When Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, they found only the few thousand pitiful survivors who had been left behind as well as 836,525 items of women clothing, 348,820 items of men clothing, 43,525 pairs of shoes and vast numbers of toothbrushes, glasses and other personal effects. They found also 460 artificial limbs and seven tons of human hair shaved from Jews before they were murdered. The human hairs were used by the company "Alex Zink" for confection of cloth. This company was paying the Nazi's 50 pfennig per kilo of human hair.