With Soviet forces closing in from the east, Nazi authorities at Auschwitz began preparations to evacuate the camp on January 12, 1945, launching what became known as the death marches. Roughly 60,000 prisoners were forced westward through snow in thin clothing; thousands died of exposure, exhaustion, or execution along the roads.
The Soviet Vistula–Oder Offensive began on January 12, 1945, tearing through German lines with devastating speed. Within days, Auschwitz's SS guards realized the camp could not hold, and orders came down to destroy evidence and remove prisoners capable of walking.
Those too sick or weak to march, some 7,000 people, were left behind and liberated by Soviet troops on January 27. The rest were forced into a brutal exodus across Poland and into Germany and Austria in the depths of winter, many wearing wooden clogs with no socks. SS guards shot those who fell behind or could not keep pace.
The death marches killed an estimated 15,000 or more prisoners, a final, almost incomprehensible act of cruelty at the tail end of the Holocaust. Survivors described roads littered with bodies, a landscape of frozen corpses stretching for miles, the last atrocity of a collapsing regime determined to erase its own crimes.