In 1944 and 1945, as the Allies advanced on German positions, German authorities scrambled to hide the evidence of the Holocaust. They ordered various concentration camps and death camps dismantled, and sent the surviving prisoners of these camps on forced evacuations known as death marches. Tens of thousands of prisoners were evacuated on foot or transported in open railroad cars to locations deeper within German territory. Most prisoners marched in mid-winter, with little or no food or water. Among these were Sol, his father, and his uncle, who were sent on a nearly 300-mile march from Erlenbusch to Bergen-Belsen. Bert was evacuated by foot, days before the end of the war, from Stutthof to the Baltic Sea. Approximately 400,000 concentration camp and death camp inmates were sent on these marches. Of those, 250,000 were either killed by the brutal conditions on the marches or, like Sol's uncle, shot for lagging behind.
