When the Russians liberated Auschwitz on 27 January 1945, a part of the camp was still intact because the Nazis didn’t have enough time to erase all traces of the mass extermination. In the camp the Russians encountered around 8000 survivors, most of them seriously weakened.

In 2005, the liberation day of Auschwitz was proclaimed as Holocaust Memorial Day by the United Nations, a day when all victims of the Holocaust and other genocides are commemorated throughout the world.