Death Marches

In early April 1945, more than 47,000 inmates were crammed into the main camp on Ettersberg Mountain. In conjunction with the advance of American troops, the SS had brought thousands of inmates from western subcamps back to Buchenwald. On April 7, the SS began to clear the main camp. In the following days, 28,000 inmates were transported by rail or forced to go by foot to the Dachau and Flossenbürg concentration camps and the Theresienstadt ghetto. The clearing of the eastern camps began simultaneously. Probably over 10,000 inmates did not survive the marches and week-long rail transports. They died along the way from exhaustion or were shot by escorting guard details. The SS murdered them in full public view, sometimes with the participation the civil population. Some inmates were not liberated until the end of the war in May.