On this day in 1945, the 70th motorized infantry brigade of the Soviet Army liberated the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. The Gross-Rosen concentration camp was created as a subcamp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, but in 1941, it became independent. By the end of the War, Gross-Rosen included at least 97 subcamps, becoming an industrial hub for the Nazis. The camps were mostly labor camps and the prisoners were forced to work in mines and factories. On January 1, 1945, there were 76,728 prisoners in Gross-Rosen, with 26,000 of them being women, one of the largest groups of female prisoners in a concentration camp. When the Soviet Army approached Gross-Rosen in early January, the Nazis’ began liquidating the subcamps east of the Oder River in Poland. By February, they dissolved the main camps and the subcamps west of the river as well. The Nazis forced most of the prisoners — at least 44,000 people — onto freight cars and brought them to Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Dora-Mittelbau, and Neuengamme. Many prisoners died on the way due to the brutal conditions. It is believed that over the course of the Holocaust, of the 120,000 prisoners who spent time in Gross-Rosen, at least 40,000 died either in the camp or during the brutal evacuation in 1945.