When we talk about the 10 cruel death marches that scarred modern history, the Trail of Tears often comes to mind first. That forced relocation of Native Americans was a grim precursor to the industrial‑age death marches of the 20th century, where armies turned walking, starvation and brutality into a method of mass murder.

10 1918

In the early 1900s the world was introduced to the term “genocide.” Beginning in 1915, the Ottoman Empire orchestrated the systematic extermination of its Armenian minority, killing an estimated 1.5 million people. The Armenians called it Medz Yeghern, meaning “the great crime.”

The campaign unfolded in stages. First, every able‑bodied Armenian male was slaughtered. Then women and children were forced to trek across the Syrian desert. A 1915 New York Times report described how Armenians were deported from Cilicia to the desert south of Aleppo, noting that the marches guaranteed death because there was no shelter, work, or food awaiting them.

Subsequent New York Times articles detailed how the deportees were starved, beaten, robbed, raped and even forced to eat grass, locusts, dead animals and, in the most desperate cases, human flesh. The Ottoman authorities used the marches themselves as a killing tool, employing cattle cars, concentration camps and bureaucratic terror that foreshadowed the Holocaust.

9 The Chelm Massacre 1939

Chelm, a city in eastern Poland, had already endured centuries of anti‑Jewish violence, but the 1939 massacre eclipsed earlier horrors. After Soviet forces withdrew in October 1939, the Nazis rounded up the town’s male Jewish population on December 1 and forced them toward the Bug River, hoping to push them into Soviet hands.

More than half of the marchers were shot along the way. When they reached the river, Soviet troops refused them passage, prompting many to plunge into the water and attempt a desperate swim. A survivor’s testimony recounts the Nazis ordering the men to run, shooting anyone who hesitated, and forcing some to dig their own graves before being sent running again.

Out of roughly 2,000 Jewish men and boys who set out from Chelm, only about 150 survived the brutal trek.

8 Stutthof Death March 1945

Established in 1939, Stutthof concentration camp housed over 100,000 prisoners, many of them non‑Jewish Poles. By early 1945 the SS decided to evacuate the camp as Soviet forces approached.

The first 5,000 inmates were forced to the Baltic Sea, compelled to wade into the water and then shot en masse. Civilians helped herd the victims onto the beach for execution. The remaining prisoners were sent toward Lauenburg, only to be turned back when Soviet troops blocked the route, forcing a return to Stutthof where thousands more perished.

On January 25 1945, over 25,000 prisoners were forced on a ten‑day march with food supplies for merely two days. Anyone who fell behind was shot. Smaller groups were evacuated by sea, where many more died. Stutthof was finally liberated in March 1945.

7 Auschwitz Death March 1945

“Arbeit Macht Frei”—the infamous sign at Auschwitz’s entrance—did not promise freedom, but forced labor and death. In mid‑January 1945, as Soviet troops closed in, the SS ordered the evacuation of roughly 60,000 inmates.

Men were first marched to Wodzislaw Śląski and Gliwice, then crammed onto unheated freight trains bound for other camps. While the SS claimed only the fit should go, many sick and under‑age prisoners volunteered, fearing that staying behind meant certain execution.

Prisoners were forced to march while hauling their captors’ luggage and weapons. Stragglers were shot on the spot, leaving a grisly trail of bodies. In one horrific incident, a train full of Auschwitz prisoners was fired upon, killing more than 300 men. Estimates suggest up to 15,000 lives were lost during this final death march. Today, memorials line the route, and an annual “March of the Living” reenacts the trek in solemn silence.

6 Bataan Death March 1942

When the Battle of Bataan ended in April 1942, the Japanese army faced a logistical dilemma: too many American and Filipino POWs for the available trucks. General Masaharu Homma decided the only solution was a forced march.

Prisoners were compelled to walk 88 km (55 mi) to San Fernando, then transferred by rail to Capas and forced to cover a final 13 km (8 mi) on foot to Camp O’Donnell. The Japanese denied water, left them exposed to the scorching sun, and routinely bayoneted, beheaded, shot, or simply abandoned those who could not keep pace. Daily, a man was tied to a tree and executed as a warning.

Filipinos who attempted to aid the captives were also shot. After the war, General Homma was tried, convicted, and executed in 1946 for his role in the atrocity.

5 Sandakan Death Marches 1945

In early 1945, after Allied bombing crippled the Sandakan airfield in Borneo, Japanese commander Hoshijima Susumu ordered the evacuation of Australian and British POWs. The prisoners were told they would be moved to Jesselton (now Kota Kinamalu) for labor, but instead were forced on a 260 km (162 mi) trek to the town of Ranau.

The first wave of 455 men left between January and February, marching through swampy terrain and relentless rain. Those who lagged were bayoneted or shot. By April, with Allied forces closing in, the Japanese razed the camp and evacuated the remaining inmates. A second wave of roughly 530 prisoners set out; only 183 survived the journey to Ranau.

At Ranau, disease, starvation and relentless brutality claimed almost every survivor. In August, the last 40 POWs were executed. Only six men survived the entire ordeal, all of whom escaped. The commandant and eight others were later hanged for war crimes.

4 Brno Death March 1945

Genocide’s bitter after‑taste often includes revenge against former victims. On the very first day of peace after World War II, anti‑Nazi sentiment sparked the forced expulsion of roughly 20,000 ethnic Germans from Brno, the capital of Moravia, into Austria.

The march began after a German woman and her infant were clubbed to death and thrown into the Elbe River. President Benes urged the populace to “take arms and kill Germans.” Many were expelled or killed merely for bearing German surnames.

Survivor Marie Ranzenhoferová recounts that the march, composed mainly of women, children and the elderly, turned nightmarish when Romanian soldiers entered a locked barn, raping women, beating people, and loading trucks with corpses. Upon reaching Austria, Soviet forces denied entry, forcing the refugees back to Brno, where they were interned in a field near Pohorelice. Starvation and disease claimed at least 700 lives. This episode foreshadowed the massive post‑war expulsions of millions of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe.

3 The Tiger Death March 1950

The Korean War unleashed a series of brutal forced treks, the most infamous being the “Tiger” death march. Prisoners had their boots and outer garments stripped, even in freezing weather, and subsisted on a single rice ball per day with little to no water.

The march spanned roughly 193 km (120 mi) to an internment camp near Pyongyang. Among the victims was an 80‑year‑old nun, imprisoned for alleged “anti‑Communist” activities.

Major “The Tiger,” a scar‑faced North Korean officer, led about 850 American POWs on the march. He and his guards killed 89 men along the way. Survivors dubbed themselves “The Tiger Survivors,” describing their captor as a man with “no humanity.” Only 262 men ever returned; among them was Private First Class Wayne Johnson, who painstakingly recorded the names of 496 fallen comrades.

2 The National Defense Corps Incident 1951

The South Korean National Defense Corps Incident stands out as a death march inflicted by a nation’s own military leadership. President Syngman Rhee, backed by the United States, ordered men aged 17‑40 into the National Defense Corps (NDC) to thwart North Korean conscription.

Although the NDC was allocated funds for 200,000 soldiers, the money vanished. When a Chinese offensive forced a winter retreat, the ill‑supplied corps was ordered southward. Lacking food, clothing and shelter, up to 90,000 men perished from starvation and exposure.

Investigations later revealed massive embezzlement by senior officers. Several were executed; Rhee’s involvement remained suspected but never proven.

1 The Evacuation Of Phnom Penh 1975

The 10 cruel death marches of modern history would be incomplete without mentioning the forced evacuation of Phnom Penh in April 1975. The nascent Khmer Rouge claimed the operation would last three days, yet the city remained nearly empty for three years.

Residents were herded into the countryside, many ending up in forced‑labor camps and collective farms. While some accounts suggest a relatively peaceful relocation, numerous witnesses reported soldiers shooting those who refused to leave, and bodies littering the roads.

Estimates of the displaced range from 2.6 million to as high as four million. The evacuation foreshadowed the Cambodian genocide, which claimed 1.5‑3 million lives. To date, only one war‑crime conviction has been secured—former prison chief Kaing Guek Eav (Duch), sentenced to life for overseeing the deaths of roughly 15,000 people.

These ten harrowing journeys remind us that the cruelty of forced marches has left indelible scars across continents and decades.

10 chilling accounts of the death marches at the close of World War II reveal some of the most harrowing atrocities ever recorded. These forced treks were designed either to exterminate prisoners or to keep them from being liberated by the advancing Allies, and in some cases they were intended to supply future hostages. The witnesses saw the cold‑blooded murder of family, friends, adults, and children, and they survived to tell the tale of those darkest days.

10 David Friedmann

Before the Holocaust, David Friedmann was one of Berlin’s most important and prolific portrait artists. Although he and his family escaped to Prague in 1938, they were deported to Łódź’s Jewish Ghetto in 1941. Friedmann was eventually sent to Gleiwitz I and became part of the death march to Blechhammer. His family perished at Auschwitz.

Friedmann and the other prisoners set out on January 21, 1945, trudging the 100 kilometres (60 mi) to the next camp. He later wrote about the merciless execution of those too weak to continue, recalling that he himself was nearly one of the victims. He credited a doctor named Orenstein and two friends for pulling him to safety and getting him to Blechhammer, where the Soviets liberated them days later.

After the war, Friedmann returned to painting, immortalising the scenes from the concentration camps he endured as well as the brutal death march itself.

9 Salvator Moshe

Salvator Moshe was born in Greece, where his family had settled generations before, fleeing persecution by the Spanish Inquisition. Moshe and the other Jewish residents of Salonika were deported to German concentration camps in 1943.

Moshe and his brother‑in‑law were part of a 4,000‑person death march from the Warsaw Ghetto to Dachau in 1944. The march stretched on for days. On the third day, the guards ordered a halt beside a river, promising the prisoners a drink. As Moshe reached for water, he heard the crack of gunfire: “[A] fellow next to me, he was drinking water, but I heard bullets. They shooting. Zzz, zzz, zzz. Coming.”

The officers opened fire on the prisoners as they knelt to drink, and when the survivors scrambled back to the road they witnessed more soldiers shooting those who could not keep moving. Moshe and his brother‑in‑law survived and were liberated by U.S. troops outside Seeshaupt.

8 William Dyess

A U.S. fighter pilot, William Dyess survived the infamous Bataan Death March. He escaped in 1943 and eventually made his way back to the United States.

Dyess published a harrowing account of the horrors he witnessed, beginning with the first murder he observed. He described an Air Force captain being searched by a Japanese private who discovered a handful of yen. Upon seeing the money, the private—whom Dyess described as a giant—stepped aside and beheaded the captain.

Dyess also detailed the so‑called “Oriental sun treatment,” where captives were forced to sit in the scorching sun for hours without protection or water. The marchers were trailed by a “clean‑up squad” of Japanese soldiers who killed anyone who fell behind. Once they arrived at San Fernando, the survivors found conditions so dire they could barely muster the strength to protest.

7 Eva Gestl Burns

When Soviet forces closed in on Auschwitz and its surrounding labor camps, the remaining prisoners were forced to march. Eva Gestl Burns was working at an ammunition factory when the order came, and she later recounted a daring escape.

The prisoners wore winter coats, each marked with a striped square. Many women, including Eva, carried scissors and thread, allowing them to remove the striped squares, patch the holes with plain fabric from elsewhere on the coat, and then replace the striped pieces until an opportunity arose.

Eva and a single companion seized their chance while being assembled into rows. When no one was watching, they fled, tore the striped fabric from their coats, and ultimately joined a group of German refugees heading toward the Sudetenland.

6 Stanislaw Jaskolski

In January 1945, prisoners at the Stutthof camp system were herded from their camps. Roughly 50,000 people were scattered; about 5,000 were marched to the Baltic Sea, ordered into the water, and shot. Others were sent eastward into Germany.

Stanislaw Jaskolski later described the march. He remembered the bitter cold and the tiny bag of supplies they were handed: shirts, long johns, half a loaf of bread, and a slab of margarine. They received a scattering of blankets meant to be shared as they were herded onto the road.

As they marched, Jaskolski reflected on what they were leaving behind—the gallows, gas chambers, and crematoriums. Though freezing, he recalled thinking that at that moment they were, “doing pretty good.”

5 Jack Aizenberg

Jack Aizenberg was one of 60 people (out of 600) who survived the 160‑kilometre (100 mi) death march from Colditz Castle to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The 16‑year‑old was already starving and endured a week without food. Fellow prisoners were so famished they resorted to eating grass.

When they stopped for the night at a factory, Aizenberg discovered a single pea. He wanted to boil it over a fire and was terrified someone might steal it. He split the pea into four pieces to stretch it, and it remained his sole nourishment for the entire march.

Aizenberg finally reached Theresienstadt, knowing he was near death—but he no longer cared. Soviet forces liberated the camp days later, and he was taken to Britain as part of a resettlement program for war orphans.

4 John Olson

Colonel John Olson survived the Bataan Death March and the subsequent horrors of Camp O’Donnell.

When the survivors arrived at the camp, locals were granted permission to provide them food. They were also given a welcome speech by a Japanese captain who explained that his only regret was that his code of honor prohibited him from killing the prisoners outright.

As personnel adjutant, Olson kept meticulous daily records of camp life, later using his notes to write a book. His journal documented details such as the increase in daily sugar rations (to 10 grams each) and the daily death toll. He also wrote about the burial detail, noting how men volunteered to ensure their friends received proper burials.

3 Ingeborg Neumeyer

After World War I, roughly three million ethnic Germans lived in the area that became Czechoslovakia. By World II, those Germans were no longer deemed racially pure and fell under the wrath of the Third Reich.

Ingeborg Neumeyer was 15 when she and her family were dragged from their apartment on 31 May 1945 and forced into the streets to join what became known as the Brno death march. She later recalled seeing people shot for lagging behind and her mother’s desperate attempt to ensure her daughter had clothing.

Neumeyer was wearing three dresses when the march began. When she tried to discard two of them, a guard saw her, beat her bloody, stripped her of the clothes, and threw away her shoes.

2 Marie Ranzenhoferova

Marie Ranzenhoferova was 24 when she trekked from Brno to the Austrian border. A would‑be suitor promised safety for her and her baby if she stayed with him, but she refused; he later forced her at gunpoint to join the march.

Marie recounted families forced to abandon homes they had occupied for generations, leaving behind priceless heirlooms they could no longer carry. She remembered guards from concentration camps who were less cruel than the men from the Zbrojovka arms factory. Those men were violent drunks; one grabbed a baby from a woman’s arms and hurled it into a field because the child would not stop crying.

When they reached the border, Marie left the march, and around 700 people followed her into the village of Perna. She stayed there for a while before eventually moving to Mikulov.

1 Keith Botterill

Keith Botterill (pictured above on the right) is one of only six people who survived the Sandakan death march. He and the other survivors survived only because they escaped their Japanese captors during the march from Sandakan Camp.

Botterill recalled that the camp was relatively decent for the first twelve months. As the war dragged on, beatings and starvation worsened. When he and his companions planned an escape, they were caught stealing rice in preparation. Botterill’s friend, Richie Murray, stepped forward and confessed to the theft; he was bayoneted.

After their escape, another companion, weakened by dysentery, slit his own throat to avoid slowing them down. The other survivors—Owen Campbell, Nelson Short (pictured left), Bill Moxham, Bill Sticpewech (pictured centre), and James Richard Braithwaite—were all Australian. They had been warned to escape by a sympathetic Japanese officer who knew about an upcoming slaughter. Botterill died in 1997, just after completing a book about the remarkable story of the Sandakan Six.

0 Further Reading

Here is a small selection of lists from the archives based around World War II.

10 Bizarre World War II Weapons That Were Actually Built
10 Little‑Known Alternative Plans From World War II
10 Amazing Untold Stories From World War II
10 World War II Soldiers Who Pulled Off Amazing Feats