As the Soviet army approached and the end of the war came closer the vast majority of Auschwitz prisoners were marched west by the Nazis, into Germany. Those few thousand remaining were thought too ill to travel, and were left behind to be shot by the SS. In the confusion that followed the abandonment of the camp, the SS left them alive. The prisoners were found by Soviet forces when they liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945.
Vasily Gromadsky, a Russian officer with the 60th Army liberating Auschwitz recalls what happened.
"They [the prisoners] began rushing towards us, in a big crowd. They were weeping, embracing us and kissing us. I felt a grievance on behalf of mankind that these fascists had made such a mockery of us. It roused me and all the soldiers to go and quickly destroy them and send them to hell."
“We ran up to them and they gave us hugs, cookies, and chocolate. Being so alone a hug meant more than anybody could imagine because that replaced the human worth that we were starving for. We were not only starved for food but we were starved for human kindness. And the Soviet Army did provide some of that.”
– Eva Mozes Kor, age 10, child survivor of Auschwitz
Eva Mozes Kor, age 10, was one of several hundred children, many of them twins, who were left behind. She and her twin sister Miriam had been subjects in Dr. Josef Mengele’s medical experiments. She describes what it was like to see the liberating Russians.
