DEATH MARCHES

1 As the battle lines approached, the SS evacuated the camps, forcing the prisoners to march west and south. On the so-called death marches, the guards mercilessly murdered every prisoner who was too weak to keep up. Martin Seyferth from Oschatz, together with other Witnesses, survived the death march from Dachau toward the German Alps in April 1945.

Collage: 1. Concentration camp prisoners walk on a death march. 2. Martin Seyfert.

A plaque marking the Sachsenhausen death march route.

2 All 230 of Jehovah’s Witnesses survived the death march of tens of thousands of prisoners from Sachsenhausen and other camps to Schwerin in April and May 1945. The Witnesses formed a cohesive group, assisting each other to survive.—(Sign marking the route of the death march.)

3 Paul Rehwald, from Königsberg, was also among those who experienced the death march from Sachsenhausen. When the German front line collapsed and Allied forces freed the camps, the regime of terror came to its end, after 12 years. Like the prisoners shown in this photograph, many Witnesses—most of them after many years of detention—headed home.

Collage: 1. Three of Jehovah’s Witnesses heading home from Sachsenhausen. 2. Paul Rehwald.

4 The SS moved 9,000 prisoners from Neuengamme camp to the Baltic Sea and packed them onto the ships Cap Arcona, Thielbeck, and Athen. On May 3, 1945, after a British fighter plane attack, two ships sunk and only a few prisoners survived. Among the survivors of the Cap Arcona disaster was Witali Kostanda (Ukraine) who had met the prisoners with the purple triangle in the camp and now became a Witness himself.

Collage: 1. The ship “Cap Arcona” with concentration camp prisoners aboard. 2. The “Cap Arcona” capsized. 3. Witali Kostanda.

5 The SS also ordered the evacuation of the Stutthof camp, near Danzig, by way of land and sea. Together with about 1,900 prisoners, Feliks Borys from Chojnice (Poland), along with 9 other Witnesses, had to march to Słupsk. “[Soon] only about 800 of us were left,” he recalls. By carrying Wilhelm Scheider (Poland), he helped him survive. After Borys was liberated, he headed home on foot, arriving there two months later.

6 Jehovah’s Witnesses from the Stutthof camp. After a dramatic journey across the Baltic Sea in a barge, they happily landed on the Danish island of Møn on May 5, 1945.

A group of Jehovah’s Witnesses who survived the Stutthof camp.