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DEATH MARCHES

1945, JAN HARTMAN

1945, JAN HARTMAN. Gift of Dr. Bohuslav Kratochvíl, courtesy of Dr. Kurt Passer, London. Born in Vienna in 1920. In 1938, with the annexation of Austria to Germany, he was sent by his parents to a pioneering Hachshara (Aliyah preparation) camp in Germany, whose members reached Denmark by means of a special agreement. With the intention of reaching Eretz Israel he surreptitiously boarded a train but was caught at the border between Germany and Switzerland. He was sent to Auschwitz in May 1943 where he received prisoner number 123201. In January 1945 Glück joined the death march to Blechhammer, Gross Rosen and from there to Buchenwald. Following the liberation, he reached the DP camp at Bergen Belsen and emigrated to Eretz Israel a few months later within the framework of the Aliyah Bet. He died in Israel in 2007.

A DRAWING OF AUSTRALIAN

A DRAWING OF AUSTRALIAN POWs being marched through Germany during the winter of 1944-45

A LONG COLUMN OF JEWS MARCHES THROUGH THE STREETS OF PABIANICE

A LONG COLUMN OF JEWS MARCHES THROUGH THE STREETS OF PABIANICE, a long column of Jews marches through the streets of Pabianice during a deportation action. Despite the harsh living conditions in the ghetto, there was a small theatre staging plays and vaudeville shows. The former Jewish school housed a Jewish-only hospital. On May 16-18, 1942, the liquidation of the ghetto took place. On May 16, the SS and SA encircled Warszawska and Zamkowa Streets, which were inside the ghetto. Jewish citizens were led along these streets. The weak, the ill, and those who did not agree to leave their homes were killed instantly. The living were kept in a stadium on Zamkowa Street. The area was encircled with a high fence.

AN AMERICAN SOLDIER

AN AMERICAN SOLDIER looks at the corpses of Polish, Russian, and Hungarian Jews found in the woods near Neunburg vorm Wald. The victims were prisoners from Flossenbürg who were shot near Neunburg while on a death march. Germany, April 29, 1945.

AS AN ADOLESCENT WILLY BRANDT

AS AN ADOLESCENT, WILLY BRANDT is already a resolute opponent of National Socialism. In 1933, he immediately offers resistance against the totalitarian dictatorship which Hitler and the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) establish. Pursued by the Nazi regime, Brandt finds asylum in Norway and later in Sweden. In exile, the democratic socialist, who establishes many international contacts, belongs to the outstanding representatives of the “other” Germany. From Scandinavia, Brandt struggles in the political arena for the liberation of Europe from the Nazi tyranny.

At the end of World War II

AT THE END OF WORLD WAR II, as the Nazis found themselves losing territory to the Allies on one side and the Russians on the other, they began forcing Jews to march from concentration camps near the battlefront closer to Germany.

CLANDESTINE PHOTOGRAPH

CLANDESTINE PHOTOGRAPH of prisoners marching to Dachau.

Dachau concentration camp inmates on a death march

DACHAU CONCENTRATION CAMP INMATES ON A DEATH MARCH, photographed on 28 April 1945 by Benno Gantner from his balcony in Percha. The prisoners were heading in the direction of Wolfratshausen.

DEATH MARCH BUDAPEST

DEATH MARCH BUDAPEST, they marched to a new camp in Auschwitz, were all they really did was sleep and avoid transports where they would be killed. Everyone in the concentration camp was tattooed a number where that became their new identity. They stayed in that concentration camp for three week before they were marched out and transferred to a camp called Buna.

Death March from Camp Gleiwitz I

DEATH MARCH FROM CAMP GLEIWITZ I. David Friedmann’s “Death March from Camp Gleiwitz I to Camp Blechhammer,” 1947. Oil on canvas. Copyright @1989 Miriam Friedman Morris.

DEATH MARCH OF PRISONERS

DEATH MARCH OF PRISONERS from Dachau, end of April 1945.

DEATH MARCH, JAN HARTMAN, 1945

DEATH MARCH, JAN HARTMAN, 1945, a line of concentration camp prisoners being marched through a winter landscape. They are accompanied by guards and walk past bodies lying in the foreground.

DEATH MARCHES 2

DEATH MARCHES 2: Jehovah's Witnesses were among the many groups of people to be killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust, and the only ones to be targeted for their religious beliefs alone.
Jehovah's Witnesses Public Information Department

EVACUATION

EVACUATION: In the closing days of the war many concentration camps, suddenly exposed to the fighting on the front, were abandoned and often deliberately destroyed. In an effort to hide their crimes, the SS evacuated the prisoners in forced death marches. Tens of thousands of them perished and were buried at the roadside in various parts of Germany. Komski walked this way to his last concentration camp, Dachau. The journey took 16 days. With no food at all being distributed to the prisoners, only those resourceful enough were able to make it. Komski and his comrades survived on a pail of potatoes they bought from a German farmer for a hundred dollars they found sewn in the lining of a coat.

From spring 1944 onwards

FROM SPRING 1944 ONWARDS the Nazis ordered the forced evacuation of prisoners from camps across occupied Europe. These forced evacuations became known as death marches.

FUNERAL SERVICE FOR VICTIMS OF A DEATH MARCH

FUNERAL SERVICE FOR VICTIMS OF A DEATH MARCH. US troops and German civilians from Neunburg vorm Wald attend a funeral service for Polish, Hungarian, and Russian Jews found in the forest near their town. The victims were shot by the SS while on a death march from Flossenbürg. Neunburg, Germany, April 29, 1945. Following the discovery of death march victims, US Army officers forced local Germans to view the scene of the crime and ordered the townspeople to give the victims a proper burial.

IN THE FINAL MONTHS

IN THE FINAL MONTHS of World War II, 700,000 prisoners were evacuated from concentration camps and traveled throughout Europe. 250,000 to 300,000 died from exhaustion or were massacred by the guards or even civilians in Austria and Germany.

INMATES ON A

INMATES ON A death march, Dachau, 1945

JEWS CARRYING THEIR POSSESSIONS

JEWS CARRYING THEIR POSSESSIONS during deportation to the Chelmno extermination camp. Most of the people seen here had previously been deported to Lodz from central Europe. Lodz, Poland, between January and April 1942.

Near the end of the war

NEAR THE END OF THE WAR, civilians in town of Nammering were ordered to dig graves for the prisoners.

On January 19, 1945

ON JANUARY 19, 1945, the French-Jewish artist David Olère, prisoner of Sonderkommando at Auschwitz, began the death march from Auschwitz to the Ebensee camp, a satellite of the Mauthausen concentration camp. He was liberated by the Americans in May 1945.

ORANIENBURG SACHSENHAUSEN DEATH MARCH

ORANIENBURG SACHSENHAUSEN DEATH MARCH, the evacuation of Sachsenhausen concentration camp began in the early hours of 21 April 1945. More than 30,000 remaining internees were marched off in groups towards the north-west. Thousands of internees died on these Death Marches. On 22 April 1945, units of the Soviet and Polish armies finally liberated around 3,000 sick internees as well as nurses and doctors who had been left behind in the camp. 300 of the camp’s former inmates did not survive their liberation and died there as a result of their incarceration in the concentration camp; they were buried in six mass graves by the camp wall near the infirmary.

PRISONERS HAULING EARTH

PRISONERS HAULING EARTH for the construction of the "Russian camp" at Mauthausen.

TRANSPORT FROM THERESINSTADT EAST

TRANSPORT FROM THERESINSTADT EAST, “The world must see through the eyes of the artists the horrors of Nazi brutality. Stories and numbers are too often forgotten or are so shocking that they completely defy imagination. But through documentary pictures, Nazism can be, and should be kept alive in the minds of all peoples of the world.” LEO HAAS, PRAGUE, JUNE 30, 1946. JDC Archives, New York Office Collection 1945-1954, Folder 1351, “Statement from Leo Haas, re: Paintings and Personal Story,”

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