By Madalyn Minnick, TWR Youth Action Fellow ‘20
WHAT DOES “NEVER AGAIN” LOOK LIKE 76 YEARS LATER?
On this day 76 years ago, the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, the horrors of the Holocaust had been kept secret, guarded behind the gates of the camps. On January 27, 1945, however, the liberation of one of the most notorious concentration camps, Auschwitz, forced the truth of what had happened to spill out into the world. The Soviet army, after dispelling German forces from the area, saw the camp, and once they realized there were human prisoners left inside, moved to liberate it. The discoveries they made behind those barbed wire fences have become some of the most incriminating accounts of human behavior, but have also revealed some of the most inspiring stories of the truly resilient nature of the human spirit.
In Eva Kor’s Surviving the Angel of Death, she recounts how the liberating armies made the prisoners walk out of the camp multiple times in order to take photographs that captured the emotions of the moment - relief, joy, anticipation, loss, pain, and so many more. The Soviets knew this liberation would be a testament to what the Nazis had done inside Auschwitz, but also of the power of survival, and their pictures prove the importance of this moment.
Ivan Martynushkin was one of those Soviet soldiers, a lieutenant in the Soviet army during World War II. Martynushkin and the other Soviet liberators knew that the people they had found inside the camp were prisoners. They’ve spoken about the infectious positivity that surrounded them as the survivors realized that they had been saved. Despite the horror they had endured, it was apparent people had held on to hope, and their relief and happiness at rescue were not misunderstood by Martynushkin, who said:
“We could feel that we had done something good.”
Fifty years after the liberation, Elie Wiesel, an Auschwitz and Buchenwald survivor, spoke of the terror of Auschwitz. He discussed its liberation, but also its lasting effect on humankind.
Elie believed that “after Auschwitz, the human condition is no longer the same. After Auschwitz, nothing will ever be the same.”
I think Elie Wiesel’s quote speaks to the shocking effect the liberation of Auschwitz, and the realization that Auschwitz existed, had on the world in the 1940s, and the effect that continues to this day. Auschwitz proved what people are capable of doing to each other, but more prominently demonstrates what people are capable of overcoming. In my opinion, the liberation of Auschwitz was one of the turning points of human history. It sparked the Genocide Convention, war crimes trials, and discussions of human rights and human dignity internationally. More importantly, it gave voice to the people, who for so long were considered victims, to finally share their stories and become symbols of resilience and hope.
Celebrating the liberation of Auschwitz should be a time to remember history and uplift human stories, but it should also be a time for reflection. How did the world allow Auschwitz to exist? Has “never again” been practiced, respected, in our own lifetime? And, most importantly, how will we honor the memories of those people for whom liberation did not come quickly enough?
Madalyn Minnick is a high school senior from Wilmington, Delaware in the United States. She loves to use writing to connect to herself and relate to events in the present and of the past.
References:
https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-veteran-recalls-soviet-liberation-of-auschwitz-/26807978.html
https://www.pbs.org/eliewiesel/life/auschwitz.html
Martynushkin, Ivan. Interview. Radio Free Europe, 22 Jan. 2015
Wiesel, Elie. “50th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.” Lives and Legacies Film, 27 January 1995.
Banner Image Source: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/remembering-auschwitz-eyes-present