“[German: Todesmarsche] Death marches were the forced marches of

prisoners over long distances, under unbearable conditions, during which the

prisoners were abused by their accompanying guards and often killed. The

Nazis conducted many death marches during the Holocaust, mostly near the

war's end, following the evacuation of Concentration Camps. The term death

march was used originally by prisoners in Nazi concentration camps, and later

employed by Holocaust historians.

“The first large-scale death march took place in the summer of 1941,

following the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands of

Soviet prisoners of war were forced to walk along the highways of the Ukraine

and Belorussia while being transferred from one camp to another. Masses of

prisoners were murdered along the way, or at prearranged execution sites.

Around the same time, Romanians (who were then German allies) marched

Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina to Transnistria. Thousands were shot

along the way by the Romanian and German guards.

“Most death marches took place near the end of World War II. During the

summer of 1944, as the Allies advanced in the west and the Soviets advanced

in the East, the Nazis began liquidating the concentration camps in earnest.

The first camps to be emptied were those in eastern and central Poland and in

the Baltic States.

“That fall, Nazi leaders decided to expedite the deportation of the Jews of

Budapest to their deaths. A death march from Budapest commenced on

November 8, 1944. 76,000 Jewish men, women, and children were forced to

walk to the Austrian border, accompanied by Hungarian guards. The march

lasted a month, during which time thousands died from starvation, disease,

exhaustion, and cold. Thousands more were shot along the way. Several

hundred were rescued by neutral diplomats like Raoul Wallenberg from

Sweden, who pulled Jews out of the marching lines, took them into his

custody, and accompanied them back to Budapest. Most were not so lucky,

though–those prisoners who reached the Austrian border were turned over to German soldiers, who led them to various concentration camps, such as

Dachau and Mauthausen.

“During the winter of 1944--1945, the Germans knew that they had essentially

lost the war. This led them to evacuate the Polish concentration camps, and

force-march their prisoners to 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.

“On January 18th 1945, the evacuation of Auschwitz and its satellite camps

commenced. About 60,000 mostly Jewish prisoners, were marched to

Wodzislaw (called Loslau in German), where they were placed on crowded

freight trains and shipped to other concentration camps further west, such as

Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Mauthausen. At least 15,000 people

died or were killed on this particular death march.

“Three days later, on January 21, 4,000 prisoners, mostly Jews, were sent off

from the Hblechhammer camp. During that month, the Germans also began to

empty the Stutthof camp complex–a network that at that time held 47,000

prisoners, over 35,000 of them Jews, most of them female. A total of 7,000

Jews, 6,000 women and 1,000 men, were force-marched for 10 days. Seven

hundred were murdered en route. Those who survived the march itself arrived

at the Baltic Sea on January 31. That very day, the Nazis pushed the

remaining prisoners into the sea and shot them–only 13 survived.

“The evacuation of the main camp of Gross-Rosen and its sub-camps began

in February 1945. Altogether, 40,000 prisoners were marched off, and

thousands were murdered along the way. In February, the 20,000 Jewish

prisoners who worked in the Forced Labor camps at Eulengebirge, were

either murdered right before the evacuation or during the death march away

from the camps.

“Throughout March and April 1945, as the war drew to a close, the Nazis

evacuated camp after camp, sending at least 250,000 of their 700,000

concentration camp prisoners on death marches. Some of those marches

lasted for weeks, causing thousands of deaths along the highways of western

Austria and central Germany. Often, the prisoners would be marched on foot part of the way, and then crowded onto trains–70 people to a car–where they

were denied food and water.

“On April 6, 1945, the evacuation of the main Buchenwald camp commenced.

3,100 Jewish prisoners were marched off, of whom 1,400 were murdered en

route. Over the next four days, another 40,000 prisoners were evacuated from

the camp, of which 13,500 were killed. Just over 20,000 prisoners remained in

the camp, including a few Jews. One of the remaining Buchenwald sub-camps

to be emptied was Rehmsdorf, which was evacuated on April 13. Over 4,000

prisoners left the camp, but no more than 500 survived through the end of the

march. The Dora-Mittelbau camp evacuation also started on April. Most of the

camp's prisoners were marched for two weeks towards Bergen-Belsen. One

group of prisoners was forced into a barn that was then set on fire. American

troops arrived the next day to discover hundreds of burnt bodies.

“By the end of April, the Nazis had initiated death marches from Flossenburg,

Sachsenhausen, Neungamme, Magdeburg, Mauthausen, Ravensbrueck, and

from several of the Dachau sub-camps. During those marches, which lasted

literally until the day of the Nazi surrender two weeks later, tens of thousands

of prisoners died or were executed. Those who fell behind or stopped to rest,

even for a moment, were shot. In one instance, thousands of mostly

Hungarian prisoners were buried along a short 37-mile stretch of road

between Gunskirchen and Mauthausen. In all, an estimated 200,000-250,000

concentration camp prisoners were murdered or died on the forced death

marches that were conducted throughout the last ten months of World War II,

25% to a third of them Jews.”

Accessed on July 19, 2011

Austria, A death march to Mauthausen, 1945

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Austria, People who died during a death march

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Dachau, Germany, Camp inmates on a death march, 1945

Accessed on July 19, 2011