Jewish prisoners after being released from the death train, 1945

- March 25, 2022

This Photo was taken by Major Clarence L. Benjamin at the moment when the people on the train saw the tanks and realized that they had been released.

It was Friday, April 13, 1945. A few miles northwest of Magdeburg, near the River Elbe, a railroad ran through a forested gorge. Major Clarence L. Benjamin led a small task force of two light tanks in a jeep on routine patrols. Suddenly, the group came across two hundred grubby civilians on the side of the road. There was something about them that was immediately evident: they looked like skeletons, thin, sickly, and could barely stand on their feet. At the sight of the Americans, they began to laugh with joy, although the laughter was more like hysteria. They were relieved, and soon the tankers found out why. They discovered the cause at the entrance to the railway.

There they stumbled upon a long line of dirty ancient boxcars, silently standing on the tracks. On the sides of the tracks, many people lay on the ground, trying to warm themselves in the rays of the weak April sun. When people noticed the American uniforms, there was a great commotion. Many rushed to the major's jeep and two tanks.

Little by little, the major managed to understand what had happened there. It was the train of death. This train, with 2,500 Jews on board, had left the Bergen-Belsen extermination camp a few days earlier. Men, women, and children were all loaded into vacant rail cars, passenger and freight, but mostly typical obsolete freight cars, called "40s and 8s" in World War I terminology. This meant that these wagons could accommodate 40 people or 8 horses. But these people were treated differently: 60-70 people were loaded into each car, most of them stood like herrings stuffed into a barrel.

As the war drew to a close, the Nazis made attempts to evacuate the concentration camps before the Allied forces arrived. On April 10, 1945, three trains were sent from Bergen-Belsen to the east of the camp, to the Elbe River, where they were informed that, due to the rapidly advancing Soviet army, it was not advisable for them to move on. The train changed direction and went to Farsleben, where the Germans were told that they were going straight to the advancing American army.

Therefore, the train stopped at Farsleben, where the Germans began to wait for further orders on where to go next. The engineers were ordered to drive the train to the bridge over the Elbe River and blow it up or simply push it off the end of the damaged bridge so that all the cars fall into the river, killing or drowning the unfortunate passengers. The engineers began to have doubts about the execution of this order, because they, too, would have to ride on this death train. At that moment, the Allies discovered them, immediately after the major and the first tanks from the 743rd tank battalion arrived on the scene.

Most of these Jews were from Poland, Russia and other countries of Eastern Europe, so they feared for their future: their houses were completely destroyed, they lost their families, and most likely they would fall under the jurisdiction of the Soviet Union. Most chose to remain in Germany or repatriate to other Western European countries. Ultimately, many of them were repatriated to Israel, South American countries, England, Canada and the United States of America.

Toward the end of the war, as Germany's military forces were collapsing, the Allied armies closed in on the Nazi concentration camps. The Germans began feverishly transporting prisoners from camps at the front to camps inside Germany as forced laborers. The prisoners were first taken by train, and then on foot by "death marches", as they began to be called.

The prisoners were forced to travel long distances in extreme cold, with little to no food, water or rest. Those who failed were shot. The largest "death marches" took place in the winter of 1944-1945, when the Soviet army began the liberation of Poland. Nine days before the Soviets arrived at Auschwitz, the Germans took tens of thousands of prisoners out of the camp towards Wodzisław, a town thirty-five miles away, where they were put on freight trains and sent to other camps. Approximately one in four died on the way.

The Nazis often killed large groups of prisoners before, during, or after marches. During one march, 7,000 Jewish prisoners, including 6,000 women, were transferred from camps in the Danzig region, bordering the Baltic Sea to the north. During the ten-day march, 700 people were killed. The rest, who were still alive when they reached the seashore, were driven into the water and shot.