International holidays - International Day of Liberation of Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps

Every year, on April 11, the world celebrates a memorable date - International Day for the Liberation of Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps. It was on this day, in 1945, that prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp rebelled against their tormentors and captured the death camp. The day before, an order was given to kill all prisoners. When the American troops appeared, who came for the purpose of liberation, the prisoners themselves had already dealt with the sadists. The first concentration camp was formed in 1933, in the German city of Dachau. Later, the network of concentration camps grew to incredible proportions - more than 14,000 concentration camps in Germany and other countries that were its allies. Prisoners were brutally tormented and tortured - gas chambers, where victims suffocated painfully; burning in crematorium ovens, and sometimes alive; brutal torture; Starvation is only a small part of what the victims experienced. They were turned into guinea pigs - new drugs were tested, cosmetics and medicines were tested. One day, out of curiosity, the Nazis brought twin brothers to a concentration camp. They had one leg amputated and waited for the results - the sadists were interested in how different the healing process would be in almost identical people. The experiment failed, one of the guys died, and the second was killed by the torturers themselves, since he was no longer of interest to them. The Nazis pursued not only scientific interests, but also monetary ones. One of the former guards admitted that if a prisoner died within a year of captivity, then the profit was 1.5 thousand Reichmarks. The statistics are simply terrifying - during the years during which World War II was going on, 20 million people were held captive in concentration camps. No exceptions were made for anyone; the prisoners were both children and old people. More than 11 million people did not live to see liberation. 5 million of them were Soviet citizens. The most terrible and largest concentration camp in terms of its numbers is Auschwitz. The documents listed about 4 million prisoners who were imprisoned there. Victory Day is celebrated all over the world, people honor veterans and those who worked on the home front. But we must not forget about those who suffered cruelly and suffered in captivity of the enemy, in most cases, without waiting for victory.