Esther Bejarano, veteran communist and Auschwitz survivor, dies at 96

Veteran German communist and a life-long anti-fascist who survived Auschwitz concentration camp, Esther Bejarano died on Saturday 10 July, aged 96.

Born in 1924 as the daughter of Jewish cantor Rudolf Loewy in French-occupied Saarlouis, the family later moved to Saarbruecken, where Bejarano enjoyed a musical and sheltered upbringing until the Nazis came to power and the city was returned to Germany in 1935.

Last surviving Soviet soldier who participated in Auschwitz liberation dies at 98

David Dushman, the last surviving Soviet soldier involved in the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, has died at the age of 98.

In January 1945, Red Army tank driver David Dushman saw Auschwitz survivors stagger out of the concentration camp, amidst the dead victims of Nazi terror. "They staggered out of the barracks, sat and lay among the dead," Dushman told the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) newspaper six years ago.

KKE in EU Parliament: On the 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army

On the occasion of the event in the European Parliament regarding the Holocaust and the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the Europarliament Group of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) issued a statement that was published on 902 portal. 

The statement reads:

"The memory of the Holocaust, one of the most atrocious crimes of Nazism, is an eternal tribute to its victims, to all those who alongside Jews suffered in Nazi crematoriums: the thousands of communists, anti-fascists who fought nazism in occupied Europe and in Germany herself, such as the murdered by the Nazis heroic Secretary of the German Communist Party, Ernst Thälmann. The Nazi hell of Auschwitz is a reminder of the criminal nature of fascism, of the barbarity of the capitalist system that creates it, just as the german, european and american business groups funded Hitler. 

Party of Labour of Austria (PdA): Statement for the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation

Declaration of the Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Austria (PdA) for the 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp by the Red Army:

On 27 January 1945, Soviet Red Army soldiers from several infantry divisions of the 1st Ukrainian Front reached the concentration camps and the extermination camp of Auschwitz and liberated the remaining inmates. 

The German fascists had left behind only minimal military forces, but in battles in and around Oświęcim at least 230 Red Army soldiers died that day.