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The largest of its kind, the Auschwitz camp complex was essential to carrying out the Nazi plan for the "Final Solution." Auschwitz left its mark as one of the most infamous camps of the Holocaust | USHMM |
The best estimates of the number of victims at the Auschwitz camp complex, including the killing center at Auschwitz-Birkenau, between 1940 and 1945 are:

Jews (1,095,000 deported to Auschwitz, 960,000 died)

Non-Jewish Poles (140,000- 150,000 deported, 74,000 died)

Roma (Gypsies) (23,000 deported, 21,000 died)

Soviet prisoners of war (15,000 deported and died)

Other nationalities (25,000 deported, 10,000- 15,000 died)

On June 22, 1941, German forces invaded the Soviet Union. Three million German soldiers were reinforced by Finnish, Romanian, Hungarian, Italian, Slovak, and Croatian troops. Within weeks, German divisions conquered the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. In September the Germans laid siege to Sevastopol and Leningrad, and by late October, the cities of Minsk, Smolensk, Kiev, Odessa, and Kharkov had fallen. Millions of Soviet soldiers were encircled, cut off from supplies and reinforcements, and forced to surrender.
Soviets Viewed as Subhuman Enemies
Yet for Nazi Germany this attack was not an "ordinary" military operation. The war against the Soviet Union was a war of annihilation between German fascism and Soviet communism; a racial war between German "Aryans" and subhuman Slavs and Jews. From the very beginning this war of annihilation against the Soviet Union included the killing of prisoners of war (POWs) on a massive scale.
In part, German officials excused their ill treatment and murder of Soviet POWs by pointing out that the Soviet Union was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention and its soldiers did not warrant the protection that the convention extended to prisoners of war. In reality, their reasons were more complex. German authorities viewed Soviet POWs as a particular threat, regarding them not only as Slavic subhumans but as part of the "Bolshevik menace" linked in Nazi ideology to the concept of a "Jewish conspiracy."
The brutal treatment of Soviet POWs by the Germans violated every standard of warfare. Existing sources suggest that some 5.7 million Soviet army personnel fell into German hands during World War II.