On 27 January 1945, soldiers of the Soviet Red Army entered Auschwitz-Birkenau in occupied Poland, revealing the largest and deadliest extermination camp created by Nazi Germany. By the time it was liberated, more than one million people had been murdered there—primarily Jews, along with Roma, Polish prisoners, and others—through gas chambers, starvation, forced labor, medical experimentation, and mass executions. As Soviet forces advanced, SS officials forced roughly 60,000 prisoners onto brutal death marches toward camps inside Germany. Those who remained were the sick, the weak, and children—anyone unable to walk. When the Red Army arrived, they found around 7,000 survivors in catastrophic condition. Many were emaciated, suffering from disease, frostbite, and severe malnutrition. Some were too frail to stand or even understand that they had been freed. The liberators encountered clear evidence of systematic mass murder. Gas chambers and crematoria were partially destroyed, an attemp...