Death marches (Holocaust)

Death marches (Todesmärsche in German) refer to the forcible movements of prisoners in Nazi Germany. They occurred at various points during the Holocaust, including in 1939 in the Lublin province of Poland, in 1942 in Ukraine, and between Autumn 1944 and late April 1945 from Nazi concentration camps and prisoner of war camps near the front, to camps inside Germany away from front lines and Allied forces to remove evidence from concentration camps and to prevent the repatriation of prisoners of war.

Towards the end of World War II in 1944, Allied forces advanced from the west, while forces of the Soviet Union advanced from the east. Trapped in the middle, the SS – not wanting the world to know about the Holocaust – decided to abandon the Nazi concentration camps, moving or destroying evidence of the atrocities they had committed there. Thousands of prisoners were killed in the camps before the marches commenced. These executions were deemed crimes against humanity during the Nuremberg 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 at a time 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 first evacuation of Majdanek inmates started in April 1944. The prisoners of Kaiserwald were transported to Stutthof or killed in August. Mittelbau-Dora was evacuated in April 1945.

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