Chapter 254
For Yuri, it was impossible to feel unfamiliar with the Auschwitz concentration camp. After all, in his previous life, this killing den was so famous that anyone with a little common sense would know about it.
Throughout World War II, the Germans established a large number of similar concentration camps, and there were eight of the most famous ones, and Auschwitz was one of them.
Of course, the so-called Auschwitz concentration camp is not a concentration camp. It refers to the collective name of nearly 40 concentration camps . It is the most efficient killing tool and the most cruel killing tool. In just four years, nearly 1.5 million people died in this hell.
1.5 million is not just a cold number, but a collection of once-vibrant lives.
Yuri is not averse to war, because in his opinion, war is also an art, a human activity, and a way of negotiation. However, he believes that war serves politics, and the purpose of launching a war is to obtain benefits that cannot be obtained at the negotiation table. Fundamentally, it is also "serving the people."
But if war is used directly as a tool for killing, or in other words, a war that is purely for killing people and exterminating a race, then it is not art, but a crime. It is not a human activity, but a backlash of beasts. Those who target civilians in war, or even massacre civilians on a large scale, are not human beings at all, they are beasts, upright beasts.
In fact, it was no secret that the Germans carried out genocide through concentration camps. They never did it secretly, but openly. However, it is true that the outside world knew nothing about the situation in the concentration camps. Auschwitz was the first concentration camp to fall into the hands of the Allies.
They flew from Warsaw to Krakow, and then took a car from Krakow to Auschwitz. When Yuri and his team appeared in the Birkenau concentration camp, the entire outer area of the concentration camp had been turned into a huge field hospital.
There were nearly 10,000 prisoners rescued from this concentration camp by the Soviet Army. With such a large crowd, the Soviet Army had no way to transfer them to other places in a short period of time and could only continue to use this camp which seemed to be filled with the undead.
Among these prisoners there were Jews, Germans, Soviets and Gypsies. Although they came from different countries and nationalities, they had one thing in common: each of them looked skinny.
They were really skinny, no matter viewed from near or far, these people looked like skeletons wrapped in a layer of skin. Their eyes were dull and numb, and they were in a trance. But perhaps because they were rescued, they all seemed very excited.
After liberating the concentration camp, the Soviet army began to provide food to the prisoners. However, considering their current condition, overeating would definitely be fatal, so the food provided was basically only liquid food.
If the camps used to hold German prisoners of war were like hell when Moscow organized a prisoner parade not long ago, then this concentration camp must be considered the eighteenth level of hell. The sky here seems to be always gloomy, and the air is filled with the smell of death, which is extremely stinky.
The concentration camp was liberated by the 322nd Infantry Division of the 60th Army. They advanced towards Auschwitz from the south of Krakow so quickly that a large number of German guards in the concentration camp did not have time to evacuate and were captured by the Soviet army.
It is said that after seeing the conditions of the prisoners in the concentration camp, the soldiers of the 322nd Infantry Division were horrified, especially after seeing the blankets woven with hair and the piles of gold teeth. Many people even vomited on the spot.
In fact, anti-Semitism was also widespread in the Soviet Union. It was a tradition passed down from the Imperial period. Comrade Lenin's efforts to abandon this tradition had little effect.
This was the case before the war, and in the first year after the outbreak of the war, anti-Semitic sentiment in the Soviet Union not only did not weaken, but became even stronger. Jews did not enjoy equal political rights, nor did they have the same political status as the Russians.
However, even so, it was still emotionally difficult for most people to accept seeing so many Jews being shot and killed.
Speaking of policies towards Jews, Yuri met a very special group of Jews in Birkenau concentration camp - the Mikhoels.
In fact, the policy towards Jews had changed significantly since the beginning of 1942, mainly because Moscow saw the great influence of Jews in the upper class of the United States. It was for this reason that the Soviet Union established a "Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee" headed by the famous actor Solomon Mikhailovich Mikhoels in mid-1942 to lobby Jewish communities in the United States and seek their assistance.
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. This name is very important and you must highlight it during the exam.
This community, composed of many Jewish celebrities in the Soviet Union, not only played an important role in the Soviet Union's Great Patriotic War, but also played a key role in the Soviet Union's development of the atomic bomb. It was with the help of this Jewish community that the Soviet Union obtained intelligence on the US atomic bomb development plan before the end of 1943.
It was this committee that proposed the so-called "Crimin Plan" to Stalin after the end of the Great Patriotic War, suggesting the establishment of a so-called "Jewish Soviet Socialist Republic" on the Crimean Peninsula. It was this plan that became the most direct evidence for the liquidation of the committee in 1952. All the leaders of the committee, including Mikhoels, were accused of "conducting anti-Soviet criminal activities" and were either executed or imprisoned.
Yuri didn't know about the future. After all, he didn't pay much attention to Soviet affairs in his previous life, and he didn't know much about this period of history. Having said that, even if he knew something, he wouldn't pay attention to Jewish affairs, as that was a bit far away from him.
Compared to Mikhoels, another American with thin cheeks and a serious face was Yuri's main target of attention, and this person was Admiral Joseph McNerney, the US military attaché to the Soviet Union.
One of these two people is from the United States, and the other is in the Soviet Union. It is difficult to say how big the gap in level is between them.
Yuri is currently the Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Union and the commander of the Belarus campaign, while McNerney is not only the US military attaché to the Soviet Union, he is also the commander-in-chief of the US military in the Mediterranean theater. In other words, the Allied forces fighting on the Italian peninsula are actually under his command. In terms of authority, the difference between the two is not big. As for the rank, McNerney is one level lower and is currently a lieutenant general of the US military. Perhaps it is because of this that Yuri was determined to be the Soviet representative accompanying McNerney on this visit to the Birkenau concentration camp.
The atmosphere in the concentration camp was very bad. Although the Soviet army had cleaned it up before, the foul smell still did not dissipate. Moreover, the gloomy atmosphere always made people feel very uncomfortable. Walking in the camp, people always felt that there seemed to be countless cold eyes looking at them in the darkness around them.
The Auschwitz incident was a big deal. In addition to the British and American ambassadors and military attachés, there were also a large number of reporters who came to the concentration camp. Even Henry Shapiro, the Allied war correspondent, came. In addition, as Roosevelt's special envoy, Hopkins also hurried over.
After visiting the concentration camp, in a makeshift tent, Hopkins put forward the request to set up an Allied military tribunal and to bring the German guards of the concentration camp to trial.
This was actually a proposal to establish an international tribunal to try war criminals after the war. Molotov, who came on behalf of the Soviet diplomatic department, proposed that the heads of the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain should hold another joint meeting to determine the issue of the trial of war criminals.
Hopkins expressed his approval of Molotov's proposal and was ready to present the Soviet proposal to President Roosevelt as soon as possible after returning to Washington, and to determine the time, place and other related issues of the meeting.
Yuri didn't pay much attention to what these diplomatic bureaucrats talked about, and he could also guess that this should be the opportunity for the Yalta Conference.
"General McNerney," Yuri turned to look at McNerney standing next to him and asked in a low voice, "Can you tell me about the Allied forces' situation in Italy and on the Western Front?"
As a general from the Allied Forces, although McNerney was a typical anti-communist, he still admired Yuri, a young and promising general. So he thought for a moment and answered directly: "In recent times, we have assembled troops north of the Ardennes region and are preparing to strike the enemy group. In the southern part of the Western Front, north of Switzerland, we are planning to drive the German army to the Mühlhausen and Colmar areas. At the same time, we also plan to launch a new campaign north of Strasbourg to eliminate the German army west of the Rhine and clear the obstacles for the forced crossing of the Rhine. If this series of battles goes well, the German army will be forced to retreat to the direction of Düsseldorf, and our troops will advance to the Rhine area north of Düsseldorf, and then advance to Berlin."
McInerney spoke very briefly, without even introducing the war situation on the Italian Peninsula. He just gave an overview of the recent battles in the Ardennes region, and he spoke very quickly.
But even so, Yuri quickly constructed a map of the war zone in his mind, and by comparing it with the intelligence previously held by the Soviet army, he had a general grasp of the general situation on the Western Front.
