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This Happened

This Happened—January 27: Liberation Of Auschwitz

On this day in 1945, prisoners of Poland’s concentration camp, Auschwitz, where Nazis had exterminated more than one million people were finally free.

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How was Auschwitz liberated?

Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Red Army during the Vistula–Oder Offensive of World War II. Although most of the prisoners had died by the time the camp was liberated, about 7,000 remained. The liberation of the camp was not a previous goal of the Red Army, but happened as a consequence of their advance westward across Poland. On site of the camp and the state of the prisoners, members of the Soviet army were shocked.

When were other concentration camps liberated?

By August 1944, there were more than 135,000 prisoners across the complex. The Red Army helped to liberate concentration camps in the Baltic area through mid-1944, and other concentration camps were liberated until the German surrender at the end of World War II in Europe in 1945.

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Society

A Refuge From China's Rat Race: The Young People Flocking To Buddhist Monasteries

Unemployment, stress in the workplace, economic difficulties: more and more young Chinese graduates are flocking to monasteries to find "another school of life."

Photograph of a girl praying at a temple during Chinese Lunar New Year. She is burning incense.

Feb 20, 2015 - Huaibei, China - Chinese worshippers pray at a temple during the Lunar New Yeat

CPRESSPHOTO/ZUMA
Frédéric Schaeffer

JIAXING — It's already dawn at Xianghai Temple when Lin, 26, goes to the Hall of 10,000 Buddhas for the 5:30 a.m. prayer.

Still half-asleep, the young woman joins the monks in chanting mantras and reciting sacred texts for an hour. Kneeling, she bows three times to Vairocana, also known as the Great Sun Buddha, who dominates the 42-meter-high hall representing the cosmos.

Before grabbing a vegetarian breakfast in the adjacent refectory, monks and devotees chant around the hall to the sound of drums and gongs.

"I resigned last October from the e-commerce company where I had been working for the past two years in Nanjing, and joined the temple in January, where I am now a volunteer in residence," explains the young woman, soberly dressed in black pants and a cream linen jacket.

Located in the city of Jiaxing, over a hundred kilometers from Shanghai, in eastern China, the Xianghai temple is home to some 20 permanent volunteers.

Unlike Lin, most of them only stay for a couple days or a few weeks. But for Lin, who spends most of her free time studying Buddhist texts in the temple library, the change in her life has been radical. "I used to do the same job every day, sometimes until very late at night, writing all kinds of reports for my boss. I was exhausted physically and mentally. I felt my life had no meaning," she says.

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