Lippstadt to Unknown Destination

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 Lippstadt 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 journey 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 Lippstadt camp was established in July 1944. Up to 832 women, predominantly Hungarian Jews, were forced to perform slave labour for the Lippstadt Iron and Metal Works.

Most likely the women from this subcamp were evacuated on 31 March 1945, in an easterly direction following the heaviest air raid on Lippstadt during the war on 10 March 1945. As a result of the air raid, work inside the subcamp had almost completely stopped. They were evacuated by rail to Leipzig. Here, they were initially held in the Leipzig-Schönefeld (HASAG) subcamp. A few days later, they set off on a march with the women of this camp. Most of the prisoners from this evacuation march were liberated by Soviet troops near Pirna on the Elbe.