On January 27th, 1945, Red Army soldiers opened the gates of the Auschwitz German camp. The extremely exhausted prisoners, of whom there were still about 7,000 – including half a thousand children – welcomed them as liberators. Established in 1940, Auschwitz and later Auschwitz II-Birkenau became a site for the extermination of at least one million people, mostly Jews, but also Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and people of other nationalities.