![\"Soviet](\"https:\/\/th-thumbnailer.cdn-si-edu.com\/s_ZU5-88AkqNhDZPZBlisFl1j0M=\/1000x750\/filters:no_upscale():focal(1500x1000:1501x1001)\/https:\/\/tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/filer_public\/95\/1c\/951c979f-df27-429b-99a0-8664f17acd61\/.jpeg\")
Soviet soldiers lead liberated prisoners out of Auschwitz in the winter of 1945. When the Red Army liberated the Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau<\/a> on January 27, 1945, the soldiers encountered unimaginable horrors, including mass graves, the smoldering remains of gas chambers and prisoners starving to death.<\/p>\n Liberating camps wasn\u2019t a specific objective of Allied troops. However, Soviet, American, British and Canadian soldiers found themselves freeing thousands of prisoners as they moved across Europe toward the end of World War II. This included Auschwitz, located in southern Poland. A complex of more than 40 subcamps<\/a>, it was the largest of all the Nazi camps.<\/p>\n Concentration camps and extermination centers were part of the Nazi \u201cFinal Solution<\/a>,\u201d a plan for the genocide of anyone its leaders defined as Jewish. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum<\/a>, the Nazis and their Allies established more than 44,000 camps and other incarceration sites throughout German-occupied Europe between 1933 and 1945.<\/p>\n Approximately 1.3 million people (mostly Jews) were sent to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945. Over those years, 1.1 million of them\u2014men, women and children\u2014lost their lives, making Auschwitz the site of the largest mass murder<\/a> in human history. Among the dead<\/a> were 960,000 Jews, 74,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Roma<\/a>, 15,000 Soviet prisoners and about 15,000 people of other nationalities.<\/p>\n The Days of Liberation | Holocaust Education | USHMM<\/p>\n
\n Public domain via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/span>
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