27 January 1945: Liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau
On 27 January 1945, Soviet soldiers liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration and death camp.
When Soviet soldiers arrived, they found several thousand emaciated survivors and the smouldering remains of the gas chambers and crematoria after the Nazis had attempted to destroy evidence of their crimes. Approximately 1.1 million men, women and children were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and over 90% of them were Jewish.
At the last moment our death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in Auschwitz and we were delivered to the gates of hell. There we were still to be interrogated. On arrival we were stripped, whipped, shaved and tattooed. From then on, we had no names. I was now number 39934 and my mother was number 39933.
– Kitty Hart-Moxon OBE
Auschwitz-Birkenau was built in the suburbs of Oświęcim, a city in the south of Nazi-occupied Poland. It was a network of several camps, combining forced labour and death camps.
Auschwitz-Birkenau © Bill Hunt
As Soviet forces approached the camp, the Nazis killed several thousand prisoners, and began evacuating others from the camps, forcing them to go on gruelling death marches.
Auschwitz-Birkenau has become a symbol of the horror of industrialised murder, and what can happen when hatred is left unchecked.
Today, we commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) on the anniversary of the liberation of this camp. We remember the 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of people murdered under Nazi persecution of other groups and during more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
HMD is for everyone. Together we bear witness for those who endured genocide, and honour the survivors and all those whose lives were changed beyond recognition.
