HUNDREDS DIED ON WAY

Southland Times, Issue 25835, 21 November 1945, Page 5

HUNDREDS DIED ON WAY

DEATH MARCH FROM DACHAU

(Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, November 19. Rudolf Wolf, a former German prisoner at Dachau concentration camp, giving evidence at the Dachau _war criminal trial at Frankfurt, described the death march from the camp as the American 7th Army advanced. In this march between 600 and 800 prisoners perished. He said that the parties were grouped according to nationalities and were marched off southward hauling, by ropes, enormous wagons on which were stowed SS officers’ baggage. “Guards mounted on motor cycles goaded us on with whips, while the guns of the 7th Army rumbled behind us. Men dropped to the ground from exhaustion and thirst, first in twos and threes, and finally in whole groups,” Wolf said. He estimated that, because of neglect by SS men and the camp authorities, between 8000 and 10,000 died of a typhus epidemic in the winter of 1944-45. Wolf said he was a Communist. He was imprisoned at Dachau for “arousing public anger and indignation.” Another witness, Heinrich Stoehrr testified that sick prisoners were subjected to painful operations without an anaesthetic. They were also beaten up and tortured by hospital attendants. Stoehrr specifically named one SS hospital attendant, Anton Andres, describing him as “one of the most brutal men I know.”