Exhibition: Death Marches: Evidence and Memory

The Library’s new exhibition will uncover how forensic and other evidence about the death marches has been gathered since the end of the Holocaust. It chronicles how researchers and others attempted to recover the death march routes – and those who did not survive them. Efforts to analyse and commemorate the death marches continue to this day.

Towards the end of the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of prisoners still held within the Nazi camp system were forcibly evacuated in terrible conditions under heavy guard. Prisoners were sent out on foot, by rail, in horse-drawn wagons, in lorries and by ship. Conveys split, dispersed and rejoined others, with routes stretching from several dozen to hundreds of miles long. Thousands of people were murdered en route in the last days before the war’s end, although it is impossible to know the exact numbers.

Many of these chaotic and brutal evacuations became known as ‘death marches’ by those who endured them. They form the last chapter of Nazi genocide.