Event description

US Army units tried for several days to capture this city located nearby the Všerubský pass, which forms a natural border between the Upper Palatine Forest and the Šumava hills. One German inhabitant of Nýrsko grippingly described the war’s last days—full of hope that peace would finally come, but also great cruelty—in his diary.

The journey of death

On April 25, 1945, a prisoner transport arrived at the Nýrsko train station from a concentration camp—the exact camp is unknown. Because it could not continue onward towards the town of Železná Ruda, which was occupied by the Americans, its SS commander Stiebitz decided to liquidate the prisoners.

For several days he prevented local citizens from providing food to the prisoners, who thus died en masse. At the start of May, Stiebitz ordered the burial of 82 dead and the murder of the remaining 26 prisoners. A burial grounds for the 108 victims of this journey of death was prepared in their memory after the war. Today it is slowly vanishing…

It is notable that through an initiative of the local Germans, a committee for food aid to the prisoners was established, with the district judge Schmidt at its head. The above-mentioned SS man had him and other activists murdered at the quarry in Hamry.