Death march

For other uses, see Death march (disambiguation).

A death march is a forced march of prisoners of war or other captives or deportees with the intent to kill, brutalize, weaken and/or demoralize as many of the captives as possible along the way. It is distinguished in this way from simple prisoner transport via foot march. Death marches usually feature harsh physical labor and abuse, neglect of prisoner injury and illness, deliberate starvation and dehydration, humiliation and torture, and execution of those unable to keep up the marching pace. The march may end at a prisoner-of-war camp or internment camp, or it may continue until all the prisoners are dead (a form of "execution by labor", as seen in the Armenian genocide among other examples).

The signing of the Fourth Geneva Convention[1] declared death marches a form of war crime.

Examples

Before World War II

We passed a slave woman shot or stabbed through the body and lying on the path. [Onlookers] said an Arab who passed early that morning had done it in anger at losing the price he had given for her, because she was unable to walk any longer.[2]

During World War II

During WWII, death marches of POWs occurred in both Nazi-Occupied Europe and the Japanese Empire. Death marches of Jews were common in the later stages of the Holocaust as the Allies closed in on concentration camps in occupied Europe.

Dead soldiers on the Bataan Death March
May 11, 1945 German civilians are forced to walk by the bodies of 96 Jewish women murdered by German SS troops in a 500-kilometre (300 mi) death march from Helmbrecht to Volary.

After World War II

See also

References

  1. "Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War". International Committee of the Red Cross. Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross. 12 August 1949. Retrieved 24 April 2014.
  2. Livingstone, David (2006). The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death. Echo Library. p. 46. ISBN 1-84637-555-X.
  3. "Trail of Tears". Choctaw Nation.
  4. Foreman, Grant (1974) [1932]. Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians. University of Oklahoma Press. Archived from the original on April 13, 2012.
  5. "Creeks". Everyculture.com.
  6. Marshall, Ian (1998). Story line: exploring the literature of the Appalachian Trail (Illustrated ed.). University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0-8139-1798-6.
  7. "Exiled Armenians Starve in the Desert". The New York Times (Boston). August 8, 1916.
  8. https://books.google.com/books?id=N1ARAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=300,000+Armenians+Der+Zor&source=bl&ots=qu0ACupdzw&sig=TCV2pQqvfwo9Vl_uhRDUiZ5Jui8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=HJ8PVeWWCMvYggT1koLACw&ved=0CDoQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=300%2C000%20Armenians%20Der%20Zor&f=false
  9. "Death marches". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
  10. Gilbert, Martin (May 1993). Atlas of the Holocaust (Revised and Updated ed.). William Morrow & Company. ISBN 0688123643. (map of forced marches)
  11. Terence Roehrig (2001). Prosecution of Former Military Leaders in Newly Democratic Nations: The Cases of Argentina, Greece, and South Korea. McFarland & Company. p. 139. ISBN 978-0-7864-1091-0.
  12. Holmes, Richard; Strachan, Hew; Bellamy, Chris; Bicheno, Hugh (2001). The Oxford companion to military history (Illustrated ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 64. ISBN 9780198662099. On 12 July, the Arab inhabitants of the Lydda-Ramle area, amounting to some 70,000, were expelled in what became known as the 'Lydda Death March'.
  13. Lewis H Carlson (2002). Remembered Prisoners of a Forgotten War: An Oral History of Korean War POWs. St Martin's Press. pp. 49–50, 60–62. ISBN 0-312-28684-8.
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