Neustadt to Gross Rosen

Members of the Boys were held in Nazi labour and concentration camps and used as slave labourers.

From 1933-1945 Nazi Germany operated over 1,000 concentration camps and subcamps in its own territory and across German occupied Europe. Among them was the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.

As the camps were dissolved thousands of people among them members of the Boys endured horrific evacuations from the camps on foot, in freight wagons and open top trains, as well as perilous journey across the Baltic Sea. 

The Boys were teenage and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after the war for rest and rehabilitation.

Arbeitslager Neustadt was located in modern-day Prudnik, Poland. It was a subcamp of Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. It was founded in late September 1944 when about 400 women prisoners were brought from Auschwitz to work in the Schlesische Feinweberei AG textile mill. The evacuation of the camp took place on 19 January 1945 due to the approaching Soviet army.

Route

Prisoners, approximately 400 Jewish women, were marched on foot towards Gross-Rosen concentration camp and later transported to Bergen-Belsen.
Memorialisation

A symbolic tombstone exists in the Jewish cemetery in Prudnik (Neustadt O/S) to the memory of Auschwitz prisoners

The march took place in sub-zero temperatures (-20 °C).  Anyone unable to maintain the pace was shot by SS guards.