Auschwitz consisted of three main camps. Auschwitz I was the original camp, built in 1940 for Polish political prisoners. Auschwitz II-Birkenau, built in 1941, became the extermination center. Auschwitz III-Monowitz provided slave labor for I.G. Farben factories. At its height, the complex held over 100,000 prisoners.

Birkenau was designed for mass murder. Four gas chambers and crematoria could kill and dispose of thousands daily. Trains arrived at a platform where SS doctors performed 'selections' - pointing left for immediate death or right for slave labor. Most went left.

An estimated 1.1 million people died at Auschwitz. Approximately 960,000 were Jews, transported from across Nazi-occupied Europe. About 74,000 were Poles, 21,000 were Roma, 15,000 were Soviet prisoners of war, and 10,000 were from other groups.

Most Jews were murdered upon arrival - deemed 'unfit for work' by SS doctors. They were told to undress for showers. The gas chamber doors locked behind them. Zyklon B pellets dropped through ceiling vents. Death took 20 minutes. Bodies were cremated. Ashes were dumped in ponds. The process was methodical, efficient, monstrous.

The Nazis tried to destroy evidence as the Soviet army approached. They demolished the gas chambers and crematoria, burned documents, and forced surviving prisoners on death marches westward. But the evidence remained - too vast to erase.

Warehouses held piles of victims' belongings: 43,000 pairs of shoes, 15,000 pounds of human hair, countless suitcases bearing names and addresses. The crematoria ruins stand as ruins. The guard towers remain. The barracks where prisoners starved and froze still exist. Auschwitz is its own evidence.

Soviet forces liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. They found 7,000 survivors, most barely alive. The soldiers discovered warehouses of belongings, mass graves, and the half-demolished killing machinery. The world began to learn what had happened.

January 27 is now International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The survivors bore witness for decades, their testimonies ensuring the crime would not be forgotten. As the last survivors pass away, their words remain - recorded, transcribed, preserved for generations who must learn what happened when humanity failed.

Auschwitz-Birkenau is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and state museum. Over 2 million visitors come annually to walk through the gate, to see the barracks and crematoria ruins, to stand in the presence of industrial mass murder. Most are silent.

The museum preserves what remains: the shoes, the suitcases, the hair, the photographs of faces. Each represents a life - a person with a name, a family, hopes and fears. Auschwitz exists to ensure we never forget. The world must remember what happened when hatred was given industrial power. The dead cannot speak. The living must remember.