"We walk, we walk continuously. Each day is the same as the previous one. Every now and then I hear planes flying overhead; sometimes they bomb somewhere and sometimes it rains. Otherwise, the days are the same. We walk, chew on some grass, sit down, bury the dead, get up again, and walk again. Every now and then, the monotony is broken by some beating or a burst of automatic gunfire. We walk, we walk, we walk.”
Source: Omiros Pellas, Stalag VI C, 1962Germany zero hour
In early 1945, the Third Reich was on the verge of collapse. The Allied forces were approaching Berlin. German cities were being razed to the ground by Allied bombing. Deaths in Nazi camps rose sharply. Massive bombing, extreme hunger, and infectious diseases decimated the camp population. Historians estimate that the death toll exceeded 1.7 million. We will never know the exact number of victims. The number of dead forced labourers from Magnesia is estimated to be at least 25.
Afroditi Koutrouli, “The bombing of Dresden”
Afroditi Koutrouli was sent from Ravensbrück concentration camp to an aircraft factory in Dresden. She recounts her experience during the Allied bombing raids that razed the city to the ground (13-15 February 1945).
"So we went to Dresden. I worked in a factory there, too. And... one night they told us [...] 'Nachts arbeiten', to go to work at night... we were not supposed to do night shifts. And we went and crossed the river, the Dresden River, to go to the other factory, at night... and then the mass bombing of Dresden started. The bomb fell vertically, but the factory was new and the bomb didn't reach the ground. But they told us [...] Flüge Alarm. Alarm means just alarm, Flüge Alarm means that planes are coming. And we went to the lower floors, when the big bombing took place... At the other factory, if we hadn't moved at night, the place had been bombed and people were killed. So I survived. I might not have died, but there were casualties there. We went upstairs, to a large hall, a dining room, where we found potatoes and salads, and we ate and ate and ate, anything... At one point, as I looked down from above, I see... Oh! I say, ‘So many factories, so many chimneys, so many chimneys!’ But it was blurry and those weren't chimneys, they were the pillars of the buildings that had been left standing”.
“Death marches”
Towards the end of the war, the SS hastily evacuated the camps, driving the inmates westward on "death marches." Those who could not keep up were executed on the spot. The Nazis' aim was to ensure that there were no living witnesses to the crimes committed there.
ΣκίτσοSketch “death marches” by Omiros Pellas
Nikolaos Samouris, “Escape”
Nikos Samouris remembers how he escaped from a death march from the Austrian camp Maria Lanzendorf in April 1945 and was later saved by Soviet troops.
“When we saw the situation... three of us were Greek, one was French and the other Russian. So, we saw this situation, we heard gunshots from here, gunshots from there. Bursts of gunfire here, bursts of gunfire there, we realized that we couldn't continue walking for much longer. We were exhausted. We had been walking for six days, and they had given us almost no food. Imagine, I weighed only 40 kilos, and I was a big guy. […] So we agreed to escape at the first opportunity. But of course, this required a lot of planning and caution. Because the Germans were constantly executing people. So at one point, we were passing through an abandoned village and we agreed with the others... - well, we couldn't really communicate, they were strangers, but they were clever - as soon as we saw everything abandoned, a house with a yard, a wall and so on, we said, 'This is our chance to escape'. And so it was, we ran, and the other two ran after us. But the moment I wanted to... they started shooting. It was dark, they couldn't see us, it [the gunfire] passed. And three of us got wounded. Me in the hand, the other guy here on the [points to his upper arm], and the third one in the leg. But we managed to jump off the other side.”
Death march from Dachau
ΑυτήThis photograph, taken secretly by a German citizen, shows prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp on a "death march" through a village south of Wolfratschausen, between April 26 and 30, 1945
Death certificate
Death certificate for Yorgos Chatzitheofilou, deported from Volos to Neuengamme concentration camp. He died on 24 February 1945. Declared cause of death: tuberculosis.
Source: Bad Arolsen Digital Archive.
