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Fury Online as US Embassy in Denmark Claims American Soldiers Freed Auschwitz During WWII

© Sputnik / B. Fishman / Go to the mediabankPrisoners of Auschwitz are meeting their liberators from the Soviet Red Army.
Prisoners of Auschwitz are meeting their liberators from the Soviet Red Army. - Sputnik International
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Earlier, German news magazine Der Spiegel apologised for making the “extremely embarrassing mistake” of claiming that US troops liberated the notorious death camp in Poland from the Nazis in 1945.

The US Embassy in Denmark sparked a furor online after “inadvertently” stating that US troops freed the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in southern Poland. In a tweet commemorating the anniversary of the camp’s liberation on Monday, the Embassy wrote that “75 years ago, American soldiers liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp,” wrapping up the tweet with the hashtag “#WeRemember.”

Soon, angry social media users took the Embassy to task, with one user writing “No, you don’t remember. Let’s refresh your memory” and posting photos of Soviet troops as they entered the death factory. Others began recalling the events as they took place.

Some users accused the Embassy of engaging in “#FakeNews”, with one angrily writing that “comics and reality are mixed in your head.” “Watch less Hollywood films,” another user suggested.

The Embassy eventually issued a clarification, stating that they had “inadvertently” written that the camp was freed by US troops. “It was of course liberated by Soviet troops. We acknowledge the important contributions of all Allied Forces during WWII and remember the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust,” the Embassy tweeted. It did not take down the original tweet.

The second tweet too was soon flooded with criticism, with users suggesting it was “beyond embarrassing” that there seemed to be “no professionals working in our embassy in Denmark.” One incensed user asked whether “the 26 million Soviets who died fighting Nazism” deserve any ‘recognition, remembrance or respect’ as well.

Earlier this week, German news magazine Der Spiegel issued an apology over a tweet which similarly claimed that US troops had freed Auschwitz during World War II.

Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest of a vast network of death camps established by Nazi Germany during World War II, with up to 1.1 million people killed at the infamous facility, among them Jews, Gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war, Poles, homosexuals, and others whom the Nazis considered ‘undesirable’. Most of these facilities were situated in modern day Poland, whose liberation cost the Red Army an estimated 600,000 lives. More than 200 Soviet troops were killed in the campaign to free Auschwitz.

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