Holocaust: Death Marches During The Holocaust

Death Marches
In the hard life of jews during the holocaust, they had no choice but were forced to go through death marches and other intense journeys. A death march was an evacuation of a large amount of inmates that had been in concentrations camps, they were give the term “death marches” by the inmates themselves. Most of these marches had occurred during the winter of both 1944 and 1945. They would happen while winter pushed the allied forces closer to any camps. The germans moving them, was an attempt to cover up the crimes they had been committing and prevent any witnesses. These marches would last both day and night going on for miles and miles without any inmates knowing where their destination was located. A large portion of these

The lifestyle they experienced was inhuman and very difficult to even find a way to keep yourself alive many of these marches had a 50% death rate, according to “Encyclopedia Judaica” . During the marches, if you began to fall behind the SS soldiers had strict orders to club you, or shoot you. The soldiers mad them run the whole time as fast as they could. If you tripped or fell you would risk getting trampled to death by the other inmates who were running. “Night,” by Elie Wiesel states, “The SS made us increase our pace... Why not? The movement warmed us up a little (Wiesel, 91).” If you had died during these marches, there was no funeral, no ceremony, and no prayers your body was left behind in the snow on the side of the

No one could every picture such a horror coming for people who do nothing but good in their small community. Elie along with his family has been sent by trains to the largest concentration camps knowns as, “Auschwitz” at this time no one had known what the place was. The life for him in a concentration was nothing but difficult both physically and emotionally. Besides going through a physical pain every day everyone who had a life in a camp were forced the change how they feel. To be able to survive in such camps you had no choice to worry about feeling you had to adapt to your surrounding by not feeling and becoming numb. Any feelings you had felt could not get in your way for example, when Elie had his father on the verge of dying he began to give up his food for him. But by the time his father had passed he realized he needed to eat and not worry about his dad anymore his main focus would to be to survive. Both Elie and his dad had gone through the harsh death marches from Auschwitz to Buchenwald where he would later be freed. During the march they had both gone through went on miles without stopping to take a break but just kept on running. As the text states, “The commandant announced we had already covered forty-two miles since we left. It was a long time since we had passed the beyond limits of fatigue. Our legs were moving