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Never again: reflections on the Holocaust
JOHN WIGHT says remembering the victims of the horrific Nazi extermination project is a vital defence of civilisation
A view inside the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, Poland [Karsten Winegeart / Creative Commons]

In his epic and comprehensive work, The Second World War, Anthony Beevor writes with customary economy:

“On January 27 in the middle of the afternoon, a reconnaissance patrol from the 107th Rifle Division (attached to the Red Army’s 60th Army of the 1st Belorussian Front) emerged from a snowbound forest to discover the most terrible symbol in modern history.”

This was the moment when Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the extensive network of Nazi extermination camps across Europe, was discovered and the full horror of the Holocaust revealed.

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