For posterity, lest one forgets, let us remember the awful, the war criminals and profiteers, and the genocidal overlords.
As the government and military began to collapse within Germany, Nazi officials in both Germany and occupied Poland began to think about their endgame. In November 1944, Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and one of the architects of the Holocaust, issued an abrupt order to destroy the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of Auschwitzβs three main camps. Historians disagree on why he issued the command, which was in direct opposition to a previous order by Adolf Hitler to destroy the remaining Jews in Europe.
Officials at the camp obeyed Himmler. In late 1944, they dismantled part of the gas chambers, forcing, eyewitnesses would later recall, the Sonderkommandoβa group of mostly Jewish prisoners who were made to run the gas chambersβto dismantle the structures piece by piece. Then, as the Russians closed in that January, the remaining buildings were destroyed, blown up completely using dynamite. However, the ruins remained.
Then, the marches began. The remaining prisoners deemed healthy enough to march were told to assemble into columns and leave Auschwitz. About 7,000 were left behind as 60,000 marched. Nazi guards led them through the forests and fields of southern Poland on their way to Germany. The Germans called the march an βevacuationβ; prisoners immediately dubbed it the βdeath march.β
The average person is way more impulsive and primal than we give them credit for.Bloody hypocrites.