Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration camp which remains a global symbol of terror, genocide and the Holocaust, was liberated eighty years ago on January 27, 1945, by the Soviet Red Army.  At its liberation, there were approximately seven thousand prisoners remaining at the camp. 

Auschwitz was established nearly a year after the September 1939 German invasion of Poland.  The camp was initially used to imprison Poles as the occupying army were unable to incarcerate so many people in the existing Polish prisons.  The first transport of Poles reached Auschwitz from Tarnów prison on June 14, 1940.  This date is now the annual official Remembrance Day in Poland for the Holocaust.

After that initial group of 728 Polish political prisoners deported by Germans from Tarnów, more groups of Polish prisoners would be transferred to Auschwitz and until early 1942 Poles were the majority of prisoners incarcerated there.  Up until the Spring of 1942 Jewish prisoners accounted for less than ten percent of the total population imprisoned at Auschwitz.  That would soon change.

Beginning in the spring of 1942, Jews began to be placed in Auschwitz. By the end of 1942 more than half of the 400,000 prisoners at Auschwitz were Jews.  From 1942-1944 Auschwitz served as the largest Nazi center for the destruction of the Jewish population of the European countries occupied by and allied to the Third Reich.  Jews were transported to Auschwitz from Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Belgium, Norway, Germany and Austria.

Historians estimate that around 1.1 million people perished in Auschwitz during the less than 5 years of its existence. The majority, around 1 million people, were Jews. Approximately 70,000 Poles were murdered there.  Many thousands more of Roma, Sinto, Russian prisoners-of-war, Czechs, Slovaks, Belorussians and other Europeans were killed at Auschwitz.

Liberating Auschwitz was not part of the advancing Red Army’s plan as they approached the region.  In fact, they did not know about the camp at all.  Red Army scouts stumbled upon the camp, shocked by the emaciated prisoners who greeted them.  As more Russian troops began arriving at the camp, they set up hospitals to care for the survivors. Polish Red Cross workers would eventually arrive to help care for the remaining Auschwitz victims of the Third Reich.

On June 14, 1947 the memorial and museum at Auschwitz was formerly opened.  The opening was attended by tens of thousands of people, primarily former prisoners and their families.  The memorial and museum nearly eighty years later serve as a reminder to all to never forget.

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Source:Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum https://www.auschwitz.org/en