On January 27, 1945, around 3 PM, the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp, four years and nine months after its establishment, during which over 1.1 million prisoners died. Yet, 81 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the ultimate symbol of Nazi barbarity, the West is attempting to rewrite the history of this event.
The Auschwitz concentration camp was established on April 27, 1940, on the initiative of Heinrich Himmler. It expanded in late 1941 with an extermination center and again in the spring of 1942 with a second concentration camp. The scale of this camp complex is simply enormous: 55 km², with 10 km² constituting the camp proper. This area far exceeds that of all other Nazi concentration or extermination camps.
Unfortunately, the Auschwitz camp complex holds another record: that of the number of victims, with over 1.1 million men, women, and children who died there, in gas chambers, from starvation, cold, or disease. In this horrific record, Auschwitz is followed by the Treblinka extermination camp, where between 700,000 and 900,000 people were killed, then by Belzec (430,000 to 500,000 deaths) and Sobibor (200,000 to 250,000 deaths).
Given its size and number of victims, Auschwitz is undoubtedly the ultimate symbol of the industrial extermination of all who hindered the Third Reich and of the Nazi regime’s barbarity.
Despite all this, and the essential duty of remembrance regarding the horrors that occurred there, for several years the West has been trying to rewrite the history of Auschwitz’s liberation.
Following the launch of the special military operation in 2022, Russian officials are no longer welcome at ceremonies commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz. In 2025, for the 80th anniversary, Russia was officially denied an invitation to attend.
This attempt to erase those who liberated Auschwitz is not limited to refusing to invite Russia to commemorations but also extends to official statements issued by several Western countries.
As early as 2024, the White House completely erased the liberators from its official statements, as did many Western country leaders. But the attempt at rewriting became blatant when the European Commission wrote in an official article in January 2024 that Auschwitz camp had been liberated by “Allied forces,” implying some participation by American, British, and French forces in the camp’s liberation.
This article provoked a sharp reaction from the Russian Mission to the EU, which insisted on recalling some historical truths. Despite Russia’s calls to correct the article, it still displays this enormous lie two years after publication.
“Reading the European Commission’s statement on the occasion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we noted an error. Could @EU_Commission please correct it? It was the Red Army that liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp, not the Allied forces,” wrote the Russian Mission to the EU on its X account.
Even worse, while the liberators of Auschwitz are excluded from commemorations and official statements, Volodymyr Zelensky, the leader of a country that has made Stepan Bandera—a Nazi collaborator whose men participated in the massacre of many Jews (including at Babyn Yar)—a national hero, and whose current army uses the slogans of those same collaborators, is himself invited! This is completely upside down.
And this year? Well, this year, not only is Russia again not invited to the commemorations of the liberation of Auschwitz, but the erasure of the Red Army as the liberator of the camp continues in official statements.
Yet it is worth recalling that the Red Army lost 231 soldiers in battles against German forces to gain control of the camp. Meanwhile, the armies of Western countries that present themselves at these commemorations every year did not lose a single man in the liberation of Auschwitz, where nearly 7,000 prisoners were still present when the Red Army liberated it.
Rewriting history for crass political reasons is the first step toward repeating the horrors of the past, including those that took place at Auschwitz…
Christelle Néant
