The camp was liberated after the armistice with Italy in September 1943,[2] whereupon about 245 Jewish survivors formed the Partisans' Rab battalion intending to fight Nazi German forces occupying Yugoslavia.
The battalion originally comprised some 245 Jews aged 15–30 with little or no military training, and one medical unit with 35 women who offered to serve as nurses.
In addition to the fighters, about 3,000 Jews from the Rab camp — almost all of them women, elderly and children — were shipped from the island to the mainland by the Partisans and dispersed into territories held by them.
The recorded total of 204 Jews who remained behind in the Rab camp, most of them very old or sick, were transported to Auschwitz when the Germans came to the island.
[3] After walking north for 16 days over mountains and through forest, the Jewish fighters joined the 7th Partisan Division.