On January 27, 1945, Red Army troops liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex. Sixty years later in 2005 the United Nations General Assembly turned the anniversary into a commemorative date, the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, more commonly known as Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest concentration camp complex and became the symbol of the Holocaust. From 1940 to 1945 a million or millions of people were murdered there, according to different estimates.