Germans troops defending their positions against the enemy’s advance in January/February 1945. In the last months of the war German forces continued to retreat across a scarred and devastated wasteland. On both the Western and Eastern Fronts, the last agonising moments of the war were played out. As the Russians advanced through Poland hundreds of thousands of concentration camp inmates, those strong enough to stand, were force-marched across Poland into Germany, many of them going to the already overcrowded camp of Belsen.