Travel with Angela Lansbury: Holocaust Remembrance Day - January 27 - where you can learn more about the liberation of Auschwitz and survivors

This January day commemorates the liberation of Auschwitz in the south of German-occupied Poland, near Krakow, by the Russians.

The motto over the entrance to the camp was Arbeit macht frei. Work makes you free. Those who could not work, children, the elderly, the disabled, were selected and sent straight to their deaths.

I remember reading about a survivor who learned that her parents were sent straight to be killed. I was horrified. I thought she would be upset. On the contrary. She was relieved that her parents did not have to witness the horror of the roll calls, watching people being executed.

Pictures of those who did not survive.

In the early days, those who arrived were photographed on arrival for identity. However, those adults selected for survival, after three months their faces and bodies were so thin, so haggard from the horrors, so changed that they were unrecognizable and could not be identified from the photos. So, instead, their arms were stamped with numbers.

Survivors. After six months, children had survived, now well-fed, were brought back to the camp for a photo to show who the Russians had liberated. Whilst they might have been relieved to see each other, I cannot imagine that the children were happy to be back.

National representatives are invited or volunteer to go to Auschwitz each year for a commemoration. In 2023 the Russians, at war with Ukraine, were not invited.

If you go to Krakow, as I did, you will find a pretty, small city. It was small enough to be quickly captured and preserved by the invading Germans during WW2 as their HQ in the area. Auschwitz is just outside and one of the main places visited in the area. I knew it would be grim, but if you are taking guided tours you can hardly avoid it, because many full day tours include a half day there, and if you are in the area for two days, you have done most other places on the first day.

On a slightly lighter note, the museum in the city in Schindler's former factory site, provides much less about those who lose their lives and much more about the survivors. I was glad to visit that afterwards.

Israel honours those who saved Jews at Yad Vashem. You can visit holocaust memorials and museums all around the world. See below.

Anne Frank was in Auschwitz in Poland and was transported to Bergen Belsen in Germany where she died.

Useful Websites

HISTORY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp

2023 NEWS

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11683361/Putin-blasts-neo-Nazis-Ukraine-Holocaust-Remembrance-Day.html

MUSEUMS TO VISIT IN POLAND

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz-Birkenau_State_Museum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majdanek_State_Museum

Photos

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Konzentrationslager_Majdanek