‘For Filipinos in particular, this International Holocaust Remembrance Day resonates if paired with the wartime battle-cry: Remember Erlinda!’
ALL hail the Soviet Red Army!
Troopers of the 322nd Rifle Division, 60th Army, 1st Ukrainian Front commanded by Marshal Ivan Konev “liberated the Auschwitz Main Camp and Birkenau at about 3 p.m., meeting some resistance from withdrawing German units at the Main Camp. The prisoners welcomed the Soviet soldiers as true liberators; the soldiers, for their part, passed through the camp gates in full awareness of the historical significance of their mission… Over 230 Soviet soldiers, including the commander of the 472nd Infantry Regiment, Semen Lvovich Bezprozvanny, died fighting to liberate Monowitz, the Main Camp, Birkenau, and the city of OÅ›wiÄ™cim; 66 of them fell during fighting in the camp buffer zone. About 7 thousand prisoners awaited liberation in the Main Camp, Birkenau, and Monowitz. Soviet soldiers also liberated approximately 500 prisoners before or shortly after January 27 at sub-camps in Stara Kuźnia, Blachownia ÅšlÄ…ska, ÅšwiÄ™tochÅ‚owice, WesoÅ‚a, Libiąż, Jawiszowice, and Jaworzno. Soviet soldiers discovered the corpses of about 600 prisoners in the Main Camp and Birkenau.” [http://www.auschwitz.org/en/liberation-of-kl-auschwitz-77/]
The Soviet Red Army’s liberation of KL Auschwitz has been memorialized: “Every 27 January, UNESCO pays tribute to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and reaffirms its unwavering commitment to counter antisemitism, racism, and other forms of intolerance that may lead to group-targeted violence…It was officially proclaimed, in November 2005, International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust by the United Nations General Assembly.” [https://en.unesco.org/commemorations/holocaustremembranceday]
The Soviet Red Army’s victory over the SS-Totenkopfverbände laid bare the NSDAP program of exterminating not only Jews but also Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other categories of people whose origins and ethnicity as well as sexual orientation or political persuasions were deemed “sub-human” and infectious.
[https://www.europarl.europa.eu/at-your-service/files/be-heard/religious-and-non-confessional-dialogue/events/en-20190130-eprs-briefing-memoire-holocauste.pdf]
This International Holocaust Remembrance Day is expansive enough to cover Fascism’s non-Jewish victims like the Voćin massacre of 14 January 1942 when the Croatian UstaÅ¡e killed 350 Serb civilians in the villages of Jorgići, Zubovići, Dobrići, Kometnik and Sekulinci.
Outside of Europe, the commemorations must consider the Rape of Nanjing, Lipa Massacre, Rape of Manila, and the Bataan Death March, among others.
The United Nations’ designation of 27 January cannot ignore the victims of the Nipponese wartime military sexual slavery system. For Filipinos in particular, this International Holocaust Remembrance Day resonates if paired with the wartime battle-cry: Remember Erlinda!
“Boys in 41st division are raring to attack Japs. Some of their patrols found the dead body of a young girl. She was evidently abused. Her hair was recently curled. Her dress was smeared with blood. Her fingernails still had manicure. She was a pretty Filipina. Her handkerchief was partly torn. On one side of the handkerchief was the name Erlinda. Troops under Lim have adopted as fighting motto: ‘Remember Erlinda!’ Leonie is now writing a radio script for Voice of Freedom on Erlinda.” [Diary of Felipe Buencamino III, January 25, 1942, HQ, Intelligence Service, Bataan]
This International Holocaust Remembrance Day further reminds Filipinos of the Japanese version of the death camps: “Dreaded internment had come! With an allowance of one small bag each and without any bedding or other conveniences we were hustled into waiting trucks driven by Japanese civilians and taken to Brent School. Upon arrival our meagre luggage was inspected for guns, kodaks, flashlights and such things as knives, scissors and razors. Many were relieved of their safety razors and spare blades! This done, we were led through the school office, along a hallway and up some stairs to rooms already partly filled with internees who had arrived earlier. On the way we saw, through an open door, a half dozen Jap soldiers stretched out on the floor, fast asleep, and near them little mounds of rice – the soldiers’ rations. The place was guarded by civilians drawn from Baguio’s Japanese population, and all inspections were made by them. The office was littered with a host of seized articles, and most of us saw for the first time one Nakamura, a civilian, who, with Mukaibo, was to regulate our daily lives for several months. It was galling enough to be ordered about by Japanese soldiers but to be told what to do by Japanese civilians with whom we had been dealing as artisans or shop keepers was extremely humiliating.” [Diary of Robert Renton Hind. December 28, 1941 to January 31, 1942 – 1st to 33rd Day. Interned in Baguio by the Japanese]
“A Filipino ice-cream vendor was permitted to enter the camp with his push cart, and we flocked to him like eager kids. On the third day, when he disposed of his wares, the Japanese guards took him to the Commandant’s office. After beating him up, they took away his earnings. When he left the camp, one side of his face was a bloody mess. I glanced back at the notes I had made a month ago. At that time I had been in a state of mind bordering on fearful anxiety, panic, and resignation. The US Army had left the city, and we were expecting the enemy. Kind and thoughtful Major Greene had given me a vial of luminal. Yes, I had been fortunate. I had had no need of it. But there were other women.
Had they known the shame, degradation, mutilation and madness that awaited them, they would have sought blessed oblivion in some fashion on the day the enemy reached the Philippines.” [Diary of Tressa Cates. January 29, 1942. Nurse at Sternberg General Military Hospital. Interned with her future husband in Manila’s University of Santo Tomas, 1942-45]
This International Holocaust Remembrance Day can be more relevant when all war criminals are brought to justice. As the hunter of Nazis Simon Wiesenthal explained: “The more trials, the weaker the Nazi revival. The trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961 was the greatest setback to the growth of the neo-Nazi movement in Germany and Austria.
Millions of people who didn’t know, or didn’t want to know, the truth, for the first time had to listen to the facts.” [The Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal memoirs. Edited and with an introductory profile by Joseph Wechsberg. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967]
The United Nations must finish the job and hunt them all down, especially the Nipponese ones. Of the Big Three, it is the United States of America that had an Office of Special Investigations (under the Justice Department) whose baton was passed to the Human
Rights and Special Prosecutions Section. The struggle is undiminished: https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/pr/leader-neo-nazi-group-sentenced-plot-targeting-journalists-and-advocates.
