In preparation for this Memorial Day, on Wednesday 22nd January 2020 a group of students at St. Margaret College Verdala School, Cospicua assembled with their teacher, Martin Azzopardi sdc to commemorate Auschwitz Liberation Camp day while creating awareness about the atrocities held in the concentration camps of the Nazi Regime.Auschwitz Concentration Camp was liberated on the 27th January 1945 by the soldiers of the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front. It was a paradox of history that Soviet soldiers (formally representing the Stalinist regime) brought freedom to the prisoners of the Nazi regime. The Russian Red Army obtained details about Auschwitz after the liberation of the city of Krakow and about seven thousand prisoners awaited liberation in the Main Camp of Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz. Before and soon after January 27, Soviet soldiers liberated about 500 prisoners in the Auschwitz sub-camps in Stara Kuźnia, Blachownia Śląska, Świętochłowice, Wesoła, Libiąż, Jawiszowice, and Jaworzno.
Over 230 Soviet soldiers, including the commander of the 472nd regiment, Col. Siemen Lvovich Besprozvanny, died in combat while liberating the Main Camp of Auschwitz, Birkenau, Monowitz, and the city of Oświęcim.
In the Main Camp of Auschwitz and Birkenau, Soviet soldiers discovered the corpses of about 600 prisoners who had been shot by the withdrawing Nazi SS or who had succumbed to exhaustion.
No one knows exactly how many people were sent to Auschwitz, or how many died there since the Nazis did not maintain registration records for those who were to be exterminated immediately upon arrival at Auschwitz. However, historians estimate that between 1940 and 1945, the Nazis sent at least 1.3 million people to Auschwitz. About 1.1 million of these people died or were killed at Auschwitz.
MAY THIS NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.
Written by Klaydi Borg, Darnoc Mizzi, Grech Carl and Mariema Zahra
Students at St. Margaret College Senior Secondary School, Verdala, Cospicua, Malta.