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Lessons we should have learned from the liberation of Auschwitz and other Nazi camps

It's been more than 75 years since the last prisoners were freed from Auschwitz. The farther we get from that chapter, the more important it is to focus on the lessons it taught us, lest we ignore the signs of history repeating itself.

From 1940 to 1945, an estimated 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz, the largest complex of Nazi concentration camps. More than four out of five of those people—at least 1.1 million people—were murdered there.

On January 27, 1945, Soviet forces liberated the final prisoners from these camps—7,000 people, most of whom were sick or dying. Those of us with a decent public education are familiar with at least a few names of Nazi extermination facilities—Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen—but these are merely a few of the thousands (yes, thousands) of concentration camps, sub camps, and ghettos spread across Europe where Jews and other targets of Hitler's regime were persecuted, tortured, and killed by the millions.

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When I interviewed 91-year-old Holocaust survivor Ben Lesser a few months ago, I was blown away by his story. I also felt dismayed hearing him explain how Holocaust education is sorely lacking in so many places. Right around the time of our interview, a report came out that our younger generations have a shockingly woeful understanding of the Holocaust. Nearly two-thirds of Millennials and Gen Z participants in a 50-state survey didn't know that 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis. Nearly half couldn't name a single concentration camp.

If we lose that history, we are less likely to recognize when the precursors to such atrocities repeat themselves. Additionally, the victims and families of victims of the millions of men, women, and children who were systematically tortured and killed in the 40,000 concentration camps and ghettos established during WWII deserve to have their experiences remembered and acknowledged.

The largest Nazi camp complex was Auschwitz, which included concentration, extermination, and forced-labor camps. Of the estimated 1.3 million people who were sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million died there between 1940 and 1945. Nearly five years, and more than a million people murdered in just one camp complex. The statistics alone are mind-blowing.

Such large numbers are hard to wrap our minds around. That's why individual stories like Ben Lesser's matter so much. He himself is an Auschwitz survivor, and his descriptions of what he experienced there are difficult but important to hear.

But what makes the Holocaust especially chilling is the premeditated, factory-like automation of the killing. Camps like Auschwitz were built for the purpose of exterminating as many human beings as possible as efficiently as possible. Men, women, and children crammed into cattle cars like sardines. Men, women, and children stripped and shaven. Nazi soldiers making split second decisions of who was strong and healthy enough to be worked to death and who would be marched straight to the gas chambers.

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In 1945, Lily Ebert, now 90, was liberated from a German munitions factory where she worked as slave labor after being transferred from the Auschwitz death camp.

A few weeks after being liberated, an American soldier shared some words of positivity with her, "The start to a new life. Good luck and happiness," he wrote on a German banknote.

The simple gesture was life-changing for Ebert and the banknote became one of her most treasured keepsakes.

"This soldier was the first human being who was kind to us," she told NBC News. "It was the first time after this terrible life that somebody was kind and I knew that somebody wants to help."

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This Nazi was lying about his role at Auschwitz. Here's the technology that caught him.

Virtual reality can be super cool — and it's bringing bad guys to justice.

About 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.

In what is one of the largest genocides in history, millions of people perished, went through extreme trauma, and lost entire families at the hands of Nazi soldiers.

Photo by Jerry Lampen/AFP/Getty Images.

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