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The Death March to Volary - Female Testimony of the Shoah
A young woman weeps during the deportation of the Romaniote Jews of loannina, Greece on 25 March 1944. Once part of thriving communities in several Greek cities, approximately 59,000 Greek Jews were victims of the Holocaust, at least 83 percent of the total number living in Greece at the time of World War II and the German Occupation. Two thirds of all murdered were from the city of Thessaloniki, where 90% of all the Jews in the city were massacred. The vast majority of the Greeks killed were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
On 20 January 1945, approximately 1000 female Jewish prisoners were evacuated from the Schlesiersee (today Sława) camp in Upper Silesia, western Poland, a region annexed to Germany. These women were forced on a death march in a southwesterly direction. On the way, the prisoners passed through other camps, and more women were added to the march.
On 5 May 1945, after covering a distance of over 800 km, the march ended in the town of Volary (German: Wallern) in Czechoslovakia, not far from the border with Germany and Austria.
106 days of rigorous marching through snow. 106 days of gnawing hunger and sickness, humiliation and murder.
Of the approximately 1,300 women who marched to Volary, some 350 survived.
The exhibition is based on the most updated research on the death marches, testimonies of survivors and US Army veterans, and documentation from the trial of death march commander Alois Dörr.
With the approach of the Red Army, the Germans evacuated the women from Schlesiersee. This evacuation turned into a death march.
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