Did you know that before the Nazi appropriated it for themselves, Auschwitz was a former Polish army barracks before it was turned to the administrative headquarters and main camp to house political prisoners. It consists of 20 brick buildings which held 30,000 prisoners by 1943.
The first prisoners of Auschwitz came on May 20, 1940 from Oranienburg, Germany. Liberation came on January 27, 1945 by the 322nd Rifle Division of the Red Army from USSR. They found 7,500 live prisoners and over 600 corpses. They have also liberated over 700 children with over 70% of the children are under the age of 15.
Auschwitz was then turned by the Soviet authorities into a POW camp for German prisoners on June 1945 until 1947. Many of the barracks were taken apart by civilians who then used the materials to rebuild their own houses
Decades after, Auschwitz is still seen as the primary symbol of the Holocaust due to the camp’s high death toll and it’s function as camp and killing facility.
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