Eighty years ago, today January 27, the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland was liberated by the Red Army. About 7,000 prisoners were there when the Soviets arrived. Those people had been left behind — too weak or sick to move when Nazi officers forced nearly 60,000 prisoners to march west as the Soviets approached.
In just over four and a half years, Nazi Germany systematically murdered at least 1.1 million people at the 40 camps that made up the Auschwitz complex, making it the site of the largest mass execution of human beings ever recorded.

Red Army soldiers are seen with liberated prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland (Photo: Pravda)
Auschwitz was at the center of the Nazi campaign to eradicate Europe’s Jewish population, and almost one million of those who died there were Jews – but Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war, among many others, also perished at the camp.
The day of Auschwitz’s liberation was designated by the UN as the International Remembrance Day for the victims of Fascism and Holocaust. According to the Communist Party of Israel (CPI), for throughout the 20th century, Communists led the struggle against fascism and racism.
“The Holocaust of European Jewry is an inseparable part of the racist essence and monstrous practice of fascism. The lesson of the Holocaust is universal and humane. Dealing with it is both a humanistic and a Communist duty. For us, it is also a very contemporary lesson. No people are immune to fascism and racism. These dangers exist in the Israeli society as well, and struggling against them obligates us to form, within the Israeli society, a broad democratic front of resistance and action,” CPI said.
The CPI understands in the recent years, the Israeli establishment made great efforts to appropriate the Holocaust for the benefit of the official Israeli propaganda, and this is a false connection. “As the Communist Party of Israel, it is our duty to contribute to the struggle against the misuse of the memory of the Holocaust, which is intended for the justification of the occupation of the Palestinian territories and the war in Gaza. The way of dealing with it is not by running away or avoiding the matter. Dealing with it does not mean forfeiting into the hands of the Israeli far-right establishment the universal marking of events and ceremonies commemorating the victims of Nazism.”
Choosing the day of Auschwitz’s liberation by the Red Army to be the International Remembrance Day for the victims of Fascism and Holocaust, “was an important achievement of the international progressive struggle against the attempt to belittle and erase the decisive part played by the Soviet Union in the defeat of the Nazi beast. In Israel, the CPI stood for many years in the forefront of the commemoration of May 9 – Victory Day over Nazi Germany – even during times in which the Israeli governments chose to completely ignore this decisive event in humanity’s history.”