Timeline of Events
- 1942
- January 16
- January 20
- March 1
- March 21
- May 27
- June 9
- June 28
- July 15
- July 23
- August 25
- September 5
- October 26
- December 17
- 1943
- February 1
- February 2
- March 13
- April 19
- August 3
- September 20
- October 14
- October 19
- November 3
- December 28
- 1944
- January 16
- January 22
- March 19
- May 15
- May 15
- June 6
- June 18
- July 9
- July 11
- July 20
- July 23
- August 1
- August 2
- August 9
- October 7
- November 25
- November 25
- December 11
- 1945
- January 17
- January 27
- February 4
- February 13
- February 13
- March 7
- April 2
- April 4
- April 11
- April 11
- April 11
- April 12
- April 13
- April 15
- April 17
- April 20
- April 23
- April 25
- April 27
- April 29
- April 30
- April 30
- May 4
- May 4
- May 5
- May 7
- June 4
- August 15
- September 2
- November 20
- November 21
- November 29
- December 1
- December 11
- December 22
Soviet Forces Liberate Auschwitz
Liberation of Auschwitz, Poland, 1945. Soviet troops entered the Auschwitz camp in Poland on January 27, 1945. This Soviet military footage shows children who were liberated at Auschwitz by the Soviet army. During the camp's years of operation, many children in Auschwitz were subjected to medical experiments by Nazi physician Josef Mengele. —National Archives - Film
Among the 2,819 liberated Auschwitz inmates, there were 180 children; 52 of them were under 8 years of age. How could they survive this hell? They managed to survive because they were wanted for medical research instead of mice and rabbits. But the German murderers with medical degrees were only keen on a particular kind of children: they wanted to experiment on twins. Twins were a special research material of Doctor Mengele and Doctor Schmidt's. Children who did not belong to that category were simply murdered. The infants were known by the numbers on their little hands.
January 27, 1945
The Soviet army enters Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz and liberates around 7,000 prisoners, most of whom are ill and dying.
In mid-January 1945, as Soviet forces approached the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, the SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its subcamps. SS units forced nearly 60,000 prisoners to march west from the Auschwitz camp system. Thousands had been killed in the camps in the days before these death marches began. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the killing center at Auschwitz. Almost all of the deportees who arrived at the camps were sent immediately to death in the gas chambers. It is estimated that the SS and police deported at a minimum 1.3 million people to Auschwitz complex between 1940 and 1945. Of these, the camp authorities murdered 1.1 million.
Artifact
The striped skirt of a prison uniform worn at the Auschwitz concentration camp. —US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Panstwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau w Oswiecimiu
