January 27th is International Holocaust Remembrance Day

In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27th, I am posting some of the photos that I took in 1998 and in 2005 at Auschwitz, the main extermination camp of the Holocaust. Auschwitz was liberated on January 27th, 1945 by soldiers of the Soviet Union.

Ruins of Krema II gas chamber at Auschwitz II, aka Birkenau

Early morning photo of the ruins of Krema III at Birkenau

The Germans marched 60,000 prisoners out of the three camps in the Auschwitz complex on January 18, 1945.  They came back twice, on January 20th and again on January 26th, to blow up the gas chambers in order to destroy the evidence.  

“scuppering” …. the new word of the day …. as in “fresh evidence of mass graves at Treblinka, scuppering the claims of Holocaust deniers”

I read this headline today in the Mail Online, a British newspaper:

British archaeologist destroys Holocaust deniers’ argument with mass grave find at Treblinka

The lead of the story is this quote:  “A British forensic archaeologist has unearthed fresh evidence to prove the existence of mass graves at the Nazi death camp Treblinka – scuppering the claims of Holocaust deniers who say it was merely a transit camp.”

I had a third-grade teacher who taught me to look up every word, that I didn’t know the meaning of, in the dictionary.  So I went directly to an online dictionary and learned that “scuppering” can be used to mean destroy or ruin.  I think a better word might be “demolish.”  But have the arguments of the Holocaust deniers been “scuppered?”  I don’t think so.

The spot where Jews disembarked from the trains to Treblinka

A lot of good comments about this subject have been posted on my previous blog about the “fresh evidence” at Treblinka here.

This article in the Mail Online states that “a lack of physical evidence in the area has been exploited by Holocaust deniers.”  The whole article seems to me to be gloating over the scuppering of Holocaust deniers, instead of just giving the facts, as a newspaper article should.