On January 27, 1945, Red Army soldiers opened the gates of German Auschwitz concentration camp. Some 7,000 extremely weak and seriously ill prisoners, including 500 children, welcomed the Soviet soldiers as liberators. In less than five years of the camp's functioning at least 1.1 million people were killed there.
Nazi Germany set up the Auschwitz camp in 1940 as a prison for Poles. Auschwitz II-Birkenau was established two years later and became a place of genocide of European Jews. A whole network of subcamps operated withing the huge complex.
At least 1.1 million people were murdered in Auschwitz, mainly Jews, but also Poles, Romani, Soviet POWs, and members of other nations.
In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated January 27 - the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau - as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
On this annual day of commemoration, the UN urges every member state to honor the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism and to develop educational programs to help prevent future genocides.
It is estimated that approx. one-third of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust were children, and according to various sources 2.6-3.3 million were Polish Jews.
President Andrzej Duda marked the International Holocaust Remembrance Day by posting a tweet with a photo of himself holding a piece of paper saying "#WeRemember Pamiętamy!".
"On the International Holocaust Victims Rememberance Day we join the #WeRemember campaign," Israeli Embassy in Poland said in a tweet showing a photo of the country's chargé d'affaires Tal Ben-Ari Yaalon holding a piece of paper saying "#WeRemember".
Źródło: TVN24 News in English, PAP
Źródło zdjęcia głównego: Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images