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Personal Histories

liberation

"I was 17. I was free, but what it meant I wasn't sure."

"A skeleton covered with skin, with big blue eyes. And as I turned to look whose reflection I saw, I realized that was my reflection."

"We took wagonload after wagonload of bodies out to the grave site."

"They couldn't drink anything, so we had to feed them with medicine droppers."

"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."

"I was 17. I was free, but what it meant I wasn't sure."
Norbert Wollheim

Born 1913
Berlin, Germany

Describes liberation at Schwerin, in northeast Germany, in May 1945
Oral History
Edwarda Kleinfeld Rorat

Born Warsaw, Poland

Describes emotions upon liberation
Oral History
George Salton

Born 1928
Przemysl, Poland

Describes liberation by American forces
Oral History
Abraham Klausner

Born in the US

Describes postwar efforts to reunite survivors
Oral History
Fela Warschau

Born 1926

Describes, while in a DP camp, reading lists of names to find surviving family members
Oral History

Copyright © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

"They couldn't drink anything, so we had to feed them with medicine droppers."
Pat Lynch

Born United States

Describes condition of surviving camp inmates upon liberation
Oral History
Colonel Richard R. Seibel

Born 1907
Defiance, Ohio

Describes food distribution after liberation of the Mauthausen camp
Oral History
Colonel Richard R. Seibel

Born 1907
Defiance, Ohio

Describes aid given to survivors after liberation in Mauthausen and their plans for emigration
Oral History
Pat Lynch

Born United States

Describes the establishment of a hospital to care for liberated camp survivors
Oral History
Pat Lynch

Born United States

Describes caring for starving and critically ill camp survivors
Oral History
Pat Lynch

Born United States

Describes treating survivors in a subcamp of Dachau
Oral History

Copyright © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

"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."
Henny Fletcher Aronsen

Born 1924
Kovno, Lithuania

Describes liberation from a death march from Stutthof
Oral History
Gerda Weissmann Klein

Born 1924
Bielsko, Poland

Describes liberation in Czechoslovakia by U.S. soldier
Oral History
Kurt Klein

Born 1920
Waldorf, Germany

Describes a group of death march survivors found in a Czechoslovak village
Oral History
Alan Zimm

Born 1920
Kolo, Poland

Describes liberation from Bergen-Belsen
Oral History
Charlene Schiff

Born 1929
Horochow, Poland

Describes her liberation by Soviet troops
Oral History
Dr. Harold Herbst

Born 1912
New York City

Describes meeting a prisoner on the verge of death (known as a "Muselmann") in Buchenwald
Oral History
Herbert A. Friedman

Born 1918
New Haven, Connecticut

Describes finding two child survivors after liberation
Oral History

Copyright © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC