60th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation remembered

This is not original reporting. All information has been gathered from various news sources.

Thursday, Jan. 27 marked the 60–year anniversary of the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz, the deadliest and most notorious Nazi death camp, where an estimated 1.5 million people were executed between 1940-45, the vast majority of them Jews.

According to the Associated Press and other reports, 44 world leaders, including Vice President Dick Cheney, gathered at the site of the camp in southern Poland to pay their respects for those who died in the Holocaust.

At a commemoration ceremony in Krakow, Poland, 40 miles away, Cheney said that the anniversary is a reminder "that evil is real and must be called by its name and confronted,” according to the Associated Press.

More than 11 million people, including 6 million Jews, died at the hands of the Nazi Protection Force, known as the "SS,” between 1939 and 1945. Auschwitz was the largest and most violent extermination camp. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum stated that nearly 90% of those who were deported to Auschwitz died there. Ninety percent of all Polish and German Jews died during the Holocaust.

On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops finally broke through southern Poland and freed the remaining prisoners from Auschwitz. Prior to the liberation, the SS forced tens of thousands of men, women and children to march from the camp, having heard that the Allied forces were closing in on the camp. It is believed that around 15,000 died during the brutal march.

At the ceremony held at Auschwitz this morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, "We will never stop asking ourselves over and over again the same question: How could this ever have happened?"