Yabbai

Ontem, 27 de janeiro, foi aniversário de 60 anos da libertação de Auschwitz. O Israpundit organizou um blogburst, que é uma espécie de flash mob com blogs (e sem o ridículo). Fiquei sabendo em cima da hora então não deu tempo de participar (*), mas aí vai um trecho (editado) do texto em comum.

Remembering the Wannsee Conference and the Liberation of Auschwitz

On January 20th, we marked the anniversary of the 1942 Wannsee Conference. In the course of that Conference, the Nazi hierarchy formalized the plan to annihilate the Jewish people. Understanding the horrors of Auschwitz requires that one be aware of the premeditated mass-murder that was presented at Wannsee.

Highlighting these events now has become particularly important, even as the press reports that '45% of Britons have never heard of Auschwitz'.

The Holocaust, symbolized by Auschwitz, the worst of the death camps, occurred in the wake of consistent, systematic, unrelenting anti-Jewish propaganda campaigns. As a result, the elimination of the Jews from German society was accepted as axiomatic, leaving open only two questions: when and how.

The Wannsee Conference formalized "the final solution" - the plan to transport Europe's Jews to eastern labour and death camps.

The mass gassings of Europe's took place in Auschwitz between 1942 and the end of 1944, when the Nazis retreated before the advancing Red Army. Jews were transported to Auschwitz from all over Nazi-occupied or Nazi-dominated Europe and most were slaughtered in Auschwitz upon arrival, sometimes as many as 12,000 in one day. Some victims were selected for slave labour or “medical” experimentation before they were murdered or allowed to die. All were subject to brutal treatment.

In all, between three and four million people, mostly Jews, but also Poles and Red Army POWs, were slaughtered in Auschwitz alone (though some authors put the number at 1.3 million).

Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army on 27 January 1945, sixty years ago, after most of the prisoners were forced into a Death March westwards. The Red Army found in Auschwitz about 7,600 survivors, but not all could be saved.

Nuno Guerreiro não participou do blogburst mas escreveu 3 posts lá na Rua da Judiaria.

(*) eu estava pivotando.