77 Years Later, Powerful Photos from the Liberation of Auschwitz

Auschwitz was a network of concentration camps built and operated in occupied Poland by Nazi Germany during World War II. Auschwitz I and nearby Auschwitz II-Birkenau were extermination camps where an estimated 1.1 million people, mostly Jews from across Europe, were killed in gas chambers or from systematic starvation, forced labor, disease and medical experiments.

The concentration camp, which was built in March 1942 in the village of Brzezinka, Poland, was liberated by the Soviet army on Jan. 27, 1945. Pictured here, the train tracks leading to the camp.

An aerial view of the Auschwitz I extermination camp in Oswiecim, Poland.

Women prisoners are pictured here in their bunks.

Children who survived the death camp are pictured shortly after the liberation.

Seven tons of hair were found after the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, in the depots.

A photo of 15-year-old Ivan Dudnik being rescued from the camp in February 1945.

Pictured here, a group of women in the barracks, in a photo taken by a Russian photographer shortly after the camp's liberation.

Survivors of Auschwitz leaving the camp at the end of World War II in February 1945.

Crematorium III at Auschwitz concentration camp, Poland, taken in January 1945.

SS Heinrich Himmler and Chief Engineer Max Faust during Himmler's visit to Auschwitz in July 1942.

Piles of personal belongings left after mass extermination at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

A mass of footwear removed from the men, women and children, taken at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp Museum.

Rose Schindler, a survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, walks through the camp with her granddaughter, husband and sons.

Schindler arrived at Auschwitz as a 14-year-old Jewish girl from Czechoslovakia in 1944, and spent three months there, during which time her mother, father and sisters were killed. She met her husband, Max, after the war as refugees in Great Britain, where they married.

Romanian-born Jack Rosenthal, who was imprisoned at Auschwitz and other concentration camps at 14 years old, stands outside the former Auschwitz I concentration camp as he points to the number tattoo he received from the Nazis.

Holocaust survivor Moshe Aelion poses holding a flower in front of a train-wagon in the old railway station in Thessaloniki, Greece, during a commemoration marking the departure of the first train from the northern Greek city to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, on March 15, 1943.