January 27 is celebrated worldwide as International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust - the mass destruction of the Jewish population of Europe by Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.

During the years of the Holocaust (from the Greek “holocaust” – “burnt offering”), according to the most accurate estimates of historians and witnesses, 6 million people of only Jewish nationality were destroyed, although not only they were exterminated, but also Slavs, Gypsies, representatives of other European nationalities. Also disabled and mentally retarded, political opponents of Nazism among the Germans themselves, Europeans of African origin, representatives of some religious groups became prisoners of concentration camps.

View of the main gate and railway tracks leading to the unloading areas from the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp site, February 1945. Photo: histrf.ru/waralbum.ru

The symbol of the Holocaust was the largest concentration camp in Europe, Auschwitz (Auschwitz-Birkenau). Only here about 1,1 million people were killed, 90 percent of whom were Jews, the rest were Soviet prisoners of war, Poles, Germans, French, Greeks, Gypsies, Hungarians and representatives of other nations.

Along with Auschwitz, other fascist death camps are notorious - Buchenwald, Dachau, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek, Ravensbrück, Mauthausen, Salaspils. Many of them were located on the territory of Germany, some - in Poland, the Baltic States, Belarus.

Photo: jewish-museum.ru

Auschwitz was liberated on January 27 by the Red Army, which is why this day, by decision of the UN General Assembly, was designated the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the

Holocaust. The adoption of the document was initiated by Israel, Russia, Canada, the USA and more than 90 countries of the world.

Liberated children from the Auschwitz concentration camp. Photo: waralbum.ru

Countries around the world tried to preserve for future generations evidence of the crimes of Nazism - memorials were erected in the liberated concentration camps of Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, Dachau, monuments to the victims of the mass execution in Babi Yar and Budapest, the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, the “Yad Vashem” Museum of Holocaust Victims in Jerusalem (Israel), as well as numerous monuments in Minsk, in the Kaliningrad region (Russia) on the site of the former concentration camp Stutthof, in the USA - in Miami, Boston and San Francisco.

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