Today is an important and obscure anniversary: "For the dead and the living, We must bear witness."

[Mira]

The quote in the headline is by Elie Wiesel


Today is the anniversary of the Liberation of Majdanek Concentration camp in Poland.
Majdanek was liberated by Soviet troops six months before Auschwitz as the first one on July 23, 1944.

I was two days short of 1 month old at the time, a tiny German newborn, much of my short life was spent in bunkers during air raids; the war was in it's last year.

A NY Times reporter who was there at the liberation of the camp opened his description with:
"Today I saw the most terrible place on the face of the earth."

As World War II was raging, nobody paid much attention because there were no pictures.

Take a look at the links as as a history lesson of a not so distant time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majdanek_concentration_camp
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/poland/majdanek/Majdanek.html

It will inspire you to continue to insist that War Criminals must be brought to Justice.

[WillyT]

1. K & R !!!

:kick:

[Greyhound]

2. K&R. I think the party "leadership" would benefit more from this. n/t

[formercia]

3. Treasures Emerge From Field of the Dead at Maidanek

By SAM ROBERTS
Published: November 4, 2005

LUBLIN, Poland, Oct. 31 - Adam Frydman shut his heavy-lidded eyes and vividly recalled his first glimpse of this unplowed field 62 years ago. He was 20 and had just arrived from the Warsaw ghetto with his father and brother. He imagined hundreds of Polish Jews huddled behind barbed wire fences. He heard barking dogs. He inhaled the unmistakable smell of death. When he got his bearings, he pointed unambiguously.

"There," he said.

So there is where they dug. Barely beating the season's first frost and oblivious to a punishing wind, a team of archaeologists transformed the former Maidanek death camp into a crime scene, complete with victims, witnesses and evidence.

After carving only a fraction of the 1,100-by-164-foot field into checkerboard plots that resembled shallow graves, they found about 20 women's rings, a heavy gold bracelet, 2 watches, gold-framed eyeglasses, a miniature Roman Catholic religious medallion and 15 valuable American Eagle gold coins. Even after the very first find, a tiny cut stone - maybe glass or a garnet - they declared their mission a success.

Once, it was written that there could be no news after the fact from a former death camp. But this week there was news from Maidanek. The dead bared their buried prayers.

"To me this was an act of defiance," Mr. Frydman said. "People who expected to die said why give it to the Germans, why help their war effort?"

--snip--

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/04/international/europe/04poland.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1&oref=slogin

[Mira]

4. Thank you for this link, so very moving and important.

It is our job to not let the stories die with the people.
It's one way to keep hope alive.