Today, on April 11, the whole world honors the courage and willpower of people who managed to survive in Nazi concentration camps, organized uprisings and daring escapes, as well as the memory of people who died in these concentration camps, UNN writes.
The International Day of the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps was established in honor of the uprising in one of the worst German concentration camps, Buchenwald, which took place on April 11, 1945.
At that time, part of the leadership and guards fled the concentration camp, fearing its capture by American troops.
The uprising began with the storming of the watchtowers. The rebels acted in an organized manner, as part of pre-determined units, attacking the guards simultaneously in several directions Then the commandant's office was seized, and the former prisoners took up a circular defense. On the same day, units of the US Third Army entered the liberated camp.
Of the 250,000 or so prisoners who have passed through Buchenwald since its founding in the summer of 1937, about 56,000 have died or been killed.
On the day of liberation, there were about 20 thousand prisoners in Buchenwald.
The largest escape from a German concentration camp is considered to be the escape from Mauthausen on the night of February 3, 1945. More than 500 people threw stones, logs, fire extinguishers, and wet blankets at the guard towers, short-circuited the live barbed wire, and escaped from the camp.
The search for fugitives was mockingly called the "Mulfirtel Hare Hunt" by the SS. Units of the SS, Wehrmacht, and Hitler Youth, with the help of the local population, pursued and brutally murdered 410 Soviet prisoners of war, including Ukrainians.
In total, the Nazis built 14033 concentration camps in Germany and the occupied territories. During the Second World War, more than 20 million people from 30 countries passed through the death camps. Approximately 12 million people never lived to see liberation, including about 2 million children.
On the territory of Ukraine, the Nazis organized 2 classical concentration camps (in Kyiv and Lviv), 78 labor and forced labor camps for Jews, 7 labor camps, 15 forced labor camps, 304 ghettos, 23 transit camps, 66 Gestapo prisons, and 242 prisoner-of-war camps.
At present, historians are unable to name even an approximate number of Ukrainians who died in German concentration camps. According to various estimates, between eight and ten million Ukrainians died in World War II. It is believed that about five million citizens of the former soviet union died in Nazi concentration camps. The number of Ukrainians tortured in Nazi concentration camps may be at least 500,000.