In January 1945, the Third Reich stood on the verge of military defeat. As Allied forces approached Nazi camps, the SS organized death marches of concentration camp inmates, in part to keep large numbers of concentration camp prisoners from falling into Allied hands.
In January 1945, the Third Reich stood on the verge of military defeat. As Allied forces approached Nazi camps, the SS organized death marches of concentration camp inmates, in part to keep large numbers of concentration camp prisoners from falling into Allied hands. The term "death march" was probably coined by concentration camp prisoners. It referred to forced marches of concentration camp prisoners over long distances under heavy guard and extremely harsh conditions. During death marches, SS guards brutally mistreated the prisoners and killed many. The largest death marches were launched from Auschwitz and Stutthof.
Fritzie's father immigrated to the United States, but by the time he could bring his family over, war had begun and Fritzie's mother feared attacks on transatlantic shipping. Fritzie, her mother, and two brothers were eventually sent to Auschwitz. Her mother and brothers died. Fritzie survived by pretending to be older than her age and thus a stronger worker. On a death march from Auschwitz, Fritzie ran into a forest, where she was later liberated.
Germany invaded Belgium in May 1940. After the Germans seized her mother, sister, and brother, Lilly went into hiding. With the help of friends and family, Lilly hid her Jewish identity for two years. But, in 1944, Lilly was denounced by some Belgians and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau via the Mechelen camp. After a death march from Auschwitz, Lilly was liberated at Bergen-Belsen by British forces.
The Germans occupied Riga in 1941, and confined the Jews to a ghetto. In late 1941, at least 25,000 Jews from the ghetto were massacred at the Rumbula forest. Steven and his brother were sent to a small ghetto for able-bodied men. In 1943 Steven was deported to the Kaiserwald camp and sent to a nearby work camp. In 1944 he was transferred to Stutthof and forced to work in a shipbuilding firm. In 1945, Steven and his brother survived a death march and were liberated by Soviet forces.
Thomas Buergenthal was born in May 1934 in the town of Ľubochňa, Czechoslovakia. His parents, Mundek and Gerda, were Jews who had fled the Nazi rise to power in Germany. In Ľubochňa, Mundek ran a hotel that welcomed other refugees and exiles fleeing Nazi persecution.
1933-39: In 1938-1939, Nazi Germany dismantled the country of Czechoslovakia and created the satellite state of Slovakia. As a result, Thomas and his family fled from Slovakia to neighboring Poland. They hoped eventually to immigrate to Great Britain. After Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, the family tried once again to escape the Nazis, but the events of the war prevented their successful departure. They joined other refugees, and made their way to the Polish city of Kielce.
1940-45: The family stayed in Kielce, where the Jewish community helped provide for Thomas and other refugees. In 1940, German authorities forced Jews in Kielce to move into a ghetto. In August 1942, Thomas and his parents survived the liquidation of the Kielce ghetto, during which German authorities sent 20,000 Jews to the Treblinka killing center. They were imprisoned in a forced-labor camp in Kielce. In August 1944, Thomas and his parents were sent to Auschwitz. Typically, Jewish children Thomas’s age were murdered in the gas chambers upon arrival. But, because there was no selection when the transport from the Kielce labor camp arrived there, he managed to survive. His mother was taken to the women's section of the camp, but Thomas and his father initially remained together in the men’s camp. They too were soon separated. In January 1945, Thomas was evacuated from Auschwitz on a death march. He was then sent by rail to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was liberated in April 1945.
Thomas’s father did not survive. After the war, Thomas was reunited with his mother. He later immigrated to the United States and attended law school. Thomas became a renowned international human rights lawyer.
Pinchas was born into a large family living in the town of Miechow in south central Poland. His father was a machinist and locksmith. Pinchas spent long days studying, either learning Hebrew in the Jewish school or taking general subjects at the public school. He belonged to the Zionist youth organization, Ha Shomer ha-Tsa'ir, and played left wing for a Jewish soccer team.
1933-39: At 13 Pinchas finished school and started work as an apprentice machinist and blacksmith in a building contractor's shop. When the German army invaded Poland in 1939, his parents decided that Pinchas and his older brother, Herschel, should flee to the Soviet-occupied part of Poland. They were on foot and no match for the motorized German division that overtook them about 150 miles east of Miechow. There was nothing else to do but return home.
1940-44: Pinchas repaired vehicles for the Germans in Miechow and later, at their Krakow airbase. In July 1943 he was deported to Krakow's suburb of Plaszow, where the Nazis had established a labor camp over a very old Jewish cemetery. There, he worked as a machinist and blacksmith with his father. Every day he saw Jews being shot by the SS guards or torn to death by dogs. The camp's commander, Goeth, always had two large dogs with him. All he had to say was, "Get somebody!" Pinchas never knew if his last minute was approaching.
Pinchas was deported to Auschwitz in early 1945. One of the few survivors of a two-week death march, he was liberated near the Dachau camp in April. He immigrated to the United States in 1948.
Lilly Appelbaum was born in Antwerp, Belgium to Jewish parents, Israel and Justine. Lilly's parents separated before she was born. Her father immigrated to the United States. Lilly had two older siblings, Leon (born 1927) and Maria (born 1925). She lived with her maternal grandparents in Antwerp. During the week, her mother lived in Brussels, where she operated a small workshop that made raincoats.
1933-39: Lilly and her grandparents lived in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Antwerp. She went to a public school where she spoke Flemish. At home, she used Yiddish with her grandparents. In 1939, Lilly’s grandmother died of cancer. Lilly moved to Brussels to live with Justine. In Brussels, Lilly learned to speak French.
1940-44: Nazi Germany invaded Belgium on May 10, 1940. Over the next several years, German occupation forces imposed increasing restrictions on Jews in Belgium. Then in August 1942, the Germans began systematically deporting Jews from Belgium to Auschwitz.
Justine tried to protect her children and find them hiding places. But she decided that Lilly first needed a tonsillectomy, so that she wouldn’t become ill while in hiding. As Lilly was recuperating in the hospital, she learned that her sister, Maria, had been denounced by the person who was supposed to hide her. Maria was deported to Auschwitz in September 1942. Shortly afterwards, Lilly’s mother and brother were caught in a round up and also deported to Auschwitz. Lilly escaped deportation because at the time she was staying with her aunt and uncle Dwojra and Aron Appelbaum.
Lilly went into hiding with her aunt and uncle in the outskirts of Brussels. In spring 1944, they were discovered, arrested, and sent to theMechelen transit camp, where they remained for weeks. On May 19, 1944, Lilly and her aunt and uncle were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center on transport number XXV from Mechelen.
At Auschwitz, fifteen-year-old Lilly was separated from her relatives. She underwent the dehumanizing camp registration process and was tattooed with camp number A-5143. Eventually, she was assigned to forced labor in a camp kitchen.
In January 1945, Lilly was evacuated along with other Auschwitz prisoners on a death march. She was then transported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she became ill with typhus. She was liberated on April 15, 1945. Lilly returned to Brussels. There, she was reunited with another aunt before immigrating to the United States in 1947. Her mother, brother, sister, aunt, and uncle were killed in the Holocaust.
German civilians from the town of Nammering, under orders of American military authorities, dig graves for victims of a death march from the Buchenwald concentration camp. Germany, May 1945.
Near the end of the war, when Germany's military force was collapsing, the Allied armies closed in on the Nazi concentration camps. The Soviets approached from the east, and the British, French, and Americans from the west. The Germans began frantically to move the prisoners out of the camps near the front and take them to be used as forced laborers in camps inside Germany. Prisoners were first taken by train and then by foot on "death marches," as they became known.
Prisoners were forced to march long distances in bitter cold, with little or no food, water, or rest. Those who could not keep up were shot. Many others died of exposure, hunger, or exhaustion. The largest death marches took place in the winter of 1944–1945, when the Soviet army began its liberation of Poland. Nine days before the Soviets arrived at Auschwitz, the Germans marched tens of thousands of prisoners out of the camp toward Wodzislaw, a town thirty-five miles away, where they were put on freight trains to other camps. About one in four died on the way.
The Nazis often killed large groups of prisoners before, during, or after marches. During one march, 7,000 Jewish prisoners, 6,000 of them women, were moved from camps in the Danzig region bordered on the north by the Baltic Sea. On the ten-day march, 700 were murdered. Those still alive when the marchers reached the shores of the sea were driven into the water and shot.
Auschwitz, Stutthof, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Sachsenhausen, and Dachau were some of the camps where prisoners were forced onto death marches in the final months of the war.
Last Edited: Sep 23, 2025
Author(s):
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC
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