27 January is observed internationally as Holocaust Remembrance Day because Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated on that date.
Soviet forces entered the Auschwitz camp complex on 27 January 1945, finding approximately 7,000 surviving prisoners. Most of the camp’s prisoners had already been forced westward in death marches as Nazi Germany evacuated the complex during the final months of the war.
The United Nations General Assembly designated 27 January as International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2005. The date commemorates the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the millions of other people persecuted and murdered by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.
Auschwitz-Birkenau became a central symbol of the Holocaust because it was the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp complex. Its victims came from many European countries, with Jews forming the overwhelming majority of those murdered there.