MILITARY HERITAGE MUSEUM HOSTS INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY
PUNTA GORDA, FL – The Military Heritage Museum in Punta Gorda will host International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, 2020. January 2020 marks 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, the largest camp established by the Germans. A complex of camps, Auschwitz included a concentration camp, killing center, and forced-labor camps. It was located 37 miles west of Krakow (Cracow), near the prewar German-Polish border.
In mid-January 1945, as Soviet forces approached the Auschwitz camp complex, the SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its satellite camps. Nearly 60,000 prisoners were forced to march west from the Auschwitz camp system. Thousands had been killed in the camps in the days before these death marches began. Tens of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, were forced to march to the city of Wodzislaw in the western part of Upper Silesia. SS guards shot anyone who fell behind or could not continue. Prisoners also suffered from the cold weather, starvation, and exposure on these marches. More than 15,000 died during the death marches from Auschwitz. On January 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz and liberated more than 7,000 remaining prisoners, who were mostly ill and dying. It is estimated that at minimum 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945; of these, at least 1.1 million were murdered.
Public Programs (free/donation):
WWII Gallery Exhibits
Timeline touch screen of WWII events
All Access Pass activities*: Requires All Access Pass - $10 p/p; $8 for veterans, active duty, and youth ages 5-13. No fee for children under 5. Annual Members - $5*
Featured Lecture*: Holocaust survivor Max Weisglass born in the Polish city of Borszczów (current-day Borshchiv, Ukraine), on September 28, 1936. By the time he was eight, Borszczów would pass from Polish to Russian to Hungarian to German control, while Max and his parents would manage to survive the liquidation of the Borszczów ghetto only by hiding in a series of windowless bunkers, once for a full ten months. Gulf Theater showtime 1 p.m.
Featured PBS Documentary: Fifty years ago, film crews for the Allied Expeditionary Force entered Nazi concentration camps to find atrocities beyond their imagination. Kept in a vault at London's Imperial War Museum since 1945, the film shows tragic images of the genocide including scenes of gas chambers, experimentation labs and the haunted, starving survivors. Some footage was filmed moments before the camps where liberated, as Nazi soldiers hurried to cover evidence. Gulf Theater showtime: 2 p.m. & 3:30 p.m.
Academy Library: Rare WWII periodicals, Fold 3 Ancestory
Google Expedition: The Holocaust: History & Memory (11 a.m. to 3 p.m.)
Flight Simulators: Iconic WWII planes that helped win the war
The Military Heritage Museum is located at 900 West Marion Avenue in Punta Gorda. For more information or reservations, please go to the website and sign up at www.militaryheritagemuseum.org or call 941-575-9002.