellow inmates, often sharing his food rations and providing spiritual counsel.

In July of that same year, several prisoners escaped from the camp; as punishment, the guards chose 10 prisoners to die by starvation in the camp’s notorious prison block, Block 11. One of the selected prisoners was Franciszek Gajowniczek, who, upon being selected, cried out, “My wife! My children!” Motivated by compassion, Kolbe volunteered to take his place.

Kolbe, along with the 9 other men, spent the next two weeks without food or water in the underground prison cells of Block 11. It was reported that he led the men in prayer each day and regularly offered kind words of reassurance. By the end of the 2 weeks, only Kolbe and two others were alive; they were subsequently killed by lethal injection.

The story of Kolbe spread throughout Auschwitz, and he became a symbol of courageous dignity amidst the cruelties of the camp. Miraculously, Franciszek Gajowniczek survived Auschwitz, and later attended Kolbe’s canonisation in 1982.

Witold Pilecki and the Polish Resistance

Witold Pilecki.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki#/media/File:Witold_Pilecki_in_b&w.jpg

Witold Pilecki was a member of the Polish resistance during the German occupation of Poland in WWII. On September 18th, 1940, he embarked on a dangerous mission: to become the first voluntary inmate of Auschwitz.

The aim of this mission was to report on the conditions of the concentration camp, and to build Polish resistance from within the camp in the hopes of sparking an uprising. Pilecki spent 2 and a half years at Auschwitz, facing starvation, lice and Typhus outbreaks, and forced labour. By 1942, Pilecki’s underground resistance group numbered almost 1000, networking to steal extra food and clothing for fellow inmates, sabotage Nazi plans, and smuggle messages from the camp to the outside world. Many of Pilecki’s messages reached London, providing the historical record for the evolution of Auschwitz into the mass killing centre it later became.

Realising he would not receive help from the Allies for any uprising, Pilecki escaped Auschwitz with two of his friends in April 1943 and rejoined the Polish resistance. He subsequently published a 100-page report on the conditions at Auschwitz, and fought in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Unfortunately, once the War had ended, the Soviet Union occupied Poland and oppressed any civilian mobilisations for independence. Pilecki continued sending messages of Polish resistance to London, and was arrested on suspicion of being a spy by communist authorities in 1947. After being repeatedly tortured, he was executed as an enemy of the state the following year. In 1990, however, he was exonerated and is today recognised as a hero for his actions during WWII.

Alberto Errera, Sonderkommando Photographer

The Sonderkommandos, German for “special command units,” were groups of Jewish prisoners who were forced to perform duties in the gas chambers and crematoria of the Nazi killing centres. Among other tasks, they were responsible for herding victims into the gas chambers, cleaning the blood and excrement from the gas chambers, and burning the thousands of corpses either in the crematoria ovens. Since workers of the Sonderkommandos were direct witnesses to genocide, they were usually killed and replaced every few months.

The Nazis’ engagement in genocide through gas was a closely guarded secret. Indeed, in the days leading up to their surrender, the Nazis were ordered to destroy the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz, and even forced camp survivors into mass evacuations (“death marches”) to keep them from falling into Allied hands.

There remain, however, four pieces of evidence documenting the gassing process: a series of blurry photographs, taken secretly in 1944 by a member of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando, and the only ones known to exist of the events around the gas chambers.

The Sonderkommando photographs were taken in a span of 15 to 30 minutes by a Sonderkommando worker who, at the time, was known only as a Greek Jew called Alex. In the decades after the Holocaust, several sources identified him as Alberto Errera, a former Greek naval officer and member of the anti-Nazi resitance. With the help of Errera and fellow Sonderkommando members, the Polish underground successfully smuggled the Errera’s photographs out of Auschwitz in a toothpaste tube.

Errera had been arrested in German-occupied Greece as a leftist, and deported to Auschwitz in April 1944. In addition to taking the Sonderkommando photographs, Errera was an active participant in the preparations for the Sonderkommando Uprising. Sadly, in August of 1944 after a failed escape attempt, Alberto Errera was tortured and killed by the SS. His heroism lives on, however, as in the 1980s he was awarded by the Greek government for his contribution to the Greek resistance during WWII.

Photo #280: Bodies waiting to be burned, taken from the gas chamber.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/images/Holocaust/sonder280.jpg