On January 27, 1945, the Red Army entered the gates of Auschwitz in horrified awe of what they encountered. As they marched through the snow, they encountered stacks of frozen corpses and 7,000 frightened, exhausted prisoners in the barracks.
Auschwitz was a large complex of camps in and around Oświęcim and Brzezinka, Poland. From 1942 to 1944, gassings took place in the best known of the three main sites, Birkenau. During this time, over 1.1 million people, mainly European Jews, were killed in the gas chambers, shootings, hangings, and from starvation, disease, and exhaustion.
In summer 1944, the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau were running at maximum capacity. Over 400,000 Hungarian Jews were arriving in the camp, the majority of whom would be murdered in the gas chambers. Plans were also in progress to expand the camp, despite its already massive size. Though it was not obvious, this was the beginning of the end of Auschwitz.
That spring, the Red Army had advanced on the Eastern Front, pushing German forces out of Soviet territory. As they pushed westward, the SS running camps and ghettos on the Eastern front raced to evacuate prisoners who might testify about their experiences or even join Soviet forces in fighting the German military. In some cases, where prisoners could not be evacuated to camps further west, they were killed on the spot.
With the beginning of Operation Bagration in June 1944, the Soviets began advancing even further west, threatening German troops and camps set up in Eastern Poland. In July 1944, Soviet forces overran Majdanek, the first intact death camp to be liberated.
The liberation of Majdanek struck fear into the hearts of SS men at Auschwitz-Birkenau. If Auschwitz-Birkenau was found intact, with all of its documentation, they might be tried for war crimes. If the prisoners were found alive, they might testify against the SS or take violent revenge. The SS began at once to destroy evidence of their crimes.
The Political Department, which oversaw the punishment of prisoners, destroyed hundreds of thousands of records of Jewish prisoners who had been gassed or executed. They also destroyed transport lists of Jewish prisoners but kept intact lists of registered prisoners who were still alive. Though the Soviet Army was advancing, it was not clear yet that they would win. The SS still held out hope that Auschwitz could continue operating.
