I remember the last days of war very well indeed.

On 4.4.45 I was released from a Labour Camp near Halle in Saxony.

It came as a surprise.  A few numbers were called, we were only known by numbers, and I thought as before that we had to go to a new work place. But to everyone's surprise we were released.  The Camps were slowly dissolved as the Allies closed in from all sides, and many guards were thinking of escaping.  Some half Jewish girls were still kept behind and marched to a different camp away, out of reach of the Allies.  I heard later that the guards guarding the men were overpowered und were hung up on trees.

I had left my address with one of the girls who had stayed behind.  She came to see me soon after the war and told me about the fate of those guards.  She was looked after by a Jewish Society in Leipzig.  She took me to her doctor who treated her for all her open sores.  We both received cod-liver oil to help us on our feet again.  We had been starved and looked like walking skeletons.

Being released, another girl and I went to the Halle Station.  It had been bombed, and after I was left alone, I waited for two hours just outside the Station to take me home.  The only person there was a soldier returning to the Russian Front after being on leave.  I told him not to go as there were no more fronts, but he stubbornly thought that we could win the war with the promised wonder weapon.  I felt angry that anyone could be so stupid.

When I arrived home it was dark, thank goodness, as I would not have liked to be seen the way I looked.  Mother had a shock when I appeared suddenly, because father had searched for me everywhere, but no one told him anything.  He was told lie after lie.

Soon father came home from his business trip.I had a good rest and plenty of food.  I picked up quite rapidly, except my legs had suddenly swollen beyond all proportion.  Our doctor gave me a few injections and my legs went back to normal size after the treatment.

Vegetable was still available from shops and farms, but shop keepers had given most of the tin food away, so it would not fall into Allied hands.  No one knew what would happen.  The shop keepers thought to give it all to their customers.  People came with handcarts to pick those items up.  Then all, including father dug a hole in the garden, put tins, mainly meat, in canvas covers and buried it all.

 

I will contn in the next e-mail.  Once writing a longish e-mail I had been cut off