david,
difference between camps in poland and those in germany which US has liberated, was the fact that from those there wasn't really anywhere to withdraw to. From poland you can take slave workers to Germany and work them to death there. From germany where are you going to take them ? Poland ? Russians already there
My grandparents were slave laborers in Wolfsburg, VW factory

They met there and my father was born there after the war. They didn't repatriate till 1946. Things weren't quite very fast then
For some darn reason, they won't give me a discount on VWs now
But back to your original point: yes, some germans were quite evil, not all of them, some. They managed to industralize what other nations done quietly and inefficiently - killing off innocents. German efficiency i guess. Every nation has a scelleton in its closet. After the war there were quite many murderes of germans in poland in reprizals. Supposidly some of the concentration camps were "reopened" with germans as "guests". Then there are issues of anti-semitism, poland, russia, germany, whole europe. Yes, it existed, and to some extend, still exists. However, your teacher's premise that Russians' were as anti-semitic as germans is incorrect. Purges of jews didn't start till much later after the war, and lots of them were allowed to emigrate to Israel and US, something that average Russian would give a left nut for

Gulags were for dissidents of all sorts. Anti-communists, intelectuals, anyone who needed to be "put away"