Battle-hardened Russian soldiers who were used to seeing death in battle were shocked by the Nazis' treatment of prisoners at Auschwitz. Red Army general Vasily Petrenko, commander of the 107th Infantry Division, remarked, "I who saw people dying every day was shocked by the Nazis' indescribable hatred toward the inmates who had turned into living skeletons. I read about the Nazis' treatment of Jews in various leaflets, but there was nothing about the Nazis' treatment of women, children, and old men. It was in Auschwitz that I found out about the fate of the Jews." In a few articles in Soviet newspapers, such as Pravda, following Soviet propaganda, the writers failed to mention Jews in their articles on the liberation.
