Bavarian Killing Fields Uncovered: Early Non-Jewish Survivors as (Forgotten) Agents in Documenting Nazi Crimes and Tracing Victims

This chapter focuses on an early survivors’ initiative that uncovered the killing fields of one of the death marches, in which thousands of concentration camp prisoners had been driven south from Flossenbürg in April 1945. When exhuming almost 600 victims around Wetterfeld only six months later, the initiative created a unique and detailed collection of documentation. It is not only striking because it was done by survivors of this very death march, and because the produced material offers rare insights into their work regarding the identification, and reflects the challenges they had with German, American and Allied authorities. This chapter not only describes these unique events and examines the context as well as the protagonists and their motivations, it also contributes to research on death marches in general, on early survivors’ initiatives and the recent forensic turn. Finally, it is part of a project at the Flossenbürg Memorial to create better access to the cemetery of honour, where the victims were reburied in the late 1950s. Here, more than 5500 victims from death marches throughout Bavaria were reburied, but only some 1400 have been identified. Therefore, the chapter is one of the starting points for a project at the memorial to systematically index and link all data and perhaps even clarify one or two ‘cold cases’ in the future.