Back مسيرات الموت في العهد النازي Arabic Marxes de la mort (Holocaust) Catalan Todesmärsche von KZ-Häftlingen German Πορείες θανάτου (Ολοκαύτωμα) Greek Marchas de la muerte (Holocausto) Spanish راه‌پیمایی مرگ (هولوکاست) Persian Kuolemanmarssi (holokausti) Finnish Marches de la mort (Shoah) French Deademars (Twadde Wrâldoarloch) Frisian צעדות המוות בשואה HE

Death marches during the Holocaust

Dachau concentration camp inmates on a death march, photographed on 28 April 1945 by Benno Gantner from his balcony in Percha.[1] The prisoners were heading in the direction of Wolfratshausen.

During the Holocaust, death marches (German: Todesmärsche) were massive forced transfers of prisoners from one Nazi camp to other locations, which involved walking long distances resulting in numerous deaths of weakened people. Most death marches took place toward the end of World War II, mostly after the summer/autumn of 1944. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, from Nazi camps near the Eastern Front were moved to camps inside Germany away from the Allied forces.[2] Their purpose was to continue the use of prisoners' slave labour, to remove evidence of crimes 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 Soviet Red Army arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp, the Germans marched 56,000 prisoners toward a train station at Wodzisław, 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 the Lublin Reservation, Poland, and in 1942 in Reichskommissariat Ukraine.

  1. ^ "Oral history interview with Benno Gantner". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
  2. ^ For the timing, see Blatman, Daniel (2011). The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide. Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-674-05049-5.
  3. ^ "Death marches". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
  4. ^ Blatman 2011, p. 81ff.
  5. ^ Hojka, Piotr; Kulpa, Sławomir (2016). Kierunek Loslau. Marsz ewakuacyjny więźniów oświęcimskich w styczniu 1945 roku. Wodzisław Śląski: Museum in Wodzisław Śląski. ISBN 978-83-927256-0-2.

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