Holocaust shoes

Imperial War Museum

"These shoes belonged to the donor's friend, Gisele Friedman, who was held at Auschwitz and was part of the death march to Bergen Belsen, where she was liberated. 

Upper Dvoriste (Czech. Horní Dvořiště), Czechoslovakia, 4th May 1945 The women's death march which lasted for 109 days. The prisoners marched 800 km in harsh weather. 149 of the prisoners who remained alive were photographed a day before the march ended. 
Private Collection Amalie Mary Reichmann-Robinson, Los Angeles, U.S.A

yadvashem.org

Gisele Friedmann was born in Hungary in 1906. She studied in Vienna and eventually settled in Paris. In July 1943 she was deported to Auschwitz, where she was subjected to medical experiments. In January 1945 Gisele was was of the 10,000 inmates of Auschwitz who was sent to West on the Nazi 'death marches'. She spent five days travelling in a covered train followed by a five-day forced march in freezing conditions with hardly any food. She then spent a further five days travelling in an open truck before reaching Bergen Belsen. She was eventually liberated from Belsen.

April 1945 A pile of shoes belonging to prisoners who perished in Bergen-Belsen, Germany; yadvashem.org

The 'Death Marches' -As the Nazis retreated before Soviet troops they tried to hide all evidence of their crimes. The surviving inmates of the Nazi death camps were evacuated and forced West. Some prisoners were evacuated by trains, often in open goods wagons, but most were force-marched hundreds of miles in dreadful conditions, including rain and snow. Thousands were shot because they were too weak or ill to continue whilst many others died of starvation, disease and exposure on the way.

Those the river keeps Study - No7
by Geoffrey Laurence

These became known as the "death marches". Of the 66,000 prisoners evacuated from Auschwitz, for example, about 15,000 died. Death marches also took place from other camps including Dachau, Mauthausen and Ravensbruck as well as cities such as Budapest."