Things You Didn't Know About Hitler That Will Blow Your Mind

The first major Nazi camp to be liberated was Majdanek, located in Lublin, Poland. It was liberated in the summer of 1944 as Soviet forces advanced westward. The previous spring, the SS had evacuated most of the Majdanek prisoners and camp personnel. 

The evacuated prisoners were sent to concentration camps further west, such as Gross-Rosen, Auschwitz, and Mauthausen. As the Soviet troops approached Majdanek at the end of July, the remaining camp personnel hastily abandoned the Majdanek concentration camp without fully dismantling it. 

Soviet troops first arrived at Majdanek during the night of July 22–23 and captured Lublin on July 24. Majdanek was captured virtually intact. At Majdanek, the Soviet troops encountered a number of prisoners who had not been evacuated in the spring, mostly Soviet prisoners of war. They also encountered substantial evidence of the mass murder committed at Majdanek by Nazi Germans. Soviet officials invited journalists to inspect the camp and evidence of the horrors that had occurred there.  

Six months later, on January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz. Auschwitz was the largest Nazi killing center and concentration camp complex. In the weeks preceding the arrival of Soviet units, Auschwitz camp personnel had forced the majority of Auschwitz prisoners to march westward in what would become known as "death marches." When they entered the camp, Soviet soldiers found over six thousand emaciated prisoners alive. These prisoners greeted the soldiers as their liberators. 

As at Majdanek, there was abundant evidence of mass murder in Auschwitz. The retreating Germans had destroyed most of the warehouses in the camp. But in those warehouses that remained, Soviet soldiers found personal belongings of the victims. Among these personal items were hundreds of thousands of men's suits, more than 800,000 women’s garments, and more than 14,000 pounds of human hair.

In the following months, Soviet units liberated additional camps in the Baltic states and Poland. Shortly before Germany's surrender in May 1945, Soviet forces liberated the Stutthof, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrück concentration camps.