Paris, Jan 27 (AFP/APP): Images of what the Allies found when they liberated the first Nazi death camps towards the end of World War II brought the horror of the Holocaust to global attention. Many of the ghastly pictures were at first held back from the broader public, partly out of concern for those with missing relatives. The concentration and extermination camps were liberated one by one as the Allied armies advanced on Berlin in the final days of the 1939-1945 war. The first was Majdanek in eastern Poland, which was freed on July 24, 1944 by the advancing Soviet Red Army. But in France, it was only the following year that media coverage was encouraged by the provisional government led by General Charles De Gaulle set up after the liberation of France. – ‘Death Marches’ – In June 1944, as it became clear that Germany was losing the war, Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler ordered some camps be evacuated before they were reached by Allied troops, and that their prisoners be transferred to other locations. This mainly concerned camps in the Baltic states most exposed to advancing Soviet troops. Officers of the Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary in charge were ordered to … Continue reading How the world discovered the Nazi death camps