TASS, January 29. The US embassy in Denmark has offered apologies on Wednesday for posting a tweet which falsely asserted that the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp was liberated by American soldiers back in 1945.
"Yesterday, we inadvertently wrote that US troops liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was of course liberated by Soviet troops. We acknowledge the important contributions of all Allied Forces during WWII and remember the 6 million Jews who perished during the Holocaust," the US embassy said via Twitter.
Yesterday, we inadvertently wrote that US troops liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was of course liberated by Soviet troops. We acknowledge the important contributions of all Allied Forces during WWII and remember the 6 million Jews who perished during the Holocaust.
— U.S. Embassy Denmark (@usembdenmark) January 28, 2020
On Tuesday, the Russian embassy in US responded to the original tweet claiming that it was Americans who liberated the camp, slamming it as "shameful WWII history rewriting."
On January 27, 1945, the Soviet Red Army liberated the concentration camp where a little over 7,000 prisoners were still held, including a few hundreds of children. Between 1.5 and 2 million people of different nationalities, particularly around 15,000 Soviet citizens, were killed in the death camp. More than 200 Soviet officers and soldiers lost their lives in fighting to liberate the camp.
The United Nations proclaimed this date as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.