New book tells about German civilians killing prisoners who were on the death march out of Dachau

Jewish prisoners and Russian POWs march out of Dachau

On April 26, 1945, three days before the Dachau concentration camp was liberated by American troops, 6,887 prisoners were marched out of the camp.  On that same day, the Commandant of Dachau, Wilhelm Eduard Weiter, left the camp with a transport of prominent Dachau prisoners bound for Schloss Itter, a sub-camp of Dachau in Austria. Also on that day, 1,759 Jewish prisoners were put on a train and evacuated out of the Dachau camp.

A new book entitled  The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide, written by Daniel Blatman, has just been published in Germany. Blatman’s book tells about German civilians killing some of the Jewish prisoners on the march out of Dachau and on other death marches.

According to an article on the Spiegel Online website, “The book addresses the broader issue of the death marches of concentration camp prisoners in 1944 and 1945, during the waning months of the war.”