Main Evacuation Routes To The West
There were three main POW evacuation routes to the west:
- The "northern route", from Stalag Luft VI at Heydekrug in East Prussia, via Stalag Luft IV at Gross Tychow, Pomerania via Stettin to Stalag XI-B and Stalag 357 at Fallingbostel. Some prisoners were marched from here at the end of the war towards Lübeck.
- A "central route", started at Stalag Luft 7 at Bankau, near Kreuzburg in Silesia (now Poland), via Stalag 344 at Lamsdorf, to Stalag VIII-A Görlitz, then ending at Stalag III-A at Luckenwalde, 30 km south of Berlin.
- The "southern route", from Stalag VIII-B (formerly Stalag VIII-D) at Teschen (not far from Auschwitz) which led through Czechoslovakia, towards Stalag XIII-D at Nuremberg and then onto Stalag VII-A at Moosburg in Bavaria.
The marches began in July 1944, at Stalag Luft VI at Heydekrug, when thousands of western Allied POWs were marched either to Stalag Luft IV at Gross Tychow (a journey which also involved a 60 hour journey by ship) to Swinemunde), or to Stalag XX-A at Thorn in Poland (with part of the distance covered by cattle train).
Read more about this topic: The March (1945)
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