This Day In History

On this day in 1945, the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp begins as Soviet forces close in. The SS sent orders calling for the execution of all remaining prisoners, but due to the chaos of the Nazi retreat, this was never carried out. The Nazi personnel ordered the evacuation of Auschwitz, with 60,000 prisoners being forced on a death march toward Wodzisław Śląski (Loslau) where they would be sent to other camps, with the weak and sick being left behind. Around 15,000 died on the way. 7,500 remained, and they were liberated by the 322nd Rifle Division of the Soviet Red Army on January 27th 1945.

Auschwitz was a network of concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany (the largest of its kind), and was used as the place of the “final solution of the Jewish question in Europe” by Heinrich Himmler. Jews and other groups were sent to the camps from 1942 onwards, where many were sent to their death in the gas chambers. Most of those who escaped the gas chambers died of starvation, disease, and execution by the Nazi guards. It is estimated that around 1.3 million people died there.

As the prospect of German defeat in the war drew near, officials tried to hide the German crimes committed at the camps. Some of the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau had their rooves removed in November 1944 so that the cremation ovens could be removed, and the remainder were blown up in January 1945.

Auschwitz remains a symbol of the horrors committed by the Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler, and the stories of its victims and survivors continue to be told, in the hope that such tragedy shall never befall the world again.