Death march

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For the use of this term in the software development industry, see death march (software development).

For the death marches of Jews and other prisoners from Nazi concentration camps, see Death marches (Holocaust).

This term is also occasionally used as a popular (albeit technically incorrect) title for the Funeral March movement of the Chopin Piano Sonata No. 2.

A death march is a long-distance march in extremely harsh conditions with disregard for the life and health of the victims, usually prisoners or refugees. Victims were often forced to march without food, water, shelter, or amenities; those who couldn't keep up were often shot.

[edit] Examples of Death Marches

• The term 'death march'- was used in the context of the World War II history by victims and then by historians to refer to the forcible movement in the winter of 1944-1945 by Nazi Germany of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, from Nazi concentration camps near the advancing war front to camps inside Germany.

• In the Pacific Theatre, the Japanese forces conducted death marches, including the infamous Bataan Death March and Sandakan Death Marches.

• During the 1915 Armenian Genocide, thousands of men, women and children were forced into death marches through the desert of Deir ez-Zor where most of them perished, leaving few survivors. Today there is a memorial in Deir ez-Zor for the marchers.

• Earlier in American history (1838), the Cherokee nation had to march westward towards Oklahoma. This became known as the Trail of Tears where an estimated 4,000 men, women, and children died during relocation.

• In 1835, Alexander Herzen encountered emaciated cantonists, Jewish boys (some as young as 8 years old) conscripted to the Imperial Russian army. Herzen was being convoyed to his exile at Vyatka, the cantonists were marched to Kazan and their (sympathetic) officer complained that a third had already died.^[1]

• in the Brünn death march of Summer 1945, Sudeten Germans were expelled by Czechs from Sudetenland to Austria, killing about 5200 in the process

• The 1975 forced evacuation of Phnom Penh in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• The March (1945)
• March of the Living