When the Axis powers in Europe finally surrendered, how many people were still alive in places like Auschwitz, Treblinka, and all the other various concentration, labor, and death camps? I’m particularly interested in what percentage of the “untermenschen” population of pre-WWII Europe survived the conflict.
Also curious as to how many prisoners the Japanese Empire still held upon their formal surrender.
According to a book I read once on the history of WWII and the whole Nazi thing, the prisoners who were still alive on the day their camps were liberated didn’t necessarily all live happily ever after.
A great many of them were already starving, malnourished, and near-deathly sick with diseases, especially typhus. Many of them were too far gone to recover – or at least, too far gone to recover given the medical resources that were available.
That’s very hard to say; in the major camps, such as those listed here, the number of survivors varied enormously, from the nearly 60,000 found in Bergen-Belsen to the tragic emptiness of the extermination camps. That list is only a fraction of the 1200 camps identified by the German Ministry of Justice.
With all the frantic transfers, death marches, and mass killings toward the end of the war, many camps were closed before they could be liberated, and others (such as Auschwitz) kept only a few thousand. Many camps were open only briefly. It looks to me like somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people were liberated from the camps or in transit. As Senegoid mentions, tens of thousands of these died afterward.
Yes, and my relatives, after being freed, were taken by the Soviets to their concentration camps, from which my relatives did not survive. My relatives were “Politicals” and the Soviets didn’t like them either. This was one shame of the Yalta Conference, that the Soviets were allowed such free reign to continue such atrocities.
Such as homosexuals, many of whom were re-imprisoned once their “rescuers” realized what the pink triangle meant.
I think all common criminals once identified were sent back to prison. Persons convicted of homosexuality would have been considered as such back then. As it is IIRC if you had a pink triangle, you were not necessarily sent back unless you had bend convicted of a crime already.
Treblinka was closed and it’s existence covered up in 1943 after the prisoner revolt there. So there was no one at the camp when the war ended. Some of the escaped prisoners were recaptured, killed, etc. But some survived. I read a book about the revolt years ago, Treblinka. Very riveting.
Some other camps were also cleaned up and the prisoners killed or moved elsewhere. But Treblinka is quite special due to the somewhat successful revolt.
Are you sure you aren’t thinking of Sobibor?
Rob