News
70th anniversary of the beginning of Death Marches from Auschwitz
70 years ago, on January 17, 1945 the final evacuation of 56,000 prisoners of the Nazi German Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp began. Between 9 and 15 thousand people died during the so-called Death Marches.
In mid-January, the Nazi leadership embarked on the final evacuation and liquidation of Auschwitz. Between January 17 and 21, approximately 56 columns marching on foot, mostly westwards through Upper and Lower Silesia. About 2,200 prisoners, evacuated from the Eintrachthütte sub-camp in Świętochłowice and the Laurahütte sub-camp in Siemianowice on January 23, were the only ones transported by rail. The main routes for the columns evacuated on foot led to Wodzisław Śląski and Gliwice, where the prisoners boarded trains to continue westward.
Some prisoners had to walk the entire evacuation route. 3,200 prisoners from the sub-camp in Jaworzno had one of the longest routes, covering 250 kilometers, to Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp in Lower Silesia. Only about 2,200 prisoners from Laurahütte and Eintrachthütte sub-camps were evacuated on trains to Mauthaue
The evacuation columns were supposed to consist exclusively of strong, healthy people capable of completing a march of up to a hundred kilometers. In practice, sick and exhausted prisoners also volunteered for evacuation, since they felt – not without reason – that those left behind would be liquidated. Underage prisoners-Jewish and Polish children – also set out on the march along with the adults.
Along all the routes, SS guards shot not only any prisoners who attempted to escape, but also those who were too physically exhausted to keep up with the others. The corpses of thousands of prisoners who had been shot, or who died of exhaustion or exposure, lined the routes of both marching and rail evacuation. About 3,000 evacuated prisoners died in Upper Silesia alone. It is estimated that a total of not fewer than 9,000 and probably as many as 15,000 Auschwitz prisoners died in the course of the evacuation.
While the prisoners were marching away, and afterwards, the Germans made a final effort to remove all traces of the crimes they had committed in the camp. They blew up Crematoria II and III on January 20, 1945. On January 26, they blew up Crematorium V, which was in fully operational condition. On January 23, they burned “Kanada II”, the complex of warehouse barracks containing property plundered from the victims of extermination. The almost 9 thousand prisoners who had been left behind in the Main Camp (Stammlager, Auschwitz I), Birkenau (Auschwitz II), and the Auschwitz sub-camps, were mostly sick and terminally exhausted. Regarded as unfit for the evacuation march, they now found themselves in an uncertain situation. The SS wanted to liquidate all or almost all of them.
Only happenstance saved the majority of them from death. Between the departure of the last evacuation column and the arrival of the Red Army, the SS managed to murder approximately 700 Jewish prisoners in the sub-camps of Fürstengrube in Wesoła, Tschechowitz-Vacuum in Czechowice and Blechhammer in Blachownia Śląska.
The victims of Death Marches will be honoured by the Museum on January 19 and 20. Flowers will be laid on many mass-graves of prisoners located along the route of evacuation.
History of tragic events from 70 years ago was researched by a historiam of the Museum Dr. Andrzej Strzelecki who described this topic in great details in his book The Evacuation, Dismantling and Liberation of KL Auschwitz.
