While some had been driven from the largest extermination and concentration camp, thousands of emaciated prisoners had been left behind to die. The Germans had long known they might have to abandon Auschwitz, but they planned to use it as long as possible, further exploiting the workers whose slave labor they rented to companies that produced chemicals, armaments and other materials. By late 1944, they were still unsure if the Allies would make it to Oswiecim. As they waited, they moved forward with a preliminary evacuation, even founding a new sub-camp at a steel mill.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Even as they waited to determine if a mass evacuation was needed, the Germans began to destroy evidence of their crimes. They murdered most of the Jews who had worked in Auschwitz's gas chambers and crematoria, then destroyed most of the killing sites. They also took steps to move much of the material they had looted from the jews they murdered elsewhere. Then the Soviets broke through German defenses and began to approach Krakow. As the Red Army marched closer and closer, the SS decided it was time to evacuate. They planned what prisoners thought of as death marches--lengthy, forced journeys from Auschwitz toward other concentration and death camps. Starting on January 17, prisoners were forced into long columns and told to walk westward toward territory still held by Germany. Only those in good health could participate, and those who fell were shot and left behind. The death marches, which occurred in extremely cold conditions, killed up to 15,000 prisoners. Those who remained were forced into open freight cars and shipped further into the Reich, where they were relocated to various camps still under German control.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             When a group of Russian scouts stumbled into Birkenea on January 27, 1945, they knew they had found something terrible. The scouts were followed by troops who entered the camp. Evva Mozes Kor was 10 years old when she spotted the soldiers. She was one of a group of hundreds of children who had been left behind, and she had endured medical experiments during her imprisonment. She remembered how the soldiers gave her "hugs, cookies and chocolate...We were not only starved for food but we were starved for human kindness."  That human kindness characterized the liberation. The shocked soldiers set up hospitals on site, and townspeople volunteered to help. Polish Red Cross workers labored to save the dying and treat the living, working without adequate food or supplies and helping prisoners get in touch with their loved ones. About 7,500 survived.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 After Soviet investigators learned the true extent of the killings at Auschwitz, it soon became known as a symbol of the horrors of the Holocaust. With the help of the Polish government, a group of former prisoners turned the site into a memorial and museum. Auschwitz had been the site of 1.1 million murders, and in 1947 it became the site of it's mastermind's hanging. After testifying at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Rudolf Hoss, the SS officer who served as Auschwitz's commandant for more than four years, was put on trial by Poland's Supreme National Tribunal.  While he awaited his execution, he wrote his memoirs and expressed remorse for his crimes. He was hanged near the Gestapo quarters at Auschwitz--Poland's last public execution. Dispite the best efforts of Hoss and his fellow Nazis, approximately 15 percent of the people sent to Auschwitz are thought to have survived. Though their numbers dwindle each year, many are still speaking out about their ordeal in an attempt to commemorate those who were  murdered and warm the world about the dangers of bigotry and anti-Semitism.