when were the concentration camps discovered

The concentration camps of Nazi Germany were first discovered by the Allies during their advance in World War II. The earliest major concentration camp discovered by the Allies was Majdanek, near Lublin, Poland, on July 22, 1944, by the Soviet Red Army. The Nazis had already begun evacuating and attempting to erase traces, but gas chambers and crematoria remained evident. Following this, Soviet troops liberated other camps including Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. The largest and most notorious camp, Auschwitz, was liberated by the Soviet Army in January 1945. American and British forces liberated other camps such as Dachau and Bergen-Belsen in the spring of 1945 as they moved through Germany. The liberation and discovery of these camps revealed the full extent of the atrocities committed within them.