As survivors and dignitaries from around the world returned to Poland, members of Winnipeg's Jewish community marked 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz.
Outside the Asper Jewish Community Campus on Tuesday, both the Canadian and Israeli flags were at half-mast.
Belle Jarniewski's mother Sylvia was just a teenager when she spent two months in Auschwitz.
Her photo is part of an exhibit at Winnipeg’s Holocaust Education Centre.
"She just talked about knowing when she got there that people didn't survive it,” Jarniewski said.
Jarniewski's mother lived to tell the story.
She escaped what seemed like certain death by sneaking onto a train to a different camp.
"And that's how she got to the other camp from Auschwitz,” Jarniewski said.
“That's probably why she survived."
Seventy years ago today, Soviet forces liberated Auschwitz, stirring up a flood of emotions for Jarniewski.
Around 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz, a million of them Jews, killed by starvation, disease and in gas chambers.
"When the Soviet army opened up Auschwitz for the world to see that's kind of where the gravity of the Holocaust started to hit home,” said Jeremy Maron, a Holocaust researcher and curator at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.
He said only a few thousand people remained in the camp when it was liberated.
Maron said the Nazis continued to murder prisoners right up until the camp was invaded.
"When the Soviets would've opened the camp and liberated the remaining prisoners of course there would've been a lot of joy, a lot of relief but it would've been an exhausted joy, an exhausted relief,” Maron said.
Jarniewski's mother left Auschwitz before the liberation but the horrors never went away.
Her mother suffered from depression until she died at age 53.
"She was never able to move beyond, but that's what one would expect,” Jarniewski said.
On the solemn anniversary, Jarniewski remembers not only those who survived Auschwitz but the millions who never left.
