Death Marches of the Holocaust - Essay Example

fall into enemy hands alive to tell their stories to Allied and Soviet liberators (2) The SS thought they needed prisoners to maintain production of armaments wherever possible (3) Some SS leaders, including Himmler, believed irrationally that they could use Jewish concentration camp prisoners as hostages to bargain for a separate peace in the west that would guarantee the survival of the Nazi regime (Holocaust Encyclopedia). Thus, one is clear that the Germans prevented the prisoners escaping from the concentration camps, and if anybody attempts to escape or protest against this injustice, they would either be severely tortured or killed.

Evacuation The evacuation of the soldiers was so brutal that thousands of prisoners were forced to move through a worst climate. According to Yehuda Bauer, on January 18, 1945, about 66,020 “…starving prisoners were marched out of the camp shivering in the bitter winter cold dressed in the now familiar thin, striped clothed and wearing, for the most part, only wooden shoes or sandals where their feet were not covered in rags” (Bauer 1). The words of Bauer exactly portray the picture of the Death marches.

He further adds that the prisoners were treated as animals and “were either forced to march on foot, driven relentlessly and senselessly through the snow-covered countryside, beaten and starved, anyone lagging behind would shot without mercy; or they were herded, 80 to 100 persons or more, onto uncovered railway cars without water or food for days on end” (Bauer 1). Historical analysis reveals that the Death Marches continued for about four months till the defeat of the Germans. After effect of the evacuation As stated earlier, the Death Marches, as the names symbolizes, were really marches of death.

Jennifer Rosenberg. This essay discusses that the evacuation of the soldiers was so brutal that thousands of prisoners were forced to move through the worst climate. On January 18, 1945, about 66,020 “…starving prisoners were marched out of the camp shivering in the bitter winter cold dressed in the now familiar thin, striped clothed and wearing, for the most part, only wooden shoes or sandals where their feet were not covered in rags”. The words of Bauer exactly portray the picture of the Death marches.

He further adds that the prisoners were treated as animals and “were either forced to march on foot, driven relentlessly and senselessly through the snow-covered countryside, beaten and starved, anyone lagging behind would shot without mercy; or they were herded, 80 to 100 persons or more, onto uncovered railway cars without water or food for days on end”. Historical analysis reveals that the Death Marches continued for about four months till the defeat of the Germans. Some of the studies have identified that even after the death marches still there remained about 70000 prisoners in the concentration camps.

It has also been identified that at least a quarter of a million prisoners were sent on death marches which lasted for weeks and hundreds of kilometers. The death marches continued to the very day of German fall. It was unparallel in history that majority of the survivors are of the opinion that it would be better to be killed in the gas chambers than undergoing all these tortures. Thus it unearths the fate of the prisoners in the Death Marches.