Jakob Hughes

 Hitler came to power in 1933  Germans were bitterly resentful over losing World War I ( ).  he also blamed certain groups for endangering the racial purity  and superiority of the German people.  Chief among those were the Jews of Europe.  Hitler vowed a "final solution" to the "Jewish question."

 The first concentration camps were built in 1933  In order to imprison Hitler's political enemies

 The Soviet Union's Red Army were the first to see and liberate (free) the camps.  On January 27, 1945, they entered the most notorious camp of all-Auschwitz (OUSH-wits).

 But few could have been prepared for the full horror  the concentration and extermination (systematic killing) camps of the Nazi regime.

 On April 4, 1945, soldiers from the U.S. Third Army freed a camp in the town of Ohrdruf  Eugene Luciano said  Many prisoners laid in their bunks too weak to move, but raised their arms in thanks.  Bodies were piled high on the ground; others were in pits covered with lime.  There were rows of ditches filled with buried bodies

 1.5 million Jews  75,000 Poles  18,000 Gypsies  15,000 Soviet prisoners of war

 7,000 sick and starving prisoners  gas chambers and crematoriums (furnaces) used for mass murder  the disposal of bodies.  The Soviets also found 35 storehouses full of  Clothes  Eyeglasses  false teeth  more than 14,000 pounds of human hair taken from the dead.

 Surprised by the rapid Soviet advance, the Germans attempted to hide the evidence of mass murder by demolishing the camp.  Camp staff set fire to the large crematorium used to burn bodies  but in the hasty evacuation the gas chambers were left standing.

 The Nazis had fled as the Soviets approached  Driving nearly 60,000 prisoners with them in a forced march that killed more than 15,000.

 Brown, Bryan. "WWII: Freeing The Death Camps." Junior Scholastic. 25 Apr. 2005: 14. eLibrary. Web. 18 Nov  Chamberlin, Brewster; Feldman, Marcia. "The Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps 1945: Front Matter." U.S. History. Bureau of Electronic Publishing, n.pag. eLibrary. Web. 18 Nov  Abzug, Robert H. GIs Remember: Liberating the Concentration Camps. Washington, DC: National Museum of American Jewish History, 1994  WWII Concentration Camps. Archive New Media. 01 Jan eLibrary. Web. 18 Nov  Concentration Camp. Archive New Media. 01 Sep eLibrary. Web. 18 Nov  Adolph Hitler. Archive New Media. 01 Sep eLibrary. Web. 20 Nov  NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA. RUSSIA-HISTORY-VICTORY-DAY- PREPARATION. Getty Images. 30 Apr eLibrary. Web. 20 Nov  Hoffman, Betty N. Liberation: Stories of Survival. New Jersey: Enslow, Print