In his posthumous memoir, Hugo Gryn, who later became a prominent rabbi in Britain, described the march on which, as an adolescent, he was forced to participate from Lieberose (a camp some 30 kilometers north of Cottbus) to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, north of Berlin, in early February 1945:
By this time, the hunger was very great and it was bitterly cold. Then we had to evacuate Lieberose and go to Sachsenhausen on foot. When we left Lieberose, we were marched some distance away, stopped, and then we heard lots of firing and then [there was] smoke. They killed and set on fire everybody who could not move out. This march was dreadful. Snow, mud. And when dusk came, turn left or turn right, walk into the nearest field, get down. In the morning, get up, except for those who could not get up, then we would move forward, wait a while, hear the shots and move on.
Of the 1400 men who started the march on 2 February, Gryn recollected, only 900 arrived at Sachsenhausen on 10, February. The remainder of the roughly 3000 prisoners at Lieberose had been massacred before the march began.
Source:
Bessel, Richard. “Murder and Mayhem.” Germany 1945: From War to Peace. New York, NY, HarperCollins, 2009. 48-49. Print.
Further Reading:
No comments, yet...