The Death Marches

About

- death marches (German: todesmarsche) used by prisoners, later employed by historians

Testimonies

- real survivors

- credible information

- life stories

Testimonies

Timeline

1945

- winter

- Germans knew they lost the war

- led to the evacuation of concentration camps in Poland while marching them to Germany

March-April 1945 = war drawing to a close

- the Nazis continued to evacuated camp after camp

- at least 250,000 of their 700,000 marched; marches lasted for weeks, causing thousands of deaths along the highways of western Austria and central Germany

“the Jews themselves lived in constant fear of being murdered during the final stages of the war, as they were no longer needed for work” - Yad Vashem Museum

1945

1941

- summer

- first large-scale death march

- after German invasion of the Soviet Union

- Romanians marched Jews from Bessarabia to Bukovina to Transnistria

- January 21, 1945 = continuation of evacuation

- 4,000 prisoners were sent off from the Hblechhammer camp

- emptied the Stutthof camp complex

- holding 47,000 prisoners (over 35,000 of them Jews)

- force-marched for 10 days (700 died en route) survivors arrived at the Baltic Sea on January 31

- Nazis pushed the remaining prisoners into the sea and shot them - only 13 survived

credit: Holocaust, Encyclopedia of the. “The Killing in Transnista.” The Killings in Transnistria, https://isurvived.org/Transnistria.html.

credit: Essay, Media. “EVACUATIONS AND DEATH MARCH FROM STUTTHOF” Holocaust Encyclopedia: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2021, pp. 1–1.

Timeline

- January 18, 1945 = evacuation of Auschwitz and satellite camps

- Jewish prisoners were marched to Wodzislaw, where they were placed on freight trains and shipped to other concentration camps such as Gross-Rosen, Buchewald, Dachau, and Mauthausen

60,000 prisoners; 15,000 deaths (this march only)

- April 6, 1945 = evacuation of main Buchenwald camp

- 3,100 Jewish prisoners were marched off (1,400 murdered en route)

- next 4 days 40,000 prisoners were evacuated from the camp (13,500 were killed)

- 20,000 prisoners remained in the camp

- Rehmsdorf last sub-camps to be emptied = evacuated on April 13

- over 4,000 prisoners left the camp

- only 500 survivors

- winter

- expedition of deportation of the Jews

credit: Essay, Media. “MAJOR DEATH MARCHES FROM AUSCHWITZ, JANUARY 1945” Holocaust Encyclopedia: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2021, pp. 1–1.

credit: Essay, Media. “MAJOR DEATH MARCHES FROM BUCHENWALD, APRIL 1945” Holocaust Encyclopedia: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2021, pp. 1–1.

1945

- February 1945

- evacuation of Gross-Rosen and its sub-camps: 40,000 prisoners were marched off, and thousands were murdered

- 20,000 Jewish prisoners, working at Forced Labor camps at Eulengebirge

1. murdered right before the evacuation

2. during the death march away from the camps

- Budapest death march (start: November 8, 1944 - end: late December, 1944)

- 76,000 Jews marched to the Austrian border

- turned over to German soldiers and deported to various concentration camps

- hundreds rescued by neutral diplomats, Raoul Wallenberg from Sweden

credit: Essay, Media. “DEATH MARCHES FROM GROSS-ROSEN, FEBRUARY 1945” Holocaust Encyclopedia: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2021, pp. 1–1.

1944

1945

credit: Essay, Media. “DEATH MARCH FROM BUDAPEST, 1944.” Holocaust Encyclopedia: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2021, pp. 1–1.

Sources

Conclusion

Friedman, M., & Friedberg, E. (2009, May 27). United States holocaust memorial museum. Retrieved November 22, 2021, from https://www.ushmm.org/remember/holocaust-survivors/first-person-conversations-with-survivors/first-person/manya-friedman-death-march-to-ravensbruck.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC. (n.d.). United States holocaust memorial museum. Retrieved November 22, 2021, from https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/death-marches.

Ushmm. (n.d.). Death March from Auschwitz. United States holocaust memorial museum. Retrieved November 22, 2021, from https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1942-1945/death-march-from-auschwitz.

Vashem, Yad. “Death Marches.” Www.yadvashem.org, www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206260.pdf.