The Death Marches | Yad Vashem

Towards the end of the war, as the German army was retreating on all fronts, Nazi Germany began to evacuate the camps near the Eastern Front and march the inmates westward. Not yielding despite their visible defeat, the Nazis were determined to prevent the survivors from falling into Allied hands. During these "death marches" prisoners were forced to march long distances in bitter cold, with little or no food, water or rest. Those who were unable to continue were shot along the way. Liberation was close, yet for the victims this was the beginning of a new phase of indescribable suffering. Many lost their lives in these last months and days of the war. It is estimated that over one half of the prisoners did not survive the death marches.

Online Exhibition

The Death March to Volary

On 20 January 1945, approximately 1,000 Jewish female prisoners were evacuated from the Schlesiersee camp (now Sława) in Upper Silesia, Western Poland, and forced on a death march heading southwest. Along the way, the march passed through other camps, and additional women were added.

On 5 May 1945, after more than 800 kilometers and 106 days of walking, the journey ended in the town of Volary (Wallern in German) in the Czech Republic. Out of the approximately 1,300 women who marched from Schlesiersee to Volary, only some 350 survived.

The exhibition is based on the latest research on death marches, testimonies of survivors and American liberators, and documentation from the trial of the march commander, Alois Dēr.

זיהוי שמותיהם של קרבנות צעדת מוות הקבורים בקבר אחים בקשיאוז'ניצה שבפולין

Identifying the death march victims buried in a mass grave in Książenice, Poland

In a Christian cemetery in the village of Książenice, Poland, a memorial presides over a mass grave of 45 people, victims of a death march that left Auschwitz-Birkenau.

איזור דכאו, גרמניה, 1945 – אסירים מן המחנה בצעדת מוות

Last Jews in the last months of the German Reich

In the summer of 1944, during the Red Army's major offensive in the East, the Germans started evacuating concentration camps and forced their prisoners on death marches westward. The marches served a twofold purpose: to ensure that no witnesses would be left to testify to the murders, as well as to exploit the Jewish labor force until the last possible moment at the destination of the marches in German and Austrian camps.

Reading Corner

Academic article

The Death Marches of Hungarian Jews Through Austria in the Spring of 1945

Eleonore Lappin

50 min.

Academic article

Auschwitz - Grosswerther - Gunskirchen: A Nine Months' Odyssey Through Eight Nazi Concentration Camps

Joachim Neander

33 min.

Holocaust Lexicon

Death Marches

12 min.

The Germans hasten their pace, denying us even a moment's rest. Is there a destination we're meant to reach?... or will this march stretch on without end, with no respite, without a destination? From here on, our legs move on pure inertia. It's impossible to look up at the sky; our eyes, stubbornly fixed on the ground, are drawn to the rhythm of the feet of the row in front of us advancing at the same pace.
From the memoirs of Giuliana Tedeschi: The Death Marches and Liberation