The vanguard of the 62nd Corps of the Russian Army on the Ukrainian Front entered Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, saving several hundred creatures who no longer possessed anything human and taking on the task of burying a mountain of corpses. Auschwitz is the symbol of Nazi madness and barbarity. In quantity and quality, Auschwitz was the concentration camp where the inventory of crimes, horrors, and death reached apocalyptic proportions. Rudolf Höss himself, who was the camp’s commander, admitted to the murder of hundreds of thousands of deportees. Exactly how many is still impossible to say. The most recent studies agree in placing the number of victims—the vast majority Jews of all ages and backgrounds—between 1,300,000 and 1.5 million. Certainly, the massacre continued apace until the final days, and only ceased with the closure of the camp.
