News
Sixty-Second Anniversary of the Death Marches and the Evacuation of Auschwitz
January 15, Oświęcim (PAP-Polish Press Agency) - January 17 marks the date when the first group of prisoners marched out of Auschwitz as part of the evacuation to other camps. Shortly before the arrival of the Red Army, the Germans led approximately 56,000 prisoners out of Auschwitz and its sub-camps. In view of the conditions that prevailed at the time and the number of victims, this event is referred to as the Death March.
On December 21, 1944, the Gauleiter of Upper Silesia, Fritz Bracht, issued guidelines on the evacuation of civilians, prisoners of war, slave laborers, and prisoners from the so-called "Province of Upper Silesia." Under the decree, all prisoners of war and prisoners were supposed to be evacuated in case of a direct threat from the enemy. The operation for taking the prisoners out of Auschwitz was code-named "Karla."
The columns of prisoners were to be made up exclusively of strong, healthy people who would be able to endure the long march. In practice, there were many sick individuals in the columns. The prisoners were afraid that those left behind in the camp would be liquidated. Teenaged and child prisoners were evacuated along with the adults.
The first column to set out, on January 17, was made up of the prisoners from the Neu Dachs sub-camp in Jaworzno and the Sosnowitz sub-camp; the last, on January 21, marched out of the Blechhammer sub-camp in Blachownia Śląska. The route ran from Oświęcim through Pszczyna to Wodzisław; another route led from Oświęcim to Gliwice by way of Tychy and Mikołów. 3,200 prisoners from the Jaworzno sub-camp covered the longest route, measuring 250 kilometers, to Gross Rosen Concentration Camp in Lower Silesia.
The prisoners marched under escort by armed SS guards. At least 9 thousand Auschwitz prisoners died during the Death Marches, with a figure of 15 thousand apparently more probable.
Numerous burial mounds bear witness to the crimes committed against the evacuees. There are almost 50 of these mounds in Silesia, and about 50 in the Czech and Moravian lands. Men, women, and children rest there. The remains of a little girl were discovered in Pszczyna in Silesia during the consolidation of three adjacent mounds in 1965; her hands were clutching a small tin cup located near her face. She was reburied in the same position.
After the war, witnesses to the evacuation columns told about the nightmarish scenes they had observed. In 1978, Jastrzębia Zdrój resident Maria Śleziona remembered how a column of prisoners marched past her house. Among them was a young woman in an advanced state of pregnancy, who was unable to go on. An SS man shot her in the face with his pistol, and then a second time in the belly.
Civilians from Upper Silesia rescued prisoners along the route of the Death March. Fugitives who ran away from the columns were concealed for periods of time up to several weeks, until liberation. Edward Marcol, Franciszek Parzych, and Ludwik Pisarski of Jastrzębia Zdrój, all veterans of the Silesian Uprising [an intermittent armed struggle, 1919-1921, carried on by local groups wishing to be included in Poland rather than Germany during the settlement of the borders after World War I - trans.], concealed more than 20 fugitives in their homes.
A Jewish woman named Helena Berman said, in a letter sent to Parzych and his wife Maria in 1946, that she "could write endlessly about those moments full of sacrifice and fear for us and the fate of our rescuers, but I must keep it short: admiration and God's blessings upon our rescuers, [your] great Polish hearts, burning with Polish patriotism." In 1964, the Parzychs received the Righteous Among the Nations of the World medal.
The prisoners who survived the march to Wodzisław or Gliwice were transported onwards, despite the terrible cold, on open train cars. In some instances, the routes passed through the Czech and Moravian lands to the Mauthausen and Buchenwald camps. Many of those who survived the Death Marches later died at camps in the depths of Germany.
The Nazis left about 7,000 badly exhausted prisoners behind in the Auschwitz complex. They were liberated on January 27, 1945, by soldiers from the 100th Lwów Infantry Division.
(PAP) Szf/ls/
