| Death marches during the Holocaust | |
|---|---|
 Dachau concentration camp inmates on a death march, photographed on 28 April 1945 by Benno Gantner from his balcony inPercha.[1] The prisoners were heading in the direction ofWolfratshausen. | |
| Location | Central and Eastern Europe |
| Date | 1939–1945 |
| Incident type | Death march,population transfer,genocide |
| Victims | Estimated hundreds of thousands |
| Memorials | Various Holocaust memorials and museums |
Duringthe Holocaust,death marches (German:Todesmärsche) were massive forced transfers of prisoners from oneNazi camp to other locations, which involved walking long distances resulting in numerous deaths of weakened people. Mostdeath marches took place toward the end ofWorld War II, mostly after the summer/autumn of 1944. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, from Nazi camps near theEastern Front were moved to camps inside Germany away from theAllied forces.[2] Their purpose was to continue the use ofprisoners' slave labour, to remove evidence ofcrimes against humanity, and to keep the prisoners to bargain with the Allies.[3]
Prisoners were marched to train stations, often a long way; transported for days at a time without food in freight trains; then forced to march again to a new camp. Those who lagged behind or fell were shot. The largest death march took place in January 1945. Nine days before the SovietRed Army arrived at theAuschwitz concentration camp, the Germans marched 56,000 prisoners toward a train station atWodzisław, 35 miles (56 km) away, to be transported to other camps.[4] Around 15,000 died on the way.[5]
Earlier marches of prisoners, also known as "death marches", include those in 1939 in theLublin Reservation, Poland, and in 1942 inReichskommissariat Ukraine.
Towards the end of World War II in 1945, Nazi Germany had evacuated an estimated 10 to 15 million people, mostly fromEast Prussia and occupiedEastern andCentral Europe.[6] While the Allied forces advanced from the West, and theRed Army advanced from the East, trapped in the middle, the GermanSS divisions abandoned the concentration camps, moving or destroying evidence of the atrocities they had committed. Thousands of prisoners were killed in the camps before the marches commenced.[7] These executions were deemedcrimes against humanity during theNuremberg trials.
Although most of the prisoners were already very weak or ill after enduring the routine violence, overwork, and starvation of concentration camp or prison camp life, they were marched for kilometres in the snow to railway stations, then transported for days without food, water, or shelter in freight carriages originally designed for cattle. On arrival at their destination, they were then forced to march again to new camps. Prisoners who were unable to keep up due to fatigue or illness were usually executed by gunshot. The evacuation ofMajdanek inmates began in April 1944. The prisoners ofKaiserwald were transported toStutthof or killed in August.Mittelbau-Dora was evacuated in April 1945.[8]
The SS killed large numbers of prisoners by starvation before the marches and shot many more dead both during and after for not being able to keep pace. Seven hundred prisoners were killed during one ten-day march of 7,000 Jews, including 6,000 women, who were being moved from camps in theDanzig region. Those still alive when the marchers reached the coast were forced into theBaltic Sea and shot.[9]
Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and winner of the 1986Nobel Peace Prize, describes in his bookNight (1960) how he and his father, Shlomo, were forced on a death march fromBuna (Auschwitz III) toGleiwitz.[10]
In December 1939, 2,000 male Jews fromChełm, Poland, were forced on a death march to the nearby town ofHrubieszów; 200–800 died during the march. At Hrubieszów, another 2,000 Jews were rounded up and forced to join the Chełm Jews.[11]
In January 1940, the Germans deported a group of prisoners from theLipowa 7 prisoner of war camp toBiała Podlaska and then toParczew. They rushed them on foot among snowstorms and temperatures below −20 °C (−4 °F). Those POWs who did not follow orders were killed by the German guards. The inhabitants of the nearby villages were forced to collect and bury the bodies in mass graves. Only a small group of prisoners survived this march of death. A few were able to escape into the woods and join the partisans.[12]
In early June 1942, Jews concentrated inBelz were driven in a 60-kilometre (37 mi) death march toHrubieszow. Those who could not continue on the way were shot by the SS guards. All death march survivors were deported along with about 3,000 Jews from Hrubieszow toSobibor.[citation needed]
The largest[5] and the most notorious of the death marches took place in mid-January 1945. On January 12, the Soviet army began itsVistula-Oder Offensive, advancing onoccupied Poland and reaching near enough such that artillery fire could be heard from the camps.[13] By January 17, orders were given to vacate theAuschwitz concentration camp andits subcamps. Between the 17th and 21st, the SS began marching approximately 56,000 prisoners[13] out of the Auschwitz camps, most of them 63 km (39 mi) west to the train depot atWodzisław Śląski (Loslau),[13] while others marched 55 km (34 mi) northwest toGliwice (Gleiwitz), with some being marched to other locations,[14] throughRacibórz (Ratibor),Prudnik (Neustadt),Nysa (Neisse),Kłodzko (Glatz),Bielawa (Langenbielau),Wałbrzych (Waldenburg) andJelenia Góra (Hirschberg).[15] Temperatures of −20 °C (−4 °F) and lower were recorded at the time of these marches.[5] Some residents ofUpper Silesia tried to help the marching prisoners. Some of the prisoners themselves managed to escape the death marches to freedom.[5] At least 3,000 prisoners died on the Gleiwitz route alone.[14] Approximately 9,000-15,000 prisoners in total died on death marches out of Auschwitz's camps,[16][13] and those who did survive were then put on freight trains and shipped to other camps deeper in German held territory.
On 17 January 1945, when Russian troops were approaching the Auschwitz concentration camp, prisoners were sent on a march to Dachau concentration camp. The ten day journey was on foot and by cattle car: many prisoners were killed along the way.[17]
The evacuation of about 50,000 prisoners from theStutthof camp system in northern Poland began in January 1945. About 5,000 prisoners from Stutthof subcamps were marched to the Baltic Sea coast, forced into the water, and machine gunned. The rest of the prisoners were marched in the direction ofLauenburg in eastern Germany. They were cut off by the advancing Soviet forces. The Germans forced the surviving prisoners back to Stutthof. Marching in severe winter conditions and treated brutally by SS guards, thousands died during the march.[9]
In late April 1945, the remaining prisoners were removed from Stutthof by sea, since it was completely encircled by Soviet forces. Again, hundreds of prisoners were forced into the sea and shot. Over 4,000 were sent by small boat to Germany, some to theNeuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg, and some to camps along the Baltic coast. Many drowned along the way. Shortly before the German surrender, some prisoners were transferred toMalmö, Sweden, and released into the care of that neutral country. It has been estimated that over 25,000 prisoners, around half, died during the evacuation from Stutthof and its subcamps. One hundred prisoners were liberated from Stutthof on 9 May 1945.[9]
In late March 1945, the SS sent 24,500 women prisoners fromRavensbrück concentration camp on death march to the north, to prevent leaving live witnesses in the camp when the Soviet Red Army would arrive, as was likely to happen soon. The survivors of this march were liberated on 30 April 1945, by a Soviet scout unit.
In early 1945,Buchenwald had received numerous prisoners moved from camps further east in territory lost to the Soviets, and camp authorities began to close the outlying camps of Buchenwald (such as those inApolda andAltenburg) to concentrate prisoners in the main camp. In April 1945, about 28,000 prisoners were marched from Buchenwald on a journey of over 300 kilometers throughJena,Eisenberg,Bad Köstritz, andGera[18] with the intended destination ofDachau,Flossenbürg, andTheresienstadt. The remaining 21,000 prisoners in Buchenwald were liberated by the U.S. Third Army on 11 April 1945.[19]
On 24 April 1945, the satellite labor camps aroundDachau were being cleared out by the Nazis ahead of the advancing Allied troops, and some 15,000 prisoners were first marched to the Dachau camp, only to be sent southwards on a death march towards the Austrian border,[20] the path for which generally headed southwards, partly along the eastern shore of theStarnberger See, taking a left turn to the east in the town ofEurasburg and heading towards theTegernsee.
By 2 May 1945, only some of the 6,000 prisoners sent on the death march were still alive; those in failing health had been shot as they fell. On that day, as the eastwards-marching prisoners had passed throughBad Tölz and were nearingWaakirchen, nearly sixty kilometers (37 miles) south of Dachau, several hundred of the dead and dying were lying on open ground, nearly all covered in freshly fallen snow. They were spotted by advance scouts of the U.S. Army's522nd Field Artillery Battalion, the only segregatedJapanese American–manned military unit in Germany at the time. Only days earlier, they hadliberated theKaufering IV Hurlach satellite slave labor camp[21] of the Dachau main camp's "system". They and the other American troops did what they could to save those left alive, for at least two days before dedicated medical personnel could take over.[22][23] A memorial to the rescue by the 522nd exists at47°46′6.15″N11°38′55.30″E / 47.7683750°N 11.6486944°E /47.7683750; 11.6486944, just under two kilometers west of the Waakirchen town centre.[24]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link){{cite web}}:Missing or empty|title= (help)Jewish prisoners from the outer Dachau camps were marched to Dachau, and then 70 miles south. Many of the Jewish marchers weighed less than 80 pounds. Shivering in their tattered striped uniforms, the "skeletons" marched 10 to 15 hours a day, passing more than a dozen Bavarian towns. If they stopped or fell behind, the SS guards shot them and left their corpses along the road.
