Today, April 27, 1940, Heinrich Himmler ordered the creation of a concentration camp which would be situated near the Polish village of Oswiecim. Eventually, the world would tremble at the sound of the name of that concentration camp: Auschwitz.
Auschwitz: one word, an overarching name that stood as the name for an evil that spanned over 3 large camps including the dreaded Birkenau and the lesser known Buna-Monowitz, and 45 sub-camps. 1 million Jews were murdered within Auschwitz's confines, by a brutal German extermination machine that instead of ignoring it, chose to heed the ancient call of anti-Semitism, embracing it and taking it to an extreme that could only be reached thanks to the help of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and willing volunteers from a myriad of countries across Europe.
Three years later, on April 27, 1943, Polish Home Army Captain Witold Pilecki successfully escaped Auschwitz, after having volunteered to infiltrate it and spending nearly 3 years inside the camp. Captain Pilecki personally reported on the extermination in the camps, which by then was advancing at a terrifying rate, but his reports were seen as exaggerations. The indifference of the world towards the plight of the Jews, as certainly as the German hatred of the Jews, contributed to their deaths. CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING
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