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Sometimes referred to as “the final phase of Nazi genocide”, so-called death marches were a frequent occurrence in German territories in the final year of the Second World War. As the Allied forces pushed towards Germany from all sides, the SS began to evacuate prisoners from concentration camps, particularly in Eastern Europe, to be used as slave laborers in Germany. Such death marches had been used during Operation Barbarossa, where thousands of Soviet POWs were marched from the eastern front to Poland and Germany to be used as slave laborers, and around 76,000 Hungarian Jews were marched from Budapest to Austria Germany in March 1944. However, these marches became much more common from January 1945, as the Soviets pushed the Axis forces out of Poland.

Dismantling in the east

The Nazi regime wanted to prioritize the transfer of fit and able-bodied prisoners to work in German industry, but, in reality, a large share of these prisoners were sick, malnourished, and unable to keep up. Because of this, thousands died of exhaustion during these journeys, and those that failed to keep up or showed signs of weakness were murdered along the way. Many of the longest death marches from the east also took place at the height of winter, and the already-weakened prisoners were not equipped with adequate clothing or footwear to survive in the cold. Additionally, as the Allies uncovered evidence of large-scale extermination programs, Nazi leadership ordered the transfer, dismantling, or destruction of concentration camp equipment and records in order to conceal evidence of their activities. This also included the murder of prisoners who were too weak to even set off on the death marches, and the destruction of camp records is one reason why so much information about the Holocaust and its victims has been lost.

Extermination through exhaustion

Possibly the largest evacuation was from Auschwitz; at least 65,000 prisoners had been transferred to Germany in the second half of 1944, and an additional 56,000 to 58,000 were then transferred in one week in January 1945; when the camp was liberated on January 27 there were just 7,000 prisoners left behind (of 1.3 million deportees). Most of the marches from Auschwitz were to train stations 50-60km away, although some columns of prisoners were marched much further, including the 250km march to Gross-Rosen camp. The rapidity of the Soviet advance meant that some death marches set off with no clear destination, such as the evacuation of the Stutthof camp near Gdansk where 7,000 prisoners were ultimately marched towards the Baltic Sea, and the 6,300 who survived were forced into the freezing water and gunned down; only 13 or 14 survived. Similarly, of the 40,000 prisoners evacuated from the Gross-Rosen camp complex in February 1945, half of these were Jews from the Eulengebirge subcamp who were all murdered before or during the death marches. With the loss of the extermination camps in Poland, death marches became one of the most effective ways of committing mass genocide. In Northern Germany, even during the final weeks of the war, it is estimated that there were upwards of 60,000 prisoners from Bergen-Belsen, Neuengamme, and Mittelbau-Dora being aimlessly marched around Northeast Germany in search of a safe camp. In total, over 700,000 prisoners were sent on death marches in the final six months of the Second World War, and 200,000 to 250,000 of these perished or were murdered during the march.