Top Photo: The entrance to the main camp at Auschwitz. Photo by Jennifer Putnam.

Auschwitz was a large complex of camps in and around Oświęcim and Brzezinka, Poland. From 1942 to 1944, gassings took place in the best known of the three main sites, Birkenau. During this time, over 1.1 million people, mainly European Jews, were killed in the gas chambers, shootings, hangings, and from starvation, disease, and exhaustion.

The Beginning of the End

In summer 1944, the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau were running at maximum capacity. Over 400,000 Hungarian Jews were arriving in the camp, the majority of whom would be murdered in the gas chambers. Plans were also in progress to expand the camp, despite its already massive size. Though it was not obvious, this was the beginning of the end of Auschwitz.

That spring, the Red Army had advanced on the Eastern Front, pushing German forces out of Soviet territory. As they pushed westward, the SS running camps and ghettos on the Eastern front raced to evacuate prisoners who might testify about their experiences or even join Soviet forces in fighting the German military.[1] In some cases, where prisoners could not be evacuated to camps further west, they were killed on the spot. 

Map of the three largest camps at Auschwitz. The complex also included over 40 smaller sub-camps, usually attached to factories, farms, mines, and quarries where prisoners were forced to work. US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

With the beginning of Operation Bagration in June 1944, the Soviets began advancing even further west, threatening German troops and camps set up in Eastern Poland. In July 1944, Soviet forces overran Majdanek, the first intact death camp to be liberated. 

The liberation of Majdanek struck fear into the hearts of SS men at Auschwitz-Birkenau. If Auschwitz-Birkenau was found intact, with all of its documentation, they might be tried for war crimes. If the prisoners were found alive, they might testify against the SS or take violent revenge. The SS began at once to destroy evidence of their crimes. The Political Department, which oversaw the punishment of prisoners, destroyed hundreds of thousands of records of Jewish prisoners who had been gassed or executed. They also destroyed transport lists of Jewish prisoners but kept intact lists of registered prisoners who were still alive.[2] Though the Soviet Army was advancing, it was not clear yet that they would win. The SS still held out hope that Auschwitz could continue operating.

In August 1944, they began another campaign to protect themselves. Nazi authorities ordered the dispersal of Polish political prisoners to camps in Germany. After the Warsaw Uprising, they feared that Polish political prisoners might band together and fight back. In the following months, as the front drew closer and closer, more and more prisoners were transferred to other camps. Survivor Wanda Koprowska describes her evacuation from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück in October 1944:

They took away the sweaters, warm underwear, and everything else that the women had “organized” with such difficulty. […] They were leading us out one by one. This gave [the guard] Stenia another chance to show what she was capable of. She bellowed like a wild woman, shoving people around and saying that she hoped “this gang’s train derails.” It was pitch dark outside and pouring down rain. […] The wagon grew cramped and impossibly stuffy. We were very cold there next to the window because we were soaked to the skin, and the rags we were wearing did not want to dry out. I was standing on one leg because there was nowhere to put the other one. Eighty-five women filled three-fourths of the freight car, and the rest was reserved for the SS men.[3]

Between October and December 1944, for the first time in the camp’s history, the number of prisoners transferred out of Auschwitz outpaced the number of new prisoners arriving. As tens of thousands of prisoners were transferred to camps in Germany, these sites became overcrowded and faced food shortages. Though the prisoners were no longer in the shadow of the gas chambers, their lives were threatened by starvation, exhaustion, and disease in ever greater numbers.[4]

At the end of 1944, there were only 67,000 people left in Auschwitz, down from its peak of 135,000 prisoners. The SS was now preparing for the final evacuation of Auschwitz.

Destroying the Evidence

At the end of summer 1944, transports of Jewish prisoners began to slow down, limiting the work at the gas chambers and crematoria. The Sonderkommando, the prisoners forced to work in these facilities, caught wind of plans to murder them as living witnesses to the genocide committed in the gas chambers. In October 1944, they revolted, destroying Crematorium IV. Most of the Sonderkommando members were killed, and the surviving prisoners were put back to work operating the crematorium ovens. 

In early November 1944, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler ordered a stop on the use of gas chambers and called for their destruction. Over the following two months, Crematoria II and III were dismantled and their usable parts were shipped elsewhere.[5] Crematorium V, though no longer used for gassings, was kept in operation as a crematorium. Though the gas chambers were no longer in use, the killings did not stop; instead, prisoners selected for execution were shot in the gas chamber or in the yard of Crematorium V.[6]

As the SS forced prisoners to dismantle the crematoria, they also planned the dismantling of barracks and warehouses. The supplies and materials stripped from these buildings were shipped to Germany. At the same time, the warehouses in the camp, stocked full of items confiscated from Jewish prisoners who had been murdered in the gas chambers, were packed up and the goods shipped to Germany.

Death Marches

The SS felt that the prisoners were the last bit of evidence to be disposed of. They knew that they had to keep the prisoners out of Allied hands because of what they had witnessed. There were two options: evacuate the prisoners to camps in Germany or kill the prisoners and raze the camp to the ground.[7]

Without the gas chambers, killing 67,000 prisoners was a logistical nightmare. In addition, though the prisoners were malnourished and weak, they could still work as forced laborers. As such, the U-Plan was hatched, covering the evacuation of civilians, industrial workers, POWs, and prisoners from Upper Silesia, the region of Poland where Auschwitz was located. In mid-January 1945, this plan was made a reality.

On January 17, 1945, the first evacuation group left Auschwitz on what would soon be referred to as a “death march.” Over the course of the next six days, 58,000 prisoners would leave the camp on foot, marching for days, inadequately clothed and with little food to sustain them. Hundreds of prisoners succumbed to exhaustion and hypothermia – others were shot if they lagged behind or tried to escape. Harry Osers, just a teenager at the time of the death march, recalled: 

Those who could not keep up were allowed to remain at the end of the column and then shot dead. We hoped the Russian army would come quickly, but on the 21^st of January, we were forced to leave with the last transport. We clearly heard gun duels and artillery shots. […] The march ended at Leslau. We were loaded into open wagons. On that same train but in a different wagon were the remainder of the Birkenau Boys. So now, after six weeks we were reunited. It snowed heavily throughout the time we were on the train. While passing through Moravska Ostrava, the Czech citizens outside threw food to us. One was killed by the SS for this activity. The trip took three days via Prague to Mauthausen in Austria.[8]

After marching for as much as 63 kilometers (roughly 39 miles), the prisoners were loaded onto cattle cars for transport to other camps. Many took advantage of the relative distance from SS officers to escape from the carriages, though the SS shot at them as they jumped out the windows and ran. During the death marches from Auschwitz, approximately 15,000 people were killed.[9]

A map of the death marches from Auschwitz in January 1945. The Archive of the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oświęcim.

Liberation at Last

As the prisoners marched past the looming metal gates of Auschwitz, most remaining SS officers and guards went with them. They hastily covered their tracks, blowing up Crematoria II and III, which had been partially dismantled. On January 23, the SS set fire to the warehouses. Before the building was set ablaze, many SS men, as well as retreating Wehrmacht troops, raided the warehouses, taking anything of value for themselves. On January 26, as the Red Army marched closer to the gates, the few SS still at the camp blew up the last crematorium.

View through the barbed wire fence of the burning Kanada barracks in Auschwitz-Birkenau immediately after the liberation. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Mark Chrzanowski.

With the death marches departed, only around 8,000 prisoners remained, the majority of them too ill or wounded to march. Eva Schloss was one of those prisoners, staying behind with her mother who was in the camp hospital barracks. When the majority of the SS left, Eva reflected that

We could have walked out; the gates were open. But, of course, we didn’t know what was outside. […] And many, many people died still in those barracks, and I was one of the few people who was still able to take out the dead bodies. There was, of course, no way of burying them because of course we didn’t have tools and the ground was frozen. So we had to heap them up outside the barrack. I see this still in front of my eyes, those skeleton bodies being heaped up in the snow.

While waiting for liberation, hundreds of prisoners died of starvation, disease, and exhaustion. Those who were able scavenged for food. Before the warehouse was set alight, many prisoners risked their lives to take food and clothing, often being shot at by SS men.[10] In the barracks, the prisoners took care of one another. Former doctors and nurses tended to the bedridden with what little medical supplies they had. Other prisoners kept the barracks as clean as possible and brought in water.

Outside the camp, the Red Army was drawing closer. On January 27, the 1st Ukrainian Front pushed toward Oświęcim and Brzezinka, engaging in a firefight with retreating Wehrmacht troops and SS men. Driving relentlessly towards the gates of Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz, the three main camps, 231 Red Army soldiers were killed.[11] 

That morning, the first liberators to arrive were scouts on reconnaissance patrols. Eva Schloss recalls their astonishment at seeing the first Red Army soldier: 

At the gate we saw this huge creature with icicles and wrapped in fur. It was terribly, terribly cold. […] First, we really thought it was a bear, but when we looked closer, we realized it was a human being. It was the first Russian soldier who had come into the camp. And I took him to show him to the barrack, and this big man who must have seen terrible things had tears running down his cheeks.

That afternoon, the 60^th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front marched through the gates of Auschwitz. Though they had heard warnings of what they might see, they were still horrified. Officer Vasilii Davydov wrote:

Wherever one looked, he saw piles of human bodies. In some places, the former prisoners, looking like living skeletons, sat or lay around. Many of them could not be helped. A few who could still walk took us around the camp and told us what happened there. It is impossible to describe everything we saw there. When we were there, the State Committee started to investigate the fascists’ terrible crimes. They opened huge ditches filled with human corpses, bones, and ashes (the fascists sold these ashes as fertilizer for five marks a pound).[12]

The day after liberation, the Extraordinary Soviet State Commission for the Investigation of the Crimes of the German-Fascist Aggressors began their investigation into the crimes committed at Auschwitz. They did autopsies on bodies at the site, opened mass graves, and spoke to former prisoners. Later in 1945 and 1946, Polish authorities conducted further investigations at the site, leading to the trials of former Auschwitz concentration camp commandant Rudolf Höss and 47 other former camp personnel. Other Auschwitz criminals would be tried during the Nuremberg Trials, like Otto Moll, who oversaw the operations of the crematoria.

Former Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss and Kurt von Burgsdorff are transported in shackles by American soldiers. Höss served as a a defense witness for Ernst Kaltenbrunner and then was handed over to Polish authorities to stand trial in Poland. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Eddie Murphy (Estate).

The Survivors

The majority of the prisoners who were still at the camp upon liberation were too sick to leave. Those few who could walk set out for Cracow immediately, where they hoped to connect with aid organizations who could help them find surviving family members and get home.[13]

On the site of the main camp, which had brick barracks and plumbing, the Soviet military and the Polish Red Cross set up a field hospital, which was used to nurse the 4,500 remaining prisoners back to health. Caring for their physical needs was challenging, but many prisoners were also mentally scarred by what they experienced. When nurses came to bathe them, they hid, associating the word “bath” with the gas chambers. Others stashed bread underneath their mattresses, not believing that they would be given more food at each mealtime.[14] Despite these challenges, by June 1945, the majority of prisoners had left and only 300 prisoners, mostly Jews, were still too weak to leave. Those who left faced a new challenge: finding home.

The hospital for former prisoners of the concentration camp in Block 21 of the former Auschwitz I camp. The Archive of the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oświęcim.