The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 8, Number 3, Spring 2020 | Page 57

he Nazi Holocaust and the
ession of Jewish Suffering
5
The infernal stench [was overwhelming].”
20 The corpses were all labeled as
non-Jews when word began to spread
within the Soviet Union.
Bełżec experienced much the
same fate as the other Reinhard camps:
the Nazis attempted to cover up all traces
of it by destroying its structures and
plowing over the earth to make farmland.
Liberation came in July 1944, and
Red Army soldiers gradually discovered
more about what happened. Survivors—who
could “be counted on one
hand” 21 —that escaped and found refuge
nearby or had come forth after the war
were the only ones who could give an
account of what happened. Their stories
may have found more traction in Western
media, but there were too few that
were too powerless when sharing their
experiences in the Soviet Union.
Lastly, Auschwitz was liberated
by Red Army troops in January 1945,
just months before the war ended in
Europe. Soviet soldier Ivan Martynushkin
commented on his unit’s arrival at
the camp: “Only the highest-ranking
officers of the General Staff had perhaps
heard of the camp .... We knew
nothing.” As they searched the camp,
Martynushkin and his comrades “noticed
people behind barbed wire.” He
continues: “It was hard to watch them.
I remember their faces, especially their
eyes which betrayed their ordeal.” Martynushkin’s
unit found “roughly 7,000
prisoners left behind—those too weak
or sick to walk. They also discovered
about 600 corpses.” 22
Genry Koptev Gomolov was
eighteen when he first saw Auschwitz.