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Recent photographs The Nazi death camp of Auschwitz The death camp of Auschwitz was organized in April 1940 in Poland under a Reichfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler’s directive. The camp was built 55 kilometers to the west of Krakow, at the junction of the rivers Sola and Vistula. At first this was a minor camp, with around 10,000 inmates, but later, due to its proximity to a major railway junction, the camp enlarged considerably and in the end of the day included about 40 sites, the most notorious of which were Auschwitz I (Stammlager), Auschwitz II (Birkenau), and Auschwitz III (Monowitz), all encircled by kilometers of electrical barbed wire and water trenches. The death capacity of four gas-chambered crematoria with was up to 12,000 per five hours’ shift. Auschwitz, where at least 1.1 million Jews from 27 states, about 75,000 Poles, 21,000 Gypsies, 15,000 Soviet POWs, and 15,000 others met their death, was liberated on January 27, 1945 by the Soviet First Ukrainian Front; 2,819 survivors were saved. The Navy Active endeavors of our Navy and its ever-high combat readiness continually bound enemy naval forces, preventing them from bombing Soviet troops engaged in shore operations. During the war, the Soviet Navy sank about 1,300 enemy cargo ships and 1,200 warships. The Naval Aviation made 384,000 sorties to down up to 5,000 enemy aircraft. The Navy also supported over a hundred landing operations involving around 330,000 men. On the Frontline Things were still sour for the Soviet Union by the end of summer. The Soviet forces were able to hinder the German advance, for which there was a great and painful price to pay. The Germans suffered increasing casualties – not yet as heavy as the Red Army, but nonetheless considerable and going up each and every day: by August the Nazis had lost more manpower in Russia than in any other preceding WWII campaign. Dust Just Settled In the spring campaign of 1942 the Soviet forces failed to meet all the targets of strategic defense and, for all people’s massive heroism and courage, had to retreat from some important areas and bridgeheads that could have been useful in a major offensive planned for the summer. The enemy grabbed the initiative on all main directions, and the Soviet Supreme Command faced a challenge of working out new solutions for addressing the imminent Wehrmacht threat in the south. Paths of War In all towns and cities facing a possibility of occupation, volunteers joined the militia; “special volunteer battalions” were set up to counter German agents airlifted to and infiltrating into the Soviet rear; people also came together into air defense firefighting units preventing fires from incendiary aerial bombs.

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