Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Camp: A Warning To Subsequent Generations

Of the estimated 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, some 1.1 million died at the camp, including 960,000 Jews. It was the largest extermination camp run by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. The Soviet army liberated Auschwitz on Jan. 27, 1945. Auschwitz is a monument to the barbaric inhumanity of the Nazi regime. It is the site where more than one million people were systematically tortured and killed in support of Adolf Hitler’s determination to eradicate entire populations that he viewed as racially impure. Dr. Josef Mengele conducted horrific experiments on live victims, treating his subjects as if they weren’t human. The Jews, homosexuals, Communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the mentally and physically disabled were less than human to the Nazis. The “Final Solution,” a cornerstone of Nazi ideology, enacted a devastating sentence upon people whose only crime was their ethnic origin or their religious and political beliefs. But the voices of Auschwitz continue to be heard.