| Original caption: “Chaplains of the United States Third Army conduct burial services for the 120 Russian and Polish Jews, victims of SS troopers’ killing in a wood near Neunburg.” As American forces approached the camp in mid-April 1945, the Schutzstaffel (SS) began the forced evacuation of prisoners, except those unable to walk, from the Flossenbürg camp. Between April 15-20, the SS moved most of the remaining 9,300 prisoners in the main camp (among them approximately 1,700 Jews), reinforced by about 7,000 prisoners who had arrived in Flossenbürg from Buchenwald, in the direction of Dachau both on foot and by train. Perhaps 7,000 of these prisoners died en route, either from exhaustion or starvation, or because SS guards shot them when they could no longer keep up the pace. Thousands of others escaped, were liberated by advancing American troops, or found themselves free when their SS guards deserted during the night. On April 21, 1945, a Saturday night, Nazi SS guards slaughtered 161 men along Neunburg vorm Wald’s roadsides and farms, on the town’s church lawns, and in its schoolyards; shot them dead, or brained them with rifle butts. This was done not as some desperate tactic to win the war, but because they knew they had already lost it. That it happened is mostly known because of the actions of the American soldiers who arrived in town and discovered the 161 bodies dumped in shallow graves on a hill. Despite the scale of killing in World War II, the soldiers would not permit 161 murdered men to be trivialized. The soldiers forced the townspeople – all of the 2,500 except children under 5 and the very old – to dig up the bodies, then to mourn the murdered men and bury them with some measure of dignity. American soldiers ordered the prisoners dug up from that depression in the hills. They ordered coffins constructed and individual burial plots dug. The townspeople of Neunburg vom Wald line the streets and watch as their fellow townspeople transport corpses found in the nearby forest to the town cemetery for proper burial. And a small funeral was held. The soldiers found other dead prisoners buried along virtually the entire route from Flossenbürg to Neunburg. They found 1 body, and soon another body, and then another. At times, they would find 3 or 4 men in a single grave. Then they hiked up another hill, overlooking the village, and they found a few shallow graves filled with 161 bodies. Fewer than 3,000 of those who left Flossenbürg main camp arrived in Dachau, where they joined some 3,800 prisoners from the Flossenbürg subcamps. When members of the 358th and 359th US Infantry Regiments (90th US Infantry Division) liberated Flossenbürg on April 23, 1945, just over 1,500 prisoners remained in the camp. As many as 200 of them died after liberation. Nearly 97,000 prisoners (of whom just over 16,000 were female) passed through the Flossenbürg system between 1938 and 1945. An estimated 30,000 prisoners died in Flossenbürg and its subcamps or on the evacuation routes, including 3,515 Jews. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0554.jpg |
| Image Size | 976.07 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2920 x 2301 |
| Photographer | Wendell N. Hustead |
| Photographer Title | United States Army Signal Corps |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 29, 1945 |
| Location | |
| City | Neunburg vorm Wald |
| State or Province | Bavaria |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-111-SC-266662 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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