This website is using cookies. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. Find out more and manage your cookies. Official Report KB pdf. The debate will be concluded without any question being put. On 27 January , 70 years ago today, Soviet soldiers liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest concentration and extermination camp that the Nazi regime established.
As the red army approached, the Nazis began to evacuate the camp. They killed thousands and forced around another 60, prisoners to march out of the camp to move them further from the approaching Soviet forces.
As many as 15, of those prisoners who were evacuated are estimated to have died as a result of the forced march and the privations that they suffered en route to other camps. As a result, only around 7, prisoners were left in Auschwitz when the red army arrived, and most of them were desperately ill or dying.
As well as moving the prisoners, the guards ordered the crematoria and gas chambers to be destroyed, in order to obliterate the evidence of the crimes that had been committed there. They wanted to wipe out the past. They wanted to hide the truth. They did that not only at Auschwitz-Birkenau but at other extermination camps.
The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust has published a booklet for Holocaust memorial day this year, listing the path to genocide, and there are eight steps. Step eight is denial: the perpetrators or later generations deny the existence of any crime. On 20 January , the Wannsee conference met to discuss the final solutionโthe plans to eliminate the Jews. One copy of the Wannsee protocolโthe minutes of the Wannsee conferenceโsurvived the war. Here is a portion of the translated minutes:. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes.
