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 di