On January 27, 1945, the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp

On January 27, 1945, the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp, about 60 kilometers southwest of Krakow, where the Nazis perfected their mass murder techniques.

 A first prison camp was set up here in 1940, but in just one year, in 1941, the Nazis built a huge extermination camp complex where more than 1.6 million people ended up. 

This camp was also served by a major railway junction with 44 parallel lines, which were used to transport and kill millions of detainees across Europe.

 The prisoners who were brought to the extermination camp were assigned by a simple selection process from the train station, so that the young and the healthy were sent to work, and the children, women, the elderly and the disabled were sent directly to the gas chambers. 

Tens of thousands of prisoners were also selected by Dr. Josef Mengele, also known as the "angel of death at Auschwitz," for medical experiments. 

His most egregious experiments involved injecting chemicals directly into children's eyes in an attempt to change their color, using massive doses of radiation on detainees, injecting bacilli with various diseases, or exposing detainees' bodies to fire or explosive or chemical substances.

 Other monstrous experiments included putting detainees in hot water boilers to see how long the temperature lasted before they died, amputations, live dissections and many other abominable acts. 

Prisoners who were not sent directly to the gas chambers or were not selected for experiments had to go to work where they worked in unimaginable conditions, without sufficient food and without medical care. 

After a few months, the vast majority of these detainees died of cold, malnutrition or accidents at work, and those who still managed to survive were sent to the gas chambers. In January 1945, with the approach of the Soviet armies and to erase the traces of these massacres, the Nazis decided to destroy any trace of their crimes by razing the Auschwitz camp to the ground. 

Thus, many of the detainee barracks fell prey to arson, while others were destroyed by the explosion. with detainees inside them, and many were simply bombed by the Nazis. However, due to the fact that the Soviet army was advancing faster than expected by the Nazis, part of the Auschwitz camp remained undamaged, and detainees had to be moved quickly to other camps.

 Thus, almost 60,000 detainees who had escaped from the gas chambers at the time were lined up and forced to walk in the so-called "death march" to the Wodzislaw camp, which is more than 70 kilometers away and where about 15,000 people died on the road due to disease, malnutrition or simply killed by the Nazis.

 As I said before, the Auschwitz camp was liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945, and although many detainees had been evacuated by the Nazis to other camps, several thousand people were found abandoned but still alive. of this death camp.

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