The Death Marches

Jewish History Soundbites

Towards the end of 1944, as it became clear to the senior officers of the Nazi SS that the war was lost, they decided to evacuate the many concentration camps which held several hundred thousand inmates, and which stood in the path of the rapidly advancing Red Army. Himmler and his SS didn’t want to leave living witnesses to be liberated by the Allied armies, and they also wished to utilize the slave labor of concentration camp inmates in the remaining war industry in Germany for the duration of the war. During the winter of 1944-45, a mass evacuation of nearly a half a million prisoners commenced from large concentration camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Stutthof and Gross-Rosen, along with many smaller camps, began under horrid conditions. Starved, diseased, freezing weather, lack of preparation for the journey, and constant shootings of those who lagged behind, made these death marches a murderous journey, in which tens of thousands were killed or died along the way. As trains were often unavailable, the bulk of these death marches took place on foot. This last deadly phase of the Holocaust was a tragic ending for many victims, and a traumatic memory for the few survivors.

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