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"It ended up being called the death march, because the ravines and the gutters, they were all red from blood." | |||
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Thomas Buergenthal Born 1934 Lubochna, Czechoslovakia 
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In 1933, just after Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power, Thomas's Jewish parents moved from Germany to Czechoslovakia. Thomas's father had worked as a banker in Germany, and then bought a small hotel in the Slovakian town of Lubochna. Many of his father's friends in Germany came to Czechoslovakia to escape the Nazi government's unfair policies and stayed at the hotel.
1933-39: Slovak soldiers who had sided with Hitler took over our hotel in late 1938. We fled to Zilina, a nearby city, and lived there until after I turned 5. Then, my father took us across the border into Poland. On September 1, 1939, we boarded a train heading for a boat that would take us to England. But the German army invaded Poland that day, and our train was bombed. We joined other refugees, and walked north to Kielce. 1940-45: In Kielce we were put into a ghetto and then a labor camp. In 1944 I was deported to Auschwitz with my parents. It was now January 1945, and the advancing Soviet army forced the Germans to evacuate. We were marched out--children at the front. Day one was a 10-hour march and tiring; we began to lag. Stragglers were shot, so two boys and I devised a way to rest as we walked: We'd run to the front of the column, then walk slowly or stop until the rear of the column reached us. Then, we'd run ahead again.
Thomas was one of only three children to survive the three-day death march. He was deported to Sachsenhausen, where he was liberated by Soviet troops in April 1945. |
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Lily Mazur Margules Born 1924 Vilna 
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And we knew the only way we can survive if we will stay in the front. Because if you were standing in the back and you couldn't walk with the column, you were just shot. And then I saw young girls walk and walk and all of a sudden they became like frozen, straightened their legs instead and they were just frozen mummies falling right with their face on the snow. The German didn't have to shoot them. This is how they fell. One of my friends started to feel bad, and we took her and I was from one side, and another of my friend, and we were dragging her, practically dragging her, she couldn't, her legs were frozen. So the guard noticed it. He, he, he told the column to stop, he took her to a turnip field, and we heard a shot. He shot her right there. | ||
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Lilly Appelbaum Lublin Malnik Born 1928 Antwerp, Belgium 
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Word came to us that we were going to evacuate Auschwitz. Why were we evacuating Auschwitz? It is because the Russians were coming close by. And so we...we all walked out Auschwitz and we started walking. And we started walking, we walked for days. I'll never forget it. I don't know how many days we walked. We walked and then we took cattle cars and then we walked again. And as we walked we heard gun shots and they told us to keep on marching. We heard gun shots and they were shooting people in the back who couldn't keep up with the walking. It ended up being called the death march because the ravines and the gutters, they were all red from blood. From people, some people who spoke Polish, we were walking through Poland, and some people who thought they could escape would try and escape. Some people who couldn't keep up with the walking anymore, they got weak, they threw all their bundles away and they walked until they couldn't keep up anymore, they fell behind and the Germans just shot them. We saw people being shot in the front in their chests, in their back. They were laying all over, on top of hills, behind trees. It was really like a war zone. And this is how we finally arrived in a camp called Bergen-Belsen. | ||
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Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall Born 1929 Klucarky, Czechoslovakia 
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We knew that it was the last days of the war, we knew because of the bombings and we knew because of the way the Germans soldiers were pushing us and pulling us already and emptying the camps and whatever. They took us all and put us together, all of the people from camps, and they had us march through towns and through fields. They didn't know where to put us anymore and they didn't know what to do with us and there was no food because the Germans were losing the war. Oftentimes as they marched us through a town, a window would open and a shutter would open and either a potato or a loaf of bread would come flying out and the shutter would close after. And we would all pounce on this potato or this whatever this piece of food was that came at us. And of course they would shoot at us, but we didn't care at that point because we were hungry. The streets were literally covered with bodies as we marched. We would pass bodies, body after body after body, people that were dropping dead from hunger, from disease, from dysentery, because they did not have the strength or because they gave up. | ||
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Steven Springfield Born 1923 Riga, Latvia 
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The order came, we are moving out because the, uh, Russians were obviously coming closer. That was the winter of 1944-45. It was a very very...the climate was very cold. We were driven on foot, through the German countryside. It was cold. It was snow. My brother could hardly walk. I supported him as much as I could. It got so bad that he pleaded with me to let him go. "Don't," he says. "Let me die. I...I cannot, I...I really cannot handle it anymore. I...I want to die. Leave me here." But it was...it was clear that the minute I let him go, he would be shot on the spot, because anybody who couldn't keep up with the march was shot on the spot. You would walk on the road, you could see corpses all over because it was an actual death march. I just couldn't give in. I just couldn't drop my brother. I carried him. I schlepped him. I kept talking to him. I'd say, "We are not too far away from salvation. You can't give up now. You can't give up now!" Anyway, somehow I was able to schlep him to the next camp, which was a place called Gottendorf in eastern Pomerania. | ||
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