Friday, December 13, 2019

Out of Auschwitz: Death March

The horrors of the Holocaust did not end in the concentration camps. Thousands more innocent people lost their lives during the forced evacuation of the concentration camps.

As Soviet troops approached Germany, the SS ordered all prisoners of the camps to be evacuated to the center of Germany. Thousands who had already endured the camps lost their lives on these marches due to starvation, freezing, and general fatigue. The prisoners marched from Auschwitz to either Gliwice or Wodzislaw. Any who grew to weak to continue were shot by the SS.

Once they returned home, survivors faced hostility from the non-Jewish populations and struggled to find their family members who were separated upon arrival at camps. Very few records were kept of those who were killed, making it difficult to locate loved ones after returning home.

After the camps were evacuated, allies arrived and tried to make sense of the situation. There were corpses everywhere, hardly distinguishable from the survivors of the camps. The Allies were not equipped or prepared to care for survivors, resulting in the death of thousands of survivors even after liberation.

The Allies created Displaced Persons camps to temporarily house people who had been in camps or displaced from their homes. Displaced Persons camps existed all the way up to 1953.

https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1942-1945/death-march-from-auschwitz
https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/survival-and-legacy/liberation-the-survivors/death-marches/

1 comment:

  1. After reading your post, I was interested in learning more about the Displacement Camps (DP's). They were instrumental in the reconstruction of the lives of survivors of the holocaust. Some continued to operate until 1952, 7 years after the end of the war. The facilities were administered by a section of the UN called the UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration). One of the first things people were concerned with after being liberated from the concentration camps was finding their family members. The UN established a sector of the UNRRA, called the Central Tracing Bureau, specifically dedicated to finding the lost family members. In addition to the attempts to find family members, they were also new ones being created. There were lots of weddings in the DP's and this provided for the beginning of the rebuilding of normalcy in many survivors lives. The DP's became cultural and social centers for Jewish people seeking refuge. Schools were stablished, as well as athletic clubs, newspaper companies, musical groups and lots of religious celebrations.
    Sources:
    https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/displaced-persons
    https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/general/displaced-persons-camps.html

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