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 Görlitz labour camp, a subcamp of Gross Rosen concentration camp.
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.
Aussenlager Görlitz Biesinitzer Grund was located in the village of Biesnitz southwest of Görlitz.
The orders were given to evacuate the camp on 11 February 1945 as the Red Army advanced. About 1,500 emaciated prisoners set off in thin prison camp clothes with just a blanket for protection from the extreme winter cold. The march went first to the Rennersdorf subcamp before being ordered back to Görlitz so the prisoners could dig anti-tank ditches. Only 500 prisoners returned to Görlitz.
“The whole thing was hell – that was hell above all hells. Marched in the winter and there was snow on the ground. Fortunately, there was snow on the ground you could eat. We kept eating the snow and who managed to survive is through the snow. And we kept marching … the SS marched with us and were every bit as fed up as we were …There are tens of thousands of bodies all over Germany buried on the death marches.”
The surviving prisoners were liberated by the Red Army in May 1945.
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