The almost 9 thousand prisoners, the majority of them sick or suffering from exhaustion, were left behind in the Main Camp (Stammlager), Birkenau, and the sub-camps as unfit to join the evacuation march. The SS intended to eliminate these prisoners, and only fortunate coincidences prevented them from doing so. The SS did manage to murder about 700 Jewish prisoners in Birkenau and the sub-camps in Wesoła (Fürstengrube), Gliwice (Glewitz IV), Czechowice (Tschechowitz-Vacuum) and Blachownia Śląska (Blechhammer) between the departure of the final evacuation column and the arrival of the Red Army.

Soldiers of the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front opened the gates of Auschwitz Concentration Camp on January 27, 1945.

In the Main Camp and Birkenau, Soviet soldiers discovered the corpses of about 600 prisoners who had been shot by the withdrawing SS or who had succumbed to exhaustion.

This photograph was taken at Auschwitz-Birkenau by Alexander Vorontsov, a Soviet photographer who accompanied the soldiers of the Red Army when they liberated the camp on 27 January 1945. The photograph depicts 13 children. Seven of the children have been identified.

While they were leading the Auschwitz prisoners onto the evacuation marches and afterwards in January 1945, the SS set about their final steps to remove the evidence of the crimes they had committed in the camp. They made bonfires of documents on the camp streets. They blew up crematoria II and III, which had already been partially dismantled, on January 20, and crematorium V, still in operational condition, on January 26. On January 23, they set fire to “Kanada II,” the complex of storage barracks holding property plundered from the victims of extermination.

Leading from Auschwitz and its sub-camps. 

 From Auschwitz by Pszczyna to Wodzislaw Slaski and by Mikolów to Gliwice.

27 January - International Holocaust Remembrance Day. 70 years ago Auschwitz-Birkenau, biggest German death camp was liberated. This picture doesn't look horrible, there is no dead bodies, just a bunch of young Germans smiling because of a sudden rain. But in fact it is horrible, it's a picture of German women guards from Auschwitz with Karl Hocker in the middle (aide-de-camp of Richard Baer) relaxing themselves after a murderous, hard job. Picture were taken in a Solahutte, rest place for a death camp staff, 30 km south of Auchwitz.