On Jan. 27, 1945, soldiers of the Soviet army entered the gates of Auschwitz in southern Poland, liberating the largest and most notorious network of Nazi concentration camps.
Just 7,000 prisoners were left in the camp when the Soviets entered in January 1945 and many of them were on the brink of death. In the days before the liberation, members of the SS had killed thousands of prisoners inside the camps and forced 60,000 others on “death marches” west. An estimated 1.1 million of the 1.3 million people deported to Auschwitz lost their lives in the camp.
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