When was Auschwitz liberated? Survivors speak on Holocaust Remembrance Day in North Miami

Auschwitz concentration camp is a symbol of the Holocaust in southern Poland, one of the most trying moments in human history. On January 27, 1945, the turning point arrived as Allied forces liberated that camp, changing the course of history against Nazi oppression. That date serves as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

It marked the end of one of the worst chapters in human history, where over 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were systematically murdered as part of the Nazi regime's "Final Solution" to eliminate the Jewish population in Europe.

The 80th anniversary of Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp liberation makes it a time when survivors came to Beth Torah Benny Rok Campus in North Miami Beach.

A 94-year-old survivor, Saul Blau, was quoted by Local10.com stating:

“I was separated from my family. My mother and father went straight to the gas chambers and I happened to be wound up within the living.”

Event organizer Judith Osers Muller was also quoted stating:

“We’re not going to have Holocaust survivors for too long so we need to take advantage to learn from them and to teach our newer generation what happened.”

In nearby Bal Harbour, another survivor, Jack Waksal, now 100 years old, reflected on his traumatic past. He shared memories of witnessing atrocities during his time in concentration camps and how he lost his entire family.

Harbour was quoted by CBS News stating:

"Sometimes I cannot sleep at night. It goes over and over."

Allan Hall, another survivor, was speaking with students at Gulliver Preparatory School in Pinecrest. CBS News quoted Hall stating:

"Every day, at any given moment, somebody could open the door and we were dead. And people risked their lives to save me."

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The context of Auschwitz

Established in 1940 by Nazi Germany, Auschwitz eventually transformed into a camp complex with different subcamps: the central camp (Auschwitz I), the extermination camp (Auschwitz II-Birkenau), and the labor camp of Auschwitz III-Monowitz.

This became a key point for the realization of the "Final Solution" - more than 1.1 million victims, most of whom were Jews, died through gas chambers, forced labor, starvation, and medical experiments.

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The road to liberation

As World War II progressed, Jews and other victims faced a far worse situation than before in the war-torn Europe. When Soviet forces marched westward by the end of 1944, Nazi forces started vacating camps from their sight of atrocities.

January 1945 marked the death marches, by which thousands of inmates were led to march vast distances under pitiless conditions.

Soviet troops from the 1st Ukrainian Front arrived in Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. What they found was grim: there were only some 7,000 prisoners still alive at the camp.

Many of them were gravely ill or too weak to walk. Soviet soldiers found remnants of gas chambers and mass graves as well as personal belongings of the dead left behind.