By July 1944, the tide of the war had turned and it was only a question of time until the Allied victory. For the inmates of concentration camps, however, the impending German defeat meant even greater hardship.

New York, 1948. U.S. soldier William Best greets 19-year-old Joseph Guttman whom he liberated from Buchenwald

The Death Marches
In January 1945, Auschwitz ceased operation. This did not mean, however, that the Germans abandonded their program to exterminate the Jews. Himmler ordered the evacuation of the 700 000 remaining inmates of camps across Europe, and in the freezing cold of winter, the so-called Death Marches began. These marches were as much a technique of killing as they were a means of moving people. Anyone who could move was forced to march. One third perished from starvation, exhaustion, exposure, disease and the summary shooting of any who fell by the wayside. Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer estimates that about half of those who perished in the Death Marches were Jews.

Sign posted at Bergen-Belsen by British liberating soldiers

Increasing numbers of survivors poured into fewer and fewer camps, particularly Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald. Conditions in these camps were horrific. They were hugely overcrowded and nutrition and sanitation were negligible. Disease, especially typhus, was rife. Many people died and their bodies were dumped, unburied, into huge pits. The British soldiers who liberated Bergen-Belsen reported that they could smell it four kilometers away.