... 1945, the Soviet Union's Red Army liberated Auschwitz. Located in southwestern Poland, the 5-year-old camp was the largest of the concentration camps run by the Nazis. In the photo at left, child detainees who had survived walk out of their barracks at the time of liberation.At that time the BBC reported:
The full horror of the camp would come to be known over time. Among those who died there were citizens of the Soviet Union, Poland, France, Belgium, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Italy and Greece. Although the death toll once was estimated as high as 4 million, today the Auschwitz Museum places the number at "between 1 and 1.5 million, including 800,000 Jews." (photo courtesy of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)According to reports, hundreds of thousands of Polish people, as well as Jews from a number of other European countries, have been held prisoner there in appalling conditions and many have been killed in the gas chambers.
... 1416, for the 1st time a European governmental entity, the Republic of Dubrovnik, outlawed slavery.
... 1949, U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.) was born in Greeley, Colorado.
