Search results for: Yad Vashem - The International School for Holocaust Studies

The 33rd issue of Teaching the Legacy, e-newsletter for Holocaust Educators has just been released. This year marks 70 years since the end of World War II. As such, we have dedicated this newsletter to liberation and the return to life. As the German army retreated during the last months of the war, the Allied soldiers discovered tens of thousands of Nazi concentration camps. Soviet soldiers were the first to liberate concentration camp prisoners in the summer of 1944. The first major concentration camp they liberated was Majdanek near Lublin in Poland. When they liberated Auschwitz in January 1945, Soviet soldiers found only several thousand emaciated prisoners alive who resembled skeletons. The months and years of abuse, violence, brutality, forced labor, disease, horrifying sanitary conditions and the lack of food made many so weak that they could hardly move. Those who survived the first weeks after liberation faced a long and difficult return to life.