Driven by their guards, in April 1945 thousands of prisoners from the Neuengamme Concentration camp (including it’s detached camps) did reach Sandbostel. They were accomodated in a barbed-wire surrounded compound, the so-called Marlag.
„Human mind will never be able to understand a scene as terrible as the one my eyes had to see this morning. About 8000 political prisoners did arrive. Mostly masses of sceletal corpses..... The survivors did look lost and had nothing in common with human beings. All nationalities, all social classes. To bring help was dangerous and impossible in this moment.. A single potato thrown from our side of the fence causes a wild fight to get it . And more and more were arriving. Upon opening the freight cars, more than half of the inmates were dead. Of fifty locked-in people, only one Italian and one Russian did reach their destination breathing. Out of the smallest reason, aimed shots are fired. It’s the bloody SS. They even kill those, who lament the dead.“ (Pasa 1947)

Survivors write of their accomodation: „In the whole Camp there was no bed, no bunch of straw, no blankets, no crockery nor cutlery. Sanitary installations were missimg completely. There was a single hut called proudly „Ward“, but there was no help for the ill. Neither bandages nor drugs. Lots and lots of vermin, though: lice, fleas, bugs. Spot fever and dysentery did reign. All dirty and a terrible smell was rising. The dysentery victims had spoiled the toilet seats with their blood. A veritable source of plagues this was.“
In the beginning, the POWs did try, in accordance with the Camp’s command, to help the new-arrivals, but after more and more transports came from Neuengamme KZ, this was forbidden and a strict order given, to open fire on everybody approaching the Marlag. Mad from hunger, cases of cannibalism did take place among the deportees:„ A hollow-cheeked, young man passes by weeping. We call him, he’s French. Slowly and shaken by pain, that nearly overwhelms him, he confesses his sorrow. After being seperated from his father some days ago, he found his body with iopened chest among a bunch of corpses: ‚They’ve eaten Dad!‘“
The thousands of KZ prisoners were left virtually on their own. Except for roll-calls lasting many hours, the German SS guards could not be seen. It seems, as if detah by starvation was planned for the prisoners.
An order from the Supreme SS Commander, Heinrich Himmler, to the Commander of the KZ Flossenbürg confirms this : „No prisoner shall be taken alive by the enenmy......“
In the early hours of April 20th, the SS men, many of the guards and a few hundred KZ prisoners did leave the Camp and the POWs could help the deportees again. The German Camp Command did consent to the POWs, led by Frenchman Marcel Albert, caring for the KZ inmates.
Some days later, Sandbostel was liberated by British troops.