The Last Agony at Auschwitz: Liberation, January
1945

A woman and a child survive.
CL:Archives of the State Museum in Oswiecim

"If National Socialist Germany is going to be destroyed,
then her enemies and the criminals in concentration camps
shall not have the satisfaction of emerging from our ruin as
triumphant conquerors. They shall share in the downfall. Those
are the Fuehrer's direct orders and I must see to it that they
are carried out down to the last detail." Heinrich
Himmler, March 12, 1945

Mass burials in liberated Auschwitz
by the Soviet Army in January 1945. CL:Archives of the
State Museum in Oswiecim

A forty-year-old inmate at
liberation in late January l945. CL:Archives of the State
Museum in Oswiecim

"'Freedom'-we repeated to ourselves and yet we could not
grasp it. We had said this word so often during all the years
we dreamed about it. that it had lost its meaning....We could
not grasp the fact that freedom was ours." Victor
Frankl, Survivor, Man's Search For Meaning

"This moment, on which all my thought and secret wishes
had been concentrated for three years, evoked neither gladness
nor, for that matter, any other feelings inside me. I let
myself drop down...and crawled on all fours to the door."
Filip Mueller, Survivor, Eyewitness Auschwitz

The Dean of Canterbury, Doctor H.
Johnson, and Polish Judge, Jan Sehn, inspect the prisoners'
barracks. CL:Archives of the State Museum in
Oswiecim

"A few days later the camp was evacuated....And then
we sent out on our march....After only a few kilometers the
first few collapsed. Anybody unable to get up was immediately
shot. Even now, when their time was so obviously almost up.
the SS took care to remove every last trace of their
crimes."
Filip Mueller, Survivor, Eyewitness
Auschwitz

Surviving children show their
tattoos. January 1945. CL:Archives of the State Museum in
Oswiecim

The Soviet Army enters Auschwitz,
January 27, 1945. CL:Archives Of the State Museum in
Oswiecim

In November 1944, the Auschwitz gas chambers were
dismantled. The mass murder was to remain a secret. On January
18, 1945, those inmates capable of walking were evacuated in a
"death march" which became the final struggle for thousands of
Jews. When the Russians arrived only several thousand ill
prisoners remained at Auschwitz. This tragic pattern--last-
minute mass murder, death marches, starvation or death from
exposure in overcrowded camps in the interior of the
Reich--typified the last days of the Nazi terror. Despite
valiant medical efforts many camp inmates died after
liberation. Those who survived had to deal with both the
psychological and physical legacy of their imprisonment in the
camps.

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