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"There were women scattered over the floor on scraps of straw, some, some of them quite obviously with the mark of death on their faces." | |||
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Henny Fletcher Aronsen Born 1924 Kovno, Lithuania 
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Eventually we wound up in Chinow [Chynowja], which was the last village of this death march. By then they knew, the Germans knew, that they had lost the war and that the Russians are on their tail. They put us in a barn and that was really Dante's "Inferno," that was real hell because everybody was dying. I wouldn't be surprised that 85 percent of the people died there because the diarrhea and the stench and the frozen bodies were unbelievable. Every place, you sat next to a corpse. And one of my friends I went to school with, uh, actually she was not in the same area I was, this was kind of a, a, uh, they decided to gather all the rest of the area of these people in Chinov. It was like a, uh, what do you call it, a, the last, the last, the last stop, and she was in a different camp. And she came over to me and she said, "Henny, you still are walking around. Would you help me bury my mother?" And I helped her carry out her mother because that was the very, the first thing they did is made us dig deep ditches because they knew. And I dropped the mother on a pile of bones. And, uh, then I went back and we went back to this barn and, and surrounded by, by death, and, except for my two friends. Yes, one escaped, two escaped on the way, kind of. One with the shoes and the other one kind of also, I don't know, she kind of escaped. So two of them left, so the three of us, we're still holding on to each other and suddenly we hear voices. They closed the barn doors, it was like ten o'clock. I remember because when we were liberated, it was about an hour later. It was ten o'clock. They closed all the doors of the barn in Chinov. They poured gasoline around, all around, and they were gonna burn the whole thing. Next thing, it was a matter of about, I don't know, next thing, we hear banging on our, on our barn doors, and Russian spoken. And they opened up the doors, and of course the ones who could walk out--I was one of them, and my friend, my two friends--we immediately ran out. | ||
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Gerda Weissmann Klein Born 1924 Bielsko, Poland 
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All of a sudden I saw (pause) a strange car coming down the hill, no longer green, not bearing the swastika, but a white star. It was sort of a mud-splattered vehicle but I've never seen a star brighter in my life. And two men sort of jumped out, came running toward us and one came toward where I stood. He was wearing battle gear. I have to think...you know. His helmet was this mesh over that and he was wearing dark glasses and he spoke to me in German. And he said, "Does anybody here speak German or English?" and I said, "I speak German." And I felt that I had to tell him we are Jewish and I didn't know if he would know what the star means or anything, but you know, and I uh looked at him, I was a little afraid to tell him that but I said to him, "We are Jewish, you know." He didn't answer me for quite a while. And then his own voice sort of betrayed his own emotion and he said, "So am I." I would say it was the greatest hour of my life. And then he asked an incredible question. He said, "May I see the other ladies?" You know, what...what we have been addressed for six years and then to hear this man. He looked to me like a young god. I have to tell you I weighed 68 pounds. My hair was white. And you can imagine, I hadn't had a bath in years. And this creature asked for "the other ladies." And I told him that most of the girls were inside, you know. They were too ill to walk, and he said, "Won't you come with me?" And, and I said, "Sure." But I didn't know what he meant. He held the door open for me and let me precede him and in that gesture restored me to humanity. And that young American today is my husband. | ||
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Kurt Klein Born 1920 Waldorf, Germany 
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And I learned from the military government unit that they had heard of a group of, uh, Polish and Hungarian Jewish women who had been, uh, dumped by their SS guards in a, in a vacant factory building. And, uh, who, uh, had been, uh, liberated, uh, by, by our troops. So I, we knew, we knew, of course, that we had to do something for them, even though we couldn't do anything that day anymore, and in the morning we set out, uh, greatly reinforced, to, to take care of the matter. And I had heard where that factory building was, and I remember approaching it, uh, and getting out of, uh, the jeep and walking across a courtyard where I saw some skeletal figures, uh, uh, trying to, to get some water from a hand pump. But over on the other side, uh, leaning, uh, next to the, against the wall next to the entrance of the building I saw a girl standing, and, and I decided to go, walk up to her. And I asked her in German and in English whether she spoke either language, and she answered me in, in German. And, uh, I, uh, I asked about her companions and she, she said, uh, "Come let me show you." And we went inside the factory. Uh, it was an indescribable scene. There were women scattered over the floor on scraps of straw, some, some of them quite obviously with the mark of death on their faces. Uh, their, they, they, all of them looked just horrible, and of course we could see they were emaciated and, and ill. And something that I have never been able to forget, was an extraordinary thing that happened. The girl who was my guide made sort of a sweeping gesture over this scene of devastation, and said the following words: "Noble be man, merciful and good." And I could hardly believe that she was able to summon a poem by the German poet Goethe, which was called--is called--"The Divine," at such a moment. And there was nothing that she could have said that would have underscored the grim irony of the situation better than, than what she did. And it was a totally shattering experience for me. | ||
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Alan Zimm Born 1920 Kolo, Poland 
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Uh, exactly at nine o'clock the gate of the camp which was uh two blocks away. You could see far away, the gate, opened up and a jeep with four military police, the English dressed up in the white belts and the white gloves and the red hats. They sit in the front of the jeep, four of them with machine guns like that. And a truck with loudspeakers behind them, and he said, "My dear friends..." in every language. In German, in Polish, in Yiddish, you name it. "From now on you are free. You are liberated by the Allied forces. And the Germans have nothing to do it to you anymore. You are free people." Everybody was crying. It was uh such an emotional experience. It's hard to describe it. The people were jumping and hugging and kissing. And everybody was running to the jeep. They...the MP went down and they lifted up the MPs on their shoulders and carried him all the way around the block. And still people did not believe. There were a lot of people still afraid. And they were coming with...with trucks. A couple military police came in and they took over. | ||
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Dr. Harold Herbst Born 1912 New York City 
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One of the most memorable parts of that particular time that I walked through these barracks and walked around barracks, I was walking to the back of the barracks just to see what was back there. And as I walked by a little window that probably was one foot square or thereabouts, I heard a voice and I turned around and I saw a living skeleton talk to me...was talking to me, and he said, "thank God the Americans have come." And that was a funny feeling. Did you ever talk to a skeleton that talked back? And that's what you, what I was doing. And later on I saw mounds of these living...I mean these skeletons that the Germans left behind them. | ||
| Copyright © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. | ||||
