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Today in 1945, the 322nd Infantry Division of the Soviet Red Army liberated 7,500 survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Although the exact number will never be known, most historians agree that between 1.1 and 1.5 million human beings were murdered there.
Auschwitz was not a single camp, but a complex of 3 main camps and dozens of sub-camps located about 60 kilometers southwest of Krakow, Poland. Auschwitz I was the first camp built at the site, which had been a Polish Army barracks. The administration offices were located there and it was also the initial place of confinement for the first group of prisoners, Polish citizens who were sent there in June, 1940. Once Germany invaded the Soviet Union in May, 1941, Soviet POWs were sent to the camp as were German civilian criminals, homosexuals and anyone else who did not fit into the tight social constructs of the Nazis. By 1942, there were 20,000 prisoners in Auschwitz I. The entrance to the camp had a sign posted over it which read, in German, “work liberates” or “work sets us free”. Similar signs were displayed above many other concentration camp gates, but this was the first.
Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, is the camp that most people think of when they think of Auschwitz. Most of the people imprisoned her were guilty of nothing more than being Jewish. Auschwitz II was located about 3 kilometers from the first camp and was built during 1941. It was over 5 square kilometers in area and could hold up to 100,000 prisoners at a time. While forced labor went on in every part of the Auschwitz complex, Auschwitz II’s main purpose was, simply, extermination. By the spring of 1942, the camp had four large gas chambers capable of murdering 10,000 people at a time. The bodies were then cremated.
Auschwitz III and the other sub-camps were labor camps built to assist Germany industry. They produced many items for the war effort, always under the watchful eye of camp doctors who sent the weak and injured to Auschwitz II for extermination.
Most of the Jews, Poles and Roma who were sent to the camps arrived by train. For the first couple years of operation, the trains were emptied out at a nearby rail terminal and the prisoners were marched to the compound. In 1944, because of the high volume of people being sent there, the tracks were extended into the camps themselves.
Once at the camps, the prisoners were immediately divided into groups: those who would go to work, those who would be held for medical experimentation and those who would go straight to the gas chambers. Jews from all over Europe were victims of this horrible sorting: Hungary, Poland, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Monrovia, Belgium and other nations all saw people ripped from their homes and taken away, never to be seen again.
The liberation of the complex by the Red Army did not spell freedom for all the enslaved. The Soviet POWs held in Auschwitz I were either executed or sent to gulags in the Soviet Union with the accusation that they had conspired with the Nazis. The NKVD, or Soviet secret police, used the complex as a prison before turning it over to the Polish government, which eventually restored parts of the area.
There has been a great controversy over how much the Allies knew about the concentration camps. Photographs were taken of some of the camps by reconnaissance flights, but this was because most of them were near potential industrial targets. It is safe to say that, by 1944 at the latest, the Allies were well aware of Nazi Germany's intention to rid Europe of Jews and other grou considered undesirable. It has been argued that bombing the camps themselves would have killed many innocent people and done little to slow the genocide, but we will never know. What is certain is that we must never forget what happened.
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Prohibition Wins the Day, January 16, 1919
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Today in 1919, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was certified when Wyoming became the 36th state in the Union to ratify it. When the amendment went into effect, exactly one year later, it ensured that alcohol (or “intoxicating liquors”, the term used in the amendment) would become all but impossible to obtain by legal means. Thus, the United States entered the era of Prohibition, the unintended consequences of which would have a far-reaching impact on American society.
The temperance movement in the United States dates back to the time of the War for Independence. By the beginning of the Civil War some 80 years later, more than 3 million Americans out of a population of 31 million belonged to an organized temperance group. These groups had a tremendous effect on society and were able to influence various state legislatures to pass laws enacting strict limitations on how, where and to whom alcohol could be sold. Many states endorsed an anti-alcohol curriculum under pressure from temperance groups, the aim being to inform young people of the purported evils of liquor long before they took that first drink.
Out of the temperance movement grew the political prohibition movement. A national move towards a prohibition on alcohol sales first gained strength in the 1840’s, but the Civil War caused the movement to fade during the 1860’s. The last quarter of the 19th century, however, witnessed a resurgence with the establishment of such groups as the Prohibition Party and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. In 1881, Kansas became the first state to outlaw alcoholic beverages by constitutional amendment. By the turn of the century, most states contained at least a few dry towns or counties; a large number of those still exist today.
Many Prohibition groups, called “dries”, were church-based, mainly Protestant denominations. The anti-Prohibition groups, or “wets”, tended to be mostly Roman Catholic, Episcopalian and Lutherans from Germany. Both major political parties had wet and dry factions. The issue was so contentious that during the 1916 Presidential election, both Democrat Woodrow Wilson and his challenger, Republican Charles Evans Hughes, ignored the issue. Wilson won the election and when Congress convened in January, 1917, the mandate was clear: regardless of party, dries outnumbered wets in Congress by 2-to-1.
Both the US House of Representatives and the Senate passed the resolution calling for the Eighteenth Amendment in December, 1917. There were forty-eight states in the Union at that time, so thirty-six state legislatures would have to ratify the amendment in order for it to be certified as part of the Constitution. This amendment was unique up to that point in American constitutional history in that it contained a codicil requiring it to be certified within seven years. The states needed barely one. Starting in January, 1918, one state after another voted in favor of the document. On January 16th, 1919, Wyoming became the 36th state to ratify the amendment. On January 29th, Secretary of State Frank Polk certified the ratification process. The amendment went into effect one year later. The Noble Experiment, as Prohibition came to be called in the United States by its proponents, was underway.
It is a peculiarity of the American legal system that Congress had to take one more action in order to give the Eighteenth Amendment teeth: it had to pass a bill which defined the term “intoxicating liquors” and implemented the amendment. This was accomplished with the National Prohibition Act, more popularly know as the Volstead Act. The law did not specifically outlaw the use of intoxicating liquors, but it superseded all state laws regarding the manufacture and sale of liquor, essentially forbidding any drink containing more than 0.5% alcohol.
Since distilleries, breweries and alcohol importation companies suddenly became illegal enterprises, those who made their livelihoods outside the law soon took over these businesses. All of the gangsters who would become household names during the 1920's owed their wealth and fame to the fact that they manufactured or imported beer and liquor for use in illegal bars, or speakeasies as they came to be known. The Mafia and other organized crime groups began to wield tremendous power in larger cities, especially those that served as distribution points for liquor importation. Southern moonshiners suddenly found their product in hot demand, resulting in a career boost for bootleggers and their fast cars. Modern stock car racing in the United States can trace its roots directly back to the young men who delivered moonshine all over the South at night in souped-up cars capable of outrunning all but the most aggressive police officers.
The surge in organized crime during the 1920's caused some who once supported Prohibition to re-think their position. The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression also helped to change the nation's attitude towards an industry that, if once again legitimized, would provide tens of thousands of jobs for the nation's unemployed. By 1933, public opinion had turned hard against Prohibition. In February of that year, the Blaine Act proposed another amendment to the Constitution, this one intended to end Prohibition and return control of alcohol manufacture and sales to the states. On December 5th, 1933, Utah ratified the Twenty-First Amendment and national Prohibition became another chapter in the history of the United States.
Today in 1919, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was certified when Wyoming became the 36th state in the Union to ratify it. When the amendment went into effect, exactly one year later, it ensured that alcohol (or “intoxicating liquors”, the term used in the amendment) would become all but impossible to obtain by legal means. Thus, the United States entered the era of Prohibition, the unintended consequences of which would have a far-reaching impact on American society.
The temperance movement in the United States dates back to the time of the War for Independence. By the beginning of the Civil War some 80 years later, more than 3 million Americans out of a population of 31 million belonged to an organized temperance group. These groups had a tremendous effect on society and were able to influence various state legislatures to pass laws enacting strict limitations on how, where and to whom alcohol could be sold. Many states endorsed an anti-alcohol curriculum under pressure from temperance groups, the aim being to inform young people of the purported evils of liquor long before they took that first drink.
Out of the temperance movement grew the political prohibition movement. A national move towards a prohibition on alcohol sales first gained strength in the 1840’s, but the Civil War caused the movement to fade during the 1860’s. The last quarter of the 19th century, however, witnessed a resurgence with the establishment of such groups as the Prohibition Party and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. In 1881, Kansas became the first state to outlaw alcoholic beverages by constitutional amendment. By the turn of the century, most states contained at least a few dry towns or counties; a large number of those still exist today.
Many Prohibition groups, called “dries”, were church-based, mainly Protestant denominations. The anti-Prohibition groups, or “wets”, tended to be mostly Roman Catholic, Episcopalian and Lutherans from Germany. Both major political parties had wet and dry factions. The issue was so contentious that during the 1916 Presidential election, both Democrat Woodrow Wilson and his challenger, Republican Charles Evans Hughes, ignored the issue. Wilson won the election and when Congress convened in January, 1917, the mandate was clear: regardless of party, dries outnumbered wets in Congress by 2-to-1.
Both the US House of Representatives and the Senate passed the resolution calling for the Eighteenth Amendment in December, 1917. There were forty-eight states in the Union at that time, so thirty-six state legislatures would have to ratify the amendment in order for it to be certified as part of the Constitution. This amendment was unique up to that point in American constitutional history in that it contained a codicil requiring it to be certified within seven years. The states needed barely one. Starting in January, 1918, one state after another voted in favor of the document. On January 16th, 1919, Wyoming became the 36th state to ratify the amendment. On January 29th, Secretary of State Frank Polk certified the ratification process. The amendment went into effect one year later. The Noble Experiment, as Prohibition came to be called in the United States by its proponents, was underway.
It is a peculiarity of the American legal system that Congress had to take one more action in order to give the Eighteenth Amendment teeth: it had to pass a bill which defined the term “intoxicating liquors” and implemented the amendment. This was accomplished with the National Prohibition Act, more popularly know as the Volstead Act. The law did not specifically outlaw the use of intoxicating liquors, but it superseded all state laws regarding the manufacture and sale of liquor, essentially forbidding any drink containing more than 0.5% alcohol.
Since distilleries, breweries and alcohol importation companies suddenly became illegal enterprises, those who made their livelihoods outside the law soon took over these businesses. All of the gangsters who would become household names during the 1920's owed their wealth and fame to the fact that they manufactured or imported beer and liquor for use in illegal bars, or speakeasies as they came to be known. The Mafia and other organized crime groups began to wield tremendous power in larger cities, especially those that served as distribution points for liquor importation. Southern moonshiners suddenly found their product in hot demand, resulting in a career boost for bootleggers and their fast cars. Modern stock car racing in the United States can trace its roots directly back to the young men who delivered moonshine all over the South at night in souped-up cars capable of outrunning all but the most aggressive police officers.
The surge in organized crime during the 1920's caused some who once supported Prohibition to re-think their position. The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression also helped to change the nation's attitude towards an industry that, if once again legitimized, would provide tens of thousands of jobs for the nation's unemployed. By 1933, public opinion had turned hard against Prohibition. In February of that year, the Blaine Act proposed another amendment to the Constitution, this one intended to end Prohibition and return control of alcohol manufacture and sales to the states. On December 5th, 1933, Utah ratified the Twenty-First Amendment and national Prohibition became another chapter in the history of the United States.
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