Colditz to Theresienstadt

Members of the Boys were held in Nazi labour and concentration camps and used as slave labourers.

From 1933-1945 Nazi Germany operated over 1,000 concentration camps and subcamps in its own territory and across German occupied Europe. Among them was the HASAG labour camp in Colditz, a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany.

As the camps were dissolved thousands of people, among them members of the Boys, endured horrific evacuations from the camps on foot, in freight wagons and open top trains, as well as perilous journeys across the Baltic Sea. 

The Boys were teenage and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after the war for rest and rehabilitation.

The camp was evacuated without warning as the US army approached. For those members of the Boys who had been on the death marches from Auschwitz – just months before – the agony was now repeated.

A handful of those who tried to avoid the march by hiding in the factory were liberated by American soldiers. The rest were shot by the SS.

The prisoners were evacuated in two columns. One would walk and the other would be transported by train.

Route

On 14 April, the death march passed through Hausdorf – Gersdorf – Hartha and Waldheim. Here the march paused in a field at Massenai, where there is a memorial. On 15 April, it then passed on to Reichenbach – Etzdorf and Nossen. On 16 April, the prisoners passed through Zellwald -Siebenlehn – Kleinvoigtsberg – Halsbrüke – Condradsdorf – Naundorf and Ortsgrenze.

The march recommenced on 18 April passing through Kleinbobritzsch. The marched was paused to start again on 21 April when it went through Teplitz Schonau – Welemin – Leitmeritz and finally arrived at the Theresienstadt Ghetto on 26 April 1945.

^{Pinchas Gutter in the Ascot hostel in 1946}

“One morning, we found out that the camp was being evacuated. We were given bread, some sausage and cheese and ordered to march. By early evening, we were in a forest in Germany when one of the SS guards, a Volksdeusche corporal who spoke Polish, told us that we were free and that they were going to take off their uniforms because the Americans were coming. Everyone went crazy and started eating whatever food they had left because we were all so hungry. Suddenly, a troop of SS arrived and shot in the air. They made us lie down with our faces in the earth and said that anybody who raised their head would be shot. We lay their all night and by next morning we were marching again. So much for freedom.

We were literally starving to death as we marched along, day after day, and as we walked through the German towns, the residents threw stones at us, abused us and refused us any food or water.”

Pinchas Gutter, Memories in Focus (Azrieli, 2018). Gutter was 13 years old when he endured the death march