Harrowing photographs taken during the liberation of Auschwitz 80 years ago today reveal the depths of human suffering left behind by the fleeing Nazis.
One image shows a group of emaciated men, women, and children, draped in filthy blankets and huddling together behind a barbed wire fence.
Another captures a skeletal woman and child standing among piles of corpses outside a barracks.
A third shows dead bodies strewn across the snow covered ground.
Other images show the mountains of shoes, glasses and even human hair that the Nazis forced their victims to give up before murdering them at the death camp that has become the most potent symbol of the horrors of the Holocaust.
These were the horrific scenes that met the Soviet 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front as they opened the gates of Auschwitz in what had been Nazi-occupied Poland.
They discovered around 7,000 survivors on the brink of death and the corpses of 600 prisoners who had either been shot by the fleeing Nazis or had died from exhaustion.
The regiment, led by Anatoly Shapiro, had endured brutal combat. Having lost losing nearly half its men each soldier knew the horrors of war.
Harrowing photographs taken during the liberation of Auschwitz 80 years ago today reveal the depths of human suffering left behind by the fleeing Nazis
Two skeletal survivors stand surrounded by corpses at Auschwitz after the arrival of Soviet troops, January 1945
Yet they were not prepared for what they found in the camp.
Shapiro, himself a Jew who would later defect to the west, recalled: ‘When we opened the gate, we saw human remains, literally just bones covered with skin.
‘Some stood there barefoot, even though it was bitterly cold. They tried to touch us, perhaps to convince themselves that it was true.
‘The camp was a whole city of hundreds of long barracks and two-story blocks. In this death factory we saw mountains of hair bags, corpses, barely alive prisoners-skeletons, the ruins of four blown up crematoriums and gas chambers, mountains of ash.
‘There was a stench of corpses in the camps, mountains of garbage.’
Former Auschwitz inmate Eva Schloss, the step-sister of diarist Anne Frank, recalled her shock at the sight of the Soviet soldiers: ‘At the gate we saw this huge creature with icicles and wrapped in fur.
‘He was the first Russian soldier who had come into the camp. I led him to the barracks and this towering man, who must have already witnessed many terrible things, had tears running down his cheeks.’
Another prisoner, Wanda Dramińska, later said: ‘At some point in the distance we noticed the silhouettes of white-clad men who were walking towards the camp.
Dozens of corpses lie in the snow at Auschwitz after its liberation by Soviet forces, January 1945
A Red Cross nurse tends to a skeletal female survivor after Auschwitz’s liberation
Ruins of crematoria and gas chamber II at Birkenau. They were blown up in January 1945
The remains of a gas chamber that the Nazis blew up to try to cover up their crimes
‘We were not sure who these men were, and we even feared that it might be the Germans who wanted to kill us.
‘Immediately there were shouts of “zdravstvuytye tovarishchi” (hello comrades).
‘The Soviet soldiers told us not to be afraid, because “germantsov net” (Germans are gone).
Alexander Vorontsov, a military cameraman from Moscow who filmed the liberation, described the overwhelming scene: ‘A ghastly sight arose before our eyes: barracks filled with people, skeletons clad in skin, lying in bunks with vacant stares.
‘Starved, sick, and exhausted, the women wept. The men wept too.
‘Even our commanders couldn’t grasp the scale of the atrocity unfolding before them.’
He added: ‘The memory has stayed with me my whole life. All of this was the most moving and most terrible thing that I saw and filmed during the war.’
‘Time has no sway over these recollections. It has not squeezed all the horrible things I saw and filmed out of my mind.’
Mountains of shoes stolen from prisoners at Auschwitz. The possessions were found by Soviet troops when the camp was liberated 80 years ago
Mounds of thousands of pairs of glasses that were stolen from Auschwitz arrivals
A mountain of clothes that were taken from Auschwitz arrivals before they were either murdered or condemned to slave labour
By the time of its liberation, Auschwitz had become an industrialised death machine, a symbol of the Nazis’ ‘Final Solution.’
Established just one year after Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, the camp had grown into a sprawling complex where an estimated 1.3 million people were sent.
Of those, 1.1 million died, including 960,000 Jews, 74,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet POWs, and around 15,000 other Europeans.
Most were sent straight to the gas chambers, but those who survived the selection process faced death by starvation, exhaustion, disease, medical experiments, or brutal executions.
The Auschwitz complex itself was made up of three main camps: Auschwitz I, the original concentration camp built in an old Polish military base; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a vast extermination camp designed to speed up the killing process; and Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a forced labor camp.
There were also 45 satellite camps spread across the region.
As Soviet forces advanced across Poland, in late 1944 the Nazis launched a frantic effort to destroy all evidence of their atrocities.
In Auschwitz this began with the systematic dismantling of the crematoria and gas chambers.
Orphaned children stand in rows at Auschwitz as it is liberated, January 1945
Notes found after the war, buried on the grounds of Crematorium III, revealed the chillingly calculated steps taken to erase the traces of mass murder.
Written in 1944 by former prisoner Załmen Gradowski, the notes said: ‘Recently, they’ve started clearing away all the evidence.
‘Wherever there were piles of ashes, they ordered them to be ground to dust, taken to the river, and released into the current.
‘We’ve dug up many graves, but there are still two open graves at the second and third crematoria. Several others remain full of ash.
‘A vast amount of ash from hundreds of thousands of Jews, Russians, and Poles has been scattered, plowed into the grounds of the crematoria.’
On October 7, Gradowski organised an uprising against the Nazis but was either killed during the fighting or shot by the SS after its suppression.
Henryk Mandelbaum, another former inmate who was forced to remove corpses from the gas chambers and burn the bodies of those killed in the crematoria, testified in March 1947: ‘They began by dismantling the crematoria.
‘First, they ordered us to strip the shingles and rafters, then we had to take apart the furnaces.
‘By December 1944, we had bored holes in the walls, and in these holes, they planted dynamite charges. Once they sent us back to the camp, they blew the whole place sky-high.’
Anatoly Shapiro led the Soviet regiment that liberated Auschwitz. The Jewish soldier, who would later defect to the west, recalled: ‘When we opened the gate, we saw human remains, literally just bones covered with skin’
With the gas chambers and crematoriums being destroyed, the Nazis then began the brutal and systematic evacuation of the camp.
Between January 17 and 21, 1945, around 56,000 prisoners were marched out of Auschwitz and its sub-camps, guarded by heavily armed SS troops.
The grim exodus, later known as the ‘Death March’, proved to be a death sentence for many.
According to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum: ‘Along every route, SS guards shot not only those who tried to escape, but also those who were too weak or exhausted to keep up.
‘The corpses of thousands of prisoners who had been shot, or who died of exhaustion or exposure, lined the routes of both marching and rail evacuation.
‘It is estimated that a total of not fewer than 9,000 and probably as many as 15,000 Auschwitz prisoners died in the course of the evacuation.’
One of those who survived the Death March was Zofia Stępień-Bator who later recalled: ‘Women kept falling into ditches, never to rise again. Ahead of me, a tiny, exhausted girl collapsed.
‘I helped her up. She was alone, like me, her pack heavy on her back.
Former Auschwitz inmate Eva Schloss, the step-sister of diarist Anne Frank, recalled her shock at the sight of the Soviet soldiers: ‘At the gate we saw this huge creature with icicles and wrapped in fur. ‘He was the first Russian soldier who had come into the camp’
‘As we walked, I learned she had no one left. Her parents were dead, and she had nowhere to return. I told her to hold on, to wait for the dawn, that it would get easier.
‘She walked a bit more, but soon fell again. I dragged her along, exhausted myself, as prisoners passed us by.
‘When she collapsed for the final time, I called for help, but before anyone could reach me a shot rang out.
‘My poor little ward, the one I had promised not to leave, she was gone. The echo of that shot still haunts me.’
For those prisoners left behind in the camp, two field hospitals were quickly set up and Red Cross volunteers and medical staff began trying to nurse the thousands of sick, weak and emaciated back to health.
Orphans were also taken out of Auschwitz and sent to foster families and children’s homes.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Musem said: ‘Soviet army medics and orderlies gave the first organised help to liberated Auschwitz prisoners.
‘Two Soviet field hospitals, commanded by doctors with the rank of colonel, soon arrived and began caring for the ex-prisoners.
Auschwitz prisoner Wanda Dramińska recalled the moment the Russian soldiers arrived. Above: Her before the war
‘Numerous Polish volunteers from Oświęcim and the vicinity, as well as other parts of the country, also arrived to help. Most of them belonged to the Polish Red Cross.
Hundreds of bedridden patients, covered in filth and excrement, were moved to clean wards and slowly reintroduced to normal eating.
At first, they were given small portions, such as a tablespoon of mashed potato soup three times a day, which gradually increased.
Even weeks after liberation, nurses found bread hidden under mattresses, as some prisoners couldn’t believe they would be fed again the next day.
But prisoners in relatively good physical condition left Auschwitz immediately after the Soviet arrival, and most hospital patients followed within three to four months.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Musem said: ‘The paradox is that soldiers who were the formal representatives of Stalinist totalitarianism were bringing freedom to the prisoners of Nazi totalitarianism.
‘Over 230 Soviet soldiers died fighting to liberate Monowitz, the Main Camp, Birkenau, and Oświęcim’, the town renamed Auschwitz by the Germans.
But the horrors of the concentration camp were far from over.
Załmen Gradowski with his wife Sonia. He was killed whilst leading an uprising against the Nazis after being forced to destroy Nazi atrocities
Within weeks of liberating the Nazis’ prisoners, Stalin’s dreaded secret police, the NKVD, began operating part of the camp as its own prison for Germans as well as Poles they considered to be a threat.
Stalin’s initial alliance with Hitler in the early days of World War II had seen the Soviet Union complicit in the invasion and partition of Poland.
But after Hitler betrayed Stalin in 1941, the Soviet Union switched sides, joining the Allies in the fight against Nazi Germany.
As the Red Army advanced through Eastern Europe, the Soviet occupation of Poland began under the guise of ‘liberation.’
In reality, though, Stalin’s forces imposed a harsh and brutal regime, and the NKVD followed closely behind rounding up Poles who resisted the Soviet occupation.
In February 1945, the NKVD set up a sub-camp on the grounds of Auschwitz I to hold German POWs.
They were held in overcrowded conditions before being transported to the Soviet Union for forced labour.
Another sub-camp was established in Birkenau under the control of the Communist controlled Ministry of Public Security, the secret police, to hold ‘enemies of the people’.
These included Polish civilians, underground resistance who had fought against the Nazis and then the Soviets, and suspected Nazi collaborators.
According to estimations, between May and the end of September 1945 alone, 19,500 prisoners of war and 3,750 civilians were deported from the camp to the Soviet Union.
Polish teenager Marta Nycz, who was 17 when rounded up and thrown inside the camp, recalled: ‘I didn’t know why I was there.
‘It was hell! Nothing to eat. ‘They gave us cabbage leaves and bran.
‘We got one slice of bread in the afternoon after work, so thin you could see through it if you held it up to the light.
‘Whoever ate it then had nothing for breakfast. Everyone was starving.
‘The secret police didn’t need to torture or shoot to kill, they let hunger, typhus, and exhaustion do the work.
‘People dropped like flies. The secret police were the masters of life and death in the camp, just like the Germans had been for the past five years.’
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
