THE STRANGE AND UNIMAGINEABLE THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN AUSCHWITZ CONCENTRATION CAMP.

On this day in 1945, Auschwitz concentration camp, with its last 7,500 inmates still present, was liberated by Soviet forces.

Auschwitz was the largest camp established by the Germans. A complex of camps, Auschwitz included a concentration camp, killing center, and forced-labor camps. It was located 37 miles west of Krakow (Cracow), near the prewar German-Polish border.

In mid-January 1945, as Soviet forces approached the Auschwitz camp complex, the SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its satellite camps. Nearly 60,000 prisoners were forced to march west from the Auschwitz camp system. Thousands had been killed in the camps in the days before these death marches began. 

Tens of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, were forced to march to the city of Wodzisław in the western part of Upper Silesia. SS guards shot anyone who fell behind or could not continue. Prisoners also suffered from the cold weather, starvation, and exposure on these marches. 

More than 15,000 died during the death marches from Auschwitz. On January 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz and liberated more than 7,000 remaining prisoners, who were mostly ill and dying. It is estimated that at minimum 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945; of these, at least 1.1 million were murdered.

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Friday the 13th - unlucky for some?

It certainly was for the 11 defendants from the Belsen Concentration camp who were hanged by Albert Pierrepoint at Hameln in Germany on this day - Friday the 13th 1945.  

The death sentences were pronounced as follows by Major-General Berney-Ficklin on November 17th.

"No. 1) Kramer, 2) Klein, 3) Weingartner, 5) Hoessler, 16) Francioh, 22) Pichen, 25) Stofel, 27) Dorr. 

The sentence of this Court on each one of you whom I have just named is that you suffer death by being hanged".

He then passed sentence on the women as follows "No. 6) Borman, 7) Volkenrath, 9) Grese. The sentence of this court is that you suffer death by being hanged."

The 11 from Belsen had been joined by two other men, Georg Otto Sandrock and Ludwig Schweinberger, sentenced for the murder of Pilot Officer Gerald Hood, a British prisoner of war at Almelo, Holland, on the 21st of March 1945.

The executions were carried out at half hour intervals starting at 9.34 a.m. with Irma Grese, who at 21, was the youngest of the condemned prisoners, followed by Elisabeth Volkenrath at 10.03 a.m. and Juana Bormann at 10.38 a.m. The men, including Joseph Kramer, were hanged in pairs afterwards, all 13 executions being completed by 1.00 p.m.

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