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Click on an image to see a larger, more detailed picture.
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| 1945: Liberation and Rebuilding |
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pg. 592 |
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A page from the Hadamar Institute's death register. The institute was one of the six major facilities in the German "euthanasia" program. The document indicates each victim's date of arrival, family and given names, date of birth, date of death, cause of death, and age at death.
Photo: National Archives/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archive
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No one is exactly sure how many concentration and work camps the Nazis established. Many camps had numerous subcamps in which inmates could be housed while they participated in temporary work assignments. This survivor was discovered in the Vaihingen camp, a subcamp of Natzweiler in Germany.
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Folke Bernadotte
In the closing days of the war, Count Folke Bernadotte, vice-president of the Swedish Red Cross, used his diplomatic skill to rescue Jews from the clutches of the Nazis. His negotiating efforts saved the lives of 423 Danish Jews imprisoned at Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia. In a daring wartime operation, the Jews were not only rescued from death but delivered by a convoy of buses to safety in Denmark. To save Jewish lives, Bernadotte met several times with Heinrich Himmler. While Bernadotte negotiated to save Jews from slaughter, Himmler used them as a bargaining chip in his quest to conclude a separate peace with the Western Allies, a ploy the Allies would firmly reject. Bernadotte's negotiations with Himmler resulted in freedom for some 14,000 women imprisoned in the Ravensbrück, Germany, concentration camp. The women were transferred to Denmark, then to Sweden.
Photo: Ullstein Bilderdienst
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Late January 1945: 29,000 Jews, mostly women, are evacuated on forced marches from Danzig, Poland, and Stutthof, Poland. Only 3000 survive.
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Late January 1945: Thousands of Jews are sent on a death march from the Lamsdorf camp near Breslau, Germany, westward toward Thuringia, Germany. Hundreds die or are killed on the way.
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February 1945: Ukrainian nationalists hunt down and murder Jews throughout the Ukraine.
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February 1945: Allied forces close on Cologne, Germany.
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February 3, 1945: 3500 prisoners from Gross-Rosen, Germany, are marched southwest to the concentration camp at Flossenbürg, Germany, nearly 200 miles away. Five hundred will die on the way. Two thousand more are evacuated by train to the labor camp at Ebensee, Austria, near Mauthausen; 49 will die on the journey and another 182 will perish at the camp.
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| 1945: Liberation and Rebuilding |
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pg. 592 |
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The Holocaust Chronicle
© 2009 Publications International, Ltd.
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