"The actual camp appeared like an untidy slaughterhouse. A pungent smell hung heavily in the air… The further we walked into the site, the stronger the smell of burnt flesh became, and dirty-black ash rained down on us from the heavens, darkening the snow… Innumerable exhausted, wretched figures with shrunken faces and bald heads were standing outside of the barracks. They didn’t know that we were coming. The surprise made many of them faint. A picture that would make everyone wither away who saw it. The misery was horrifying. The ovens [of the crematoria] were still hot and some were still blazing fiercely when we approached… We were standing in a circle, everyone was silent. From the barracks more and more hungry children were emerging, reduced to skeletons and enveloped in rags. Like ants they assembled in large groups, making noise as if they were in a large school yard. With arms extended, they were waiting, begging and screaming for bread. They were whining out of despair and wiping away their tears… Only death reigned here. It smelled of it"
"I was a translator at the front. Our forces had taken half of Poland. At New Years we reached Krakow. I interrogated German and Italian officers there, because I knew Italian and Polish besides Russian. I’ve learnt that from my mother and during school. We then got the order to push beyond the town and into the concentration camp Auschwitz.
When our tanks reached the front gates of the KZ [KZ = Konzentrationslager; German for concentration camp] early on the 27th of January 1945, the guards had already caught wind and had fled. Only some remained, others had died by their own hands. Nobody resisted. The front gate of the camp was locked. Our tank broke through. One truck after the other, full of soldiers, drove onto the camp site. Our soliders disembarked, disarmed the remaining guards of the camp and arrested them. So we drove up to the extermination camp Birkenau.
Knowing the Red Army was closing in, the SS gave the boilermen (?) [people operating the ovens] the order, to throw the prisoners, who were already emaciated to the point of looking like skeleton, into the crematorium alive. They wanted to get rid of the sick and weakened to cover up their tracks as fast as possible.
The boilermen looked surprised to see us officers and soldiers. They were strong people, mostly Kapos [prisoners forced to work in the camps]. They greeted us with shy smiles on their faces, a mix of happiness and fear. Like on command, they threw away their poker. With us, they talked freely. Angry words about Hitler were spoken. I still remember an old boilermen stammer “Thank you”. “Thank you, friend. May I call you [the Russians] friends?”.
One of them, a Ukrainian, I asked: “Why did you do that?” and pointed towards the ovens. Without blinking he replied: “They didn’t ask if I wanted to. No, I didn’t want to. But better be the guy working the oven, then be the one burning. That’s why I did it.” I was speechless, could just shake my head. “Why aren’t the other ovens burning? There’s no smoke coming up the chimney”, I asked the guy. “Deconstructed”, he said.
Caught in our own thoughts, everyone just stood around. Nobody cared about the burning ovens. “Stop this. Out! All of you!”, the commanding officer Sergejew shouted. Outside, he was shaking and said with a stuttering voice: “How can this be in the midst of the 20th century! I can’t comprehend this. If there’d be a god, maybe he could explain how this all came to be.”
We visited the barracks and couldn’t believe our own eyes. Naked and groaning people, hardly looking like humans, were laying on straw bags. I touched one of the people laying there. He didn’t move. He wasn’t alive anymore.
In another barrack, a woman was dying. I asked if someone from her family was also in the camp. She said yes. Via speakers we tried to find her relatives and reunited the family. Shortly after, the woman died, although our doctors tried to save her.
After that we concentrated on the camp headquarters. In the hallway towards the office of the camp management I found a paper pinned to the wall which concerned me, too, since I’m Slav. It said something along the lines of “Germans! We are the masters. Our interests are the only that matter. The reproduction of the Slav people is not desired. Childlessness and abortion are to be encouraged. Education of Slav children is unnecessary. If they can count up to 100, that’s sufficient. Those who can’t work, shall die.”
I translated the text for the others who just shook their heads. One teared it down. The offices were empty and chaotic so we went outside.
In the meantime our soldiers had gathered the female guards and brought them to us. “Should we…?”, asked a Corporal. “No, don’t do anything stupid”, the officer replied. “This is to be decided by the Ordnungstruppe” [something like 'commanding unit' or 'military police' perhaps; definitely a higher authority; can’t find a solid translation;].
“What does she have in her bag”, I asked another woman, since I saw how filled her bag was. A soldier grabbed into the bag. It was a brochure. The headline was “About the law to defend the hereditary health of the German people”. I took it, read some pages. Proof of being Aryan, marriage prohibition, Anglo-Jewish plague … I took note of it and was shocked. People are still carrying these with them! [Nikolai Politanow is surprised that these people still carry things that will be used as evidence against them.]
“Are you all Aryan women?”, I asked. They give me a cold look. “I don’t know”, one of them replied. We laughed. “Where are the camp doctors?”, I asked. “Not here, ran off”. “And the male prisoners, where are they? I haven’t seen a single man. What is this all about?”. “A week ago they’ve been escorted out of the camp. Probably relocated to Majdanek or Treblinka”, she replied. I tore the brochure into pieces and threw it onto the piles of garbage.
Until evening, many reporters had arrived. Nonstop buzzing and flashing cameras everywhere inside and outside the barracks. We had to learn one step after the other that Auschwitz was a central selection camp. Jewish people were selected for forced labour or death in the gas chambers. The immediate extermination by Jews who were unable to work was expressly insisted upon.
The field kitchens arrived soon. Nearly at the same time, the Ordnungstruppe and surprisingly high ranking officers from the staff of Rokossowski and Konjew showed up. Medics distributed sheets and clothing to the prisoners. To prevent the prisoners from eating snow, soldiers distributed tea and bread to the nearly starved skeletons. In the meantime, military trucks had arrived. Around midnight, all prisoners were taken out of the camp. Those still able to walk had no patience to wait and had already taken off by foot towards Sosnowitz. The only remaining people were Kapos and guards. Those were immediatly ordered to dig up mass graves outside the camp and to bury the dead bodies there. Floodlights and generators had already been put in place.
The camp was now empty and it was as silent as a monastery. Some torches were lighting the ground here and there. We had to leave, since we are a combat unit assigned to the front. We caught up to the rest of our unit in Sosnowitz, approximatly 15 kilometer east of Kattowitz."
- Account (with translators notes) of Nikolai Palitinow, one of the first Red Army soliders to enter Auswitzch-Birkeneau at the liberation.
To Neo Nazis, I ask is this your end game? Do you want this? Do you know this is where all your racial homeland stuff is leading? Is this what you want?
But I'm sure neo-Nazis could care less what some SJW snowflake Tumblrina butter golem (have I covered all the insults) thinks of them. So what I really want to do is talk to those who say "well, I don't like neo-Nazis, I hate them, but I don't think we should go around punching them in the face".
To those people I'd like to say, well this is what neo-Nazi views leads to. This is where visions of white supremacy and racial purity end up; with emaciated humans being flung alive into crematoria. So this isn't a matter of free speech or respecting the right to a difference of opinion. And it isn't something that should be resisted with non-violence, peaceful protest, using our words or being better than that. It should be fought ever millimetre of the way.
And now, enjoy.
"I was a translator at the front. Our forces had taken half of Poland. At New Years we reached Krakow. I interrogated German and Italian officers there, because I knew Italian and Polish besides Russian. I’ve learnt that from my mother and during school. We then got the order to push beyond the town and into the concentration camp Auschwitz.
When our tanks reached the front gates of the KZ [KZ = Konzentrationslager; German for concentration camp] early on the 27th of January 1945, the guards had already caught wind and had fled. Only some remained, others had died by their own hands. Nobody resisted. The front gate of the camp was locked. Our tank broke through. One truck after the other, full of soldiers, drove onto the camp site. Our soliders disembarked, disarmed the remaining guards of the camp and arrested them. So we drove up to the extermination camp Birkenau.
Knowing the Red Army was closing in, the SS gave the boilermen (?) [people operating the ovens] the order, to throw the prisoners, who were already emaciated to the point of looking like skeleton, into the crematorium alive. They wanted to get rid of the sick and weakened to cover up their tracks as fast as possible.
The boilermen looked surprised to see us officers and soldiers. They were strong people, mostly Kapos [prisoners forced to work in the camps]. They greeted us with shy smiles on their faces, a mix of happiness and fear. Like on command, they threw away their poker. With us, they talked freely. Angry words about Hitler were spoken. I still remember an old boilermen stammer “Thank you”. “Thank you, friend. May I call you [the Russians] friends?”.
One of them, a Ukrainian, I asked: “Why did you do that?” and pointed towards the ovens. Without blinking he replied: “They didn’t ask if I wanted to. No, I didn’t want to. But better be the guy working the oven, then be the one burning. That’s why I did it.” I was speechless, could just shake my head. “Why aren’t the other ovens burning? There’s no smoke coming up the chimney”, I asked the guy. “Deconstructed”, he said.
Caught in our own thoughts, everyone just stood around. Nobody cared about the burning ovens. “Stop this. Out! All of you!”, the commanding officer Sergejew shouted. Outside, he was shaking and said with a stuttering voice: “How can this be in the midst of the 20th century! I can’t comprehend this. If there’d be a god, maybe he could explain how this all came to be.”
We visited the barracks and couldn’t believe our own eyes. Naked and groaning people, hardly looking like humans, were laying on straw bags. I touched one of the people laying there. He didn’t move. He wasn’t alive anymore.
In another barrack, a woman was dying. I asked if someone from her family was also in the camp. She said yes. Via speakers we tried to find her relatives and reunited the family. Shortly after, the woman died, although our doctors tried to save her.
After that we concentrated on the camp headquarters. In the hallway towards the office of the camp management I found a paper pinned to the wall which concerned me, too, since I’m Slav. It said something along the lines of “Germans! We are the masters. Our interests are the only that matter. The reproduction of the Slav people is not desired. Childlessness and abortion are to be encouraged. Education of Slav children is unnecessary. If they can count up to 100, that’s sufficient. Those who can’t work, shall die.”
I translated the text for the others who just shook their heads. One teared it down. The offices were empty and chaotic so we went outside.
In the meantime our soldiers had gathered the female guards and brought them to us. “Should we…?”, asked a Corporal. “No, don’t do anything stupid”, the officer replied. “This is to be decided by the Ordnungstruppe” [something like 'commanding unit' or 'military police' perhaps; definitely a higher authority; can’t find a solid translation;].
“What does she have in her bag”, I asked another woman, since I saw how filled her bag was. A soldier grabbed into the bag. It was a brochure. The headline was “About the law to defend the hereditary health of the German people”. I took it, read some pages. Proof of being Aryan, marriage prohibition, Anglo-Jewish plague … I took note of it and was shocked. People are still carrying these with them! [Nikolai Politanow is surprised that these people still carry things that will be used as evidence against them.]
“Are you all Aryan women?”, I asked. They give me a cold look. “I don’t know”, one of them replied. We laughed. “Where are the camp doctors?”, I asked. “Not here, ran off”. “And the male prisoners, where are they? I haven’t seen a single man. What is this all about?”. “A week ago they’ve been escorted out of the camp. Probably relocated to Majdanek or Treblinka”, she replied. I tore the brochure into pieces and threw it onto the piles of garbage.
Until evening, many reporters had arrived. Nonstop buzzing and flashing cameras everywhere inside and outside the barracks. We had to learn one step after the other that Auschwitz was a central selection camp. Jewish people were selected for forced labour or death in the gas chambers. The immediate extermination by Jews who were unable to work was expressly insisted upon.
The field kitchens arrived soon. Nearly at the same time, the Ordnungstruppe and surprisingly high ranking officers from the staff of Rokossowski and Konjew showed up. Medics distributed sheets and clothing to the prisoners. To prevent the prisoners from eating snow, soldiers distributed tea and bread to the nearly starved skeletons. In the meantime, military trucks had arrived. Around midnight, all prisoners were taken out of the camp. Those still able to walk had no patience to wait and had already taken off by foot towards Sosnowitz. The only remaining people were Kapos and guards. Those were immediatly ordered to dig up mass graves outside the camp and to bury the dead bodies there. Floodlights and generators had already been put in place.
The camp was now empty and it was as silent as a monastery. Some torches were lighting the ground here and there. We had to leave, since we are a combat unit assigned to the front. We caught up to the rest of our unit in Sosnowitz, approximatly 15 kilometer east of Kattowitz."
- Account (with translators notes) of Nikolai Palitinow, one of the first Red Army soliders to enter Auswitzch-Birkeneau at the liberation.
To Neo Nazis, I ask is this your end game? Do you want this? Do you know this is where all your racial homeland stuff is leading? Is this what you want?
But I'm sure neo-Nazis could care less what some SJW snowflake Tumblrina butter golem (have I covered all the insults) thinks of them. So what I really want to do is talk to those who say "well, I don't like neo-Nazis, I hate them, but I don't think we should go around punching them in the face".
To those people I'd like to say, well this is what neo-Nazi views leads to. This is where visions of white supremacy and racial purity end up; with emaciated humans being flung alive into crematoria. So this isn't a matter of free speech or respecting the right to a difference of opinion. And it isn't something that should be resisted with non-violence, peaceful protest, using our words or being better than that. It should be fought ever millimetre of the way.
And now, enjoy.
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