Buchenwald
At the beginning of April 1945, we began to see planes overhead and could see fires in the distance. The British and Americans were levelling cities, and we thought they would come to us any day. They were approaching fast, and we could hear their artillery. Every day we heard the fighting and explosions, louder and louder, and then, all of a sudden, we didn’t hear them anymore. I found out later that a war machine cannot just go on; it needs to stop to regroup and wait for supplies. The Americans had stopped about fifty kilometres from Buchenwald, giving the Germans time to organize the evacuation of the prisoners.
The prisoners in Buchenwald were mostly from different countries outside Germany. There were two barracks for Jewish prisoners and one for us, the children. The Germans announced that the two Jewish barracks had to come to the Appellplatz, the meeting place, but nobody went. The next day, they ordered all the prisoners in the camp to come to the Appellplatz and line up in blocks with five in each row. Then they ordered the Jewish blocks to march forward. We sensed something bad was coming, and so all the Jewish prisoners scattered and mixed into the different groups of prisoners. I wound up in a French group, and they knew what the Germans were going to do. When they saw a guard coming, they pushed me behind them so the guard couldn’t see me.
This went on for about an hour, and the Germans caught a lot of Jewish guys during that time. Then there was a loud air alarm, and they told the rest of us to go back to the barracks. We don’t know what exactly happened to all those Jewish guys they caught, but we assumed they were taken on a death march. As the American forces approached, the Germans began to evacuate the Jewish prisoners from the large camp and some several thousand more from the small camp. I would learn later that on the death march from Buchenwald, about a third of those prisoners would die from exhaustion and starvation or were shot by the SS.
After the Germans had evacuated most of the Jews from Buchenwald, they spread rumours that they were going to dynamite the place. They had an airfield in Weimar, not far away, and they said they were going to bomb Buchenwald and level all the barracks. I heard they were promising half loaves or a full loaf of bread and margarine at the gate to prisoners who would leave, which would be a very big incentive. When you are starving, all you want is to fill your stomach to get rid of that terrible pain. It could have just been another Nazi trap. A lot of prisoners seemed to be leaving, and it was very busy at the front gate.
But that offer left me with a dilemma. Should I leave or should I stay? I decided to stay — I guess because I was afraid to leave. I had no one to go with. I couldn’t find another Jewish person, because those of us still in the camp had scattered and were hiding in different barracks. I would have to find another group of strangers to go with. I decided to go back to my barracks in the small camp and maybe find someone there.
I walked back to the small camp and stayed there for about a week. I was just lying there under the bunks and didn’t go out at all. There were a lot of people in the barracks when I came back, but by April 10 the place was almost empty. I decided I would leave too. At that point, I figured the Germans were going to bomb us any minute, so I had nothing to lose. I was dying of hunger anyway. I hadn’t eaten anything for six or seven days.
Late in the afternoon, I took my package and headed out. I don’t even know what I was carrying, since I had nothing, not even any underwear. For the three and a half months I was in Buchenwald, I had the one set of striped pyjamas I was wearing and no underwear. It was the same for everyone there. We slept in the striped pyjamas, never had a shower, never washed ourselves. Can you imagine how people smelled? My neighbours smelled so terrible the last few weeks that I couldn’t sleep next to another person. There was an empty table in the barracks, and I slept on that.
