Professor Christoph Mick, from the Department of History at The University of Warwick, says, "The name Auschwitz stands for immeasurable suffering, for genocide and crimes against humanity committed by Nazi Germany. About one million Jews, 74,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and thousands of others targeted by the Nazis were murdered in the Auschwitz camp system. When the soldiers of the 322nd Rifle Division of the Soviet Army liberated the camp, they found just 7000 survivors, most of them emaciated, ill and close to death. The shocked Soviet soldiers and Poles showed their humanity, quickly organising food and setting up medical stations. Soviet army doctors and the Polish Red Cross tried to save as many lives as possible. If Auschwitz is a symbol of the worst mankind is capable of, the liberation of Auschwitz is a sign of hope, and not just because of the pity and spontaneous aid provided by Soviet soldiers and Polish doctors and nurses.

"As the Soviet Army approached, the SS tried to cover up their crimes by murdering prisoners and destroying the evidence. Their attempts to suppress the truth were not successful. Some documentary and material evidence was preserved but, most importantly, the witness accounts of prisoners survived, hidden, smuggled outside or memorised by survivors. Bearing witness is an act of successful resistance. Not enough perpetrators were brought to justice, but it is not the Nazi falsification of history which is told today but the truth told by those bearing witness. It would be a betrayal of them if we were to stop listening."