Liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp

[2] In January 1945, after the Red Army launched the Vistula–Oder Offensive and approached the camp, almost 60,000 prisoners were forced to leave on a death march westward.

[1][3] Inmates were marched mostly to Wodzisław Śląski but also to Gleiwitz (Gliwice),[4] where they were forced into Holocaust trains and transported to concentration camps in Germany.

[8][9] A total of 231 Red Army soldiers died in the fighting around Monowitz concentration camp, Birkenau, and Auschwitz I, as well as the town of Oświęcim and village of Brzezinka.

[13] Red Army soldiers also found 600 corpses, 370,000 men's suits, 837,000 articles of women's clothing, and seven tonnes (7.7 tons) of human hair.

Red Army general Vasily Petrenko, commander of the 107th Infantry Division, remarked, "I who saw people dying every day was shocked by the Nazis' indescribable hatred toward the inmates who had turned into living skeletons.

[20] In January 2025, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk guaranteed safe passage for senior Israeli officials, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to travel to an event marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, despite an arrest warrant issued for Netanyahu by the International Criminal Court.