Human Interest Powerful Photos from the Liberation of Auschwitz for International Holocaust Remembrance Day "We tell these stories because perhaps we know that not to listen, not to want to know, would lead you to indifference, and indifference is never the answer." - Elie Wiesel, author and Auschwitz survivor By Andrea Wurzburger Andrea Wurzburger Andrea Wurzburger is a former features writer at PEOPLE. She left PEOPLE in 2022. People Editorial Guidelines Updated on January 26, 2024 03:50PM EST Close Auschwitz-Birkenau. Photo: Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty 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. Every year, on Jan. 27, people around the world pause for International Holocaust Remembrance Day to reflect on the dark period in history, and to remember the liberation of Auschwitz, which took place on that date in 1945. Here, haunting photos from the site. 01 of 15 Portraits of Auschwitz Auschwitz-Birkenau. Pictured here, the train tracks leading to the camp. 02 of 15 Portraits of Auschwitz Auschwitz-Birkenau. Christopher Furlong/Getty An aerial view of the Auschwitz I extermination camp in Oswiecim, Poland. 03 of 15 Portraits of Auschwitz Auschwitz-Birkenau. Northcliffe Collection/ANL/Shutterstock Women prisoners are pictured here in their bunks. 04 of 15 Portraits of Auschwitz Auschwitz-Birkenau. Votava/Imagno/Getty Children who survived the death camp are pictured shortly after the liberation. 05 of 15 Portraits of Auschwitz Auschwitz-Birkenau. Votava/Imagno/Getty Seven tons of hair were found after the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, in the depots. 06 of 15 Portraits of Auschwitz Auschwitz-Birkenau. Sovfoto/Universal Images Group via Getty A photo of 15-year-old Ivan Dudnik being rescued from the camp in February 1945. 07 of 15 Portraits of Auschwitz Auschwitz-Birkenau. Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Pictured here, a group of women in the barracks, in a photo taken by a Russian photographer shortly after the camp's liberation. 08 of 15 Portraits of Auschwitz Auschwitz-Birkenau. Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Survivors of Auschwitz leaving the camp at the end of World War II in February 1945. 09 of 15 Portraits of Auschwitz Auschwitz-Birkenau. Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Crematorium III at Auschwitz concentration camp, Poland, taken in January 1945. 10 of 15 Portraits of Auschwitz Auschwitz-Birkenau. Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty SS Heinrich Himmler and Chief Engineer Max Faust during Himmler's visit to Auschwitz in July 1942. 11 of 15 Portraits of Auschwitz Auschwitz-Birkenau. STANISLAW MUCHA/HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock Piles of personal belongings left after mass extermination at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 12 of 15 Portraits of Auschwitz Auschwitz-Birkenau. Scott Barbour/Getty A mass of footwear removed from the men, women and children, taken at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp Museum. 13 of 15 Portraits of Auschwitz Auschwitz-Birkenau. Sean Gallup/Getty 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. 14 of 15 Portraits of Auschwitz Auschwitz-Birkenau. Sean Gallup/Getty 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. 15 of 15 Portraits of Auschwitz Auschwitz-Birkenau. SAKIS MITROLIDIS/AFP via Getty 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.