Auschwitz

The camp opened June 14, 1940, when the first transport of Polish political prisoners arrived. Soviet prisoners of war, Gypsies, and prisoners of other nationalities were also incarcerated there. The overall number of victims of Auschwitz in the years 1940-1945 is estimated at between 1,100,000 and 1,500,000 people. The majority of them, and above all the mass transports of Jews who arrived beginning in 1942, died in the gas chambers.

At the end of 1944, in the face of the approaching Red Army offensive, the Auschwitz administration set about removing the traces of the crimes that they had committed. They destroyed documents, dismantled some buildings, and burned others down or demolished them with explosives.

Prisoners capable of marching were evacuated into the depths of the Third Reich in late January 1945, at the moment when Soviet soldiers were liberating Krakow, some 60 kilometers from the camp. Approximately 56,000 men and women prisoners were led out of Auschwitz from January 17-21 in marching columns escorted by heavily armed SS guards. Many prisoners lost their lives during this tragic evacuation, known as the "Death March." On January 27, 1945, Red Army soldiers liberated the few thousand prisoners whom the Germans had left behind in the camp.

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