When the Soviet army entered Auschwitz exactly 70 years ago, finding piles of corpses and prisoners close to death, a Russian soldier took a small and hungry 11-year-old girl into his arms and rocked her tenderly, tears coming to his eyes.
That girl, today 81-year-old Paula Lebovics, doesn’t know who that soldier was, but she still feels enormous gratitude to him and the other Soviet soldiers who liberated the camp on Jan. 27, 1945.
To her, it is a shame that Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t be among other European leaders Tuesday on the anniversary of the death camp’s liberation, his absence coming amid a deep chill between Russia and the West over the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine.
“He should be there,” said Lebovics, who traveled from her home in Encino, California, back to the land of her birth for the ceremonies. “They were our liberators.”
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Associated Press writer David Rising in Berlin, Nicole Winfield in Rome and Edith Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
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Follow Vanessa Gera on Twitter at twitter.com/VanessaGera
