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Oral history interview with George Salton

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1995.A.1269.18 | RG Number: RG-50.470.0018

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    Oral history interview with George Salton
    Transcript
    Interview slate one coming up.
    George Salton.
    This is camera one, marker one.
    Should I start?
    Yes.
    All right.
    I was liberated in spring of 1945.
    And I was by that time a prisoner
    in various concentration camps for over three years,
    and it was the 10th camp.
    The name of the camp was Wobbelin.
    It was a camp that apparently the Germans didn't finish.
    When we arrived there, the buildings were not finished.
    They were no floors, and a few barracks, and the windows.
    We slept on the sand.
    The place was very disorganized.
    It was based-- but it was springtime.
    It was a time of double pain, because inside, the discipline
    and organization and supply of food were deteriorating,
    the madness and the evil was increasing,
    while nature placed leaves on the trees outside of the wires.
    And birds were singing and flowers
    appeared in greater numbers, as if to mock
    the many starving and dying prisoners inside the camp.
    There was no work there.
    There was really very little organization.
    The German SS men still, however,
    maintained a certain process, calling us
    out every morning for a assembly to count us.
    It was not meaningful anymore because so many people
    died every night that the count didn't mean anything.
    And nevertheless, we who were still alive and able
    got up every morning and appeared for the assembly
    and for count.
    We did it because we are afraid.
    I suppose in those days only the dead were not afraid.
    We were.
    And so it happened one day--
    and I believe it was the beginning of May.
    I know now that it was the 1st of May, but at that time
    I believed that it is the beginning of May.
    At one of those assemblies, it was announced that
    the prisoners in this camp, Camp Wobbelin--
    in which there must have been about 4,000 or 5,000 prisoners
    that were still alive--
    they were to be placed on a train to be evacuated again.
    Mind you that during those late days
    of the war, as the fronts were moving and advancing,
    we were being evacuated from camp to camp.
    May I?
    And so it happened at about noon or 10 o'clock that day,
    we were placed in boxcars, some 100 or 80,
    or 120 people to a boxcar.
    It was obviously very crowded.
    The train was-- well, let me tell you,
    but the camp is-- all camps was surrounded by double fence.
    And that in the railroad line was there
    waiting boxcars, when an area between the two fences--
    is significant as the story evolves.
    We were on that train the whole night, hungry and miserable.
    There was some random shootings from the guards
    which surrounded us.
    And then by next morning, again, as I remember it very well,
    about 10:00, the doors were opened
    and the prisoners were saying to other prisoners
    that the locomotive did not show up.
    And therefore, there are some doubts
    about us being transported to some new destination.
    Later that morning, we were asked
    to-- we were ordered to leave the boxcars,
    line up in the area in front of the boxcars,
    right in front of the fence and the gate that
    led to the inner camp, where the camp was,
    with instructions that was orders.
    I need to remember that, orders, barked, orders that all
    the Jews should step forward.
    I would estimate that at that time,
    among the 6,000-- or 4,000 to 6,000 prisoners,
    there must have been a few hundred Jews, maybe 400 Jews.
    Most of us, being sufficiently experienced
    and knowing what to expect--
    most of us Jews, I should say--
    tried to ignore this order.
    Some people who really didn't care step forward,
    others were being singled out in this commotion
    by prisoners who are not Jewish.
    And then in the midst of that confusion and shouting and fear
    accompanied by shouts and beatings,
    there was a-- we heard the cannon fire, artillery cannon
    fire, and some place close by.
    And all of us looked in the direction
    of the sound, from which the sound came,
    down the corridor that the railroad
    track cuts through the forest.
    And in the distance, we could see
    a tank, a kind of a green tank.
    And I quite frankly didn't know and didn't care at that time
    whether it was a German or Russian or American tank.
    We didn't know exactly where we were and which part of Germany,
    and we did not know at all how the war was coming,
    even though we knew that there were
    changes because of the movement of the prisoners from camp
    to camp.
    And there was this tank, and it was
    surrounded by smoke, which I suppose was the smoke emitted
    by the cannon.
    And it stood there on the horizon, almost--
    I remember seeing it as some kind of a prehistoric animal,
    ready to snarl or attack.
    And I was-- and most of us who could see it
    were stunned by that sight.
    And the Germans, of course, reacted to it very quickly.
    They opened the inner gate, the gate to the inner camp,
    and made all of us move, walk into the camp,
    gave up the idea of singling out Jews.
    They did hold back the--
    the German trusties were called kapos
    who were basically the administrators
    of the day-to-day workings of the camp.
    And we just went in, and there was nothing more.
    There was no-- the tank didn't appear,
    there were no additional cannon fire.
    It would have been about 10:00 or 11:00
    when this happened, in the morning.
    The German guards continued to occupy the towers that
    surrounded the electric wire around the fence,
    for reasons which were their own.
    They continue random shooting into the camp.
    Prisoners were being shot.
    And those of us who were inside searched out,
    and I in particular searched out,
    a position between the barracks where
    I was not in the line of fire.
    And some food was available for stealing
    because the kapos who in the past
    protected the supply of potatoes or cabbage
    or whatever was there were no longer inside the camp.
    So there we were, not knowing what's going to happen.
    And clearly, I did not anticipate liberation.
    The whole-- I must confess, that the whole notion of being free,
    of living a life that was my own,
    was outside of my expectation.
    I have been in camp since--
    I was a prisoner since I was 14.
    I have been under German control since I was 11.
    I just didn't know what it meant to be
    able to decide when to get up, or what to do, or--
    the whole notion of liberation and freedom
    was not something I was counting on.
    And I had no idea and no expectation
    that this was the day when the thing that I
    had forgotten about may happen, that I
    may be liberated and free.
    So there I was, sitting behind a barrack with other prisoners.
    Mind you, in that camp there were hundreds and hundreds
    of unburied bodies, because the whole process of managing
    the camp has stopped.
    And so there we were sitting behind the barrack.
    I think I had two or three potatoes.
    And some prisoners started fires, little fires.
    And I had my bowl that all prisoners carried,
    and it was essential to have in order
    to receive rations of soup whenever it was available.
    And I tried to cook these potatoes.
    And time passed.
    I really didn't think about anything very much.
    When I noticed out of the corner of my eye,
    in the distance among other barracks, people running, just
    individual prisoners I could see running, all
    in a certain direction.
    And I still had a survival instinct
    even though I was by that time very tired,
    and my life was ebbing, and I was
    on the verge of becoming a Muselmann,
    if you know what it is, someone who no longer really cares
    about surviving.
    Still, the instinct was there, and I saw these people
    running in this one direction.
    And I wanted to know why.
    Maybe there was food, maybe something good was happening,
    and I wanted to take advantage of it.
    Maybe there was something bad, and I
    needed to know about it to try to avoid it.
    Mind you, as a youngster, I survived the many years
    of concentration camps and many selections
    by making myself invisible.
    15-year-old boys were not supposed to stay alive in camps
    because they were not old enough to be productive workers.
    We have to reload.
    That's what "cut" means?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Got it.
    Right here.
    Two.
    So there I was sitting, hidden against one of the barracks,
    protecting myself from the line of fire,
    when I noticed people running.
    In the distance between the barracks,
    I could see individuals in their white and blue striped prison
    uniforms running.
    And I initially wanted to ignore it
    because it was safe and warm sitting in the sun over there,
    but my survival instincts made me
    want to find out why the people were running
    and what was happening.
    There were maybe good things that were happening.
    Maybe there was food, and I needed
    to know about it to take advantage of it.
    They were maybe bad things that I
    needed to know about to avoid.
    That was the instinct of a prisoner
    who, no matter what the circumstances,
    still wanted to survive.
    So after noticing the movement of people and the running,
    I followed.
    I followed between the barracks, moved on,
    and came to an area of the camp where the latrines, toilets,
    were located.
    It was a special area, not only because the toilets were there,
    but because this is the place where
    prisoners who are about to die for some strange reasons
    went to die.
    And there were mountains of bodies and many dead people.
    And so I ran in that direction.
    And as I came onto that place, I notice many prisoners
    yelling and screaming and jumping and dancing.
    And there, standing among them, were
    seven giants, young people.
    They must have been 18 or 19, American soldiers.
    There were seven or eight of them standing inside the camp.
    Apparently, they cut the wire and came into the camp.
    They were bewildered by us, wild and unkempt and dirty
    and, I'm sure, smelly people, jumping and dancing and trying
    to embrace them and kiss them.
    And I did, too.
    I also joined the crowd and yelled and screamed,
    and somehow knew that the day of liberation has come.
    It was a strange feeling for me, however,
    because as I remember, on the one hand,
    I was overwhelmed by this unexpected
    and unhoped for encounter of freedom.
    But at the same time, what was happening was outside of me.
    I really-- I didn't know what to make of it.
    I knew I was free, but I didn't count on it.
    I somehow didn't know what it meant.
    And I knew it was great, but I was
    overjoyed because all people around me
    were overjoyed and were singing and dancing.
    But I was 17.
    I was free, but what it meant, I wasn't sure.
    The soldiers were there for a few minutes.
    They were patrols, whose job, I'm sure--
    whose assignment was not to liberate the camp,
    but to march along a certain road to some destination.
    And after 10 minutes or 15 minutes, they left.
    They just moved on through the wire.
    We looked around incidentally during that celebration
    and wonderful feeling.
    And the Germans were gone.
    The towers were empty.
    There were no soldiers, there were no guards.
    And the Americans have left.
    And some of us who remembered the stories
    that our parents told us from the first war,
    when the Austrians and the Russians
    kept moving back and forth across little towns
    and advancing and retreating, some of us
    said the Germans may come back.
    So we left.
    Some groups of people, the Frenchman,
    I saw arrange themselves into a marching order
    and walked out of the gate.
    And five of us Jewish young men who knew each other from home
    left through the hole in the fence into the forest,
    not to search for freedom, or for--
    but to hide, because we thought that the Germans might
    come back.
    So while we were free, and while the Germans were gone,
    we were not really free, because we--
    freedom didn't come like a sunrise
    where one day we were in the dark, the next day there
    was light and warmth and nurturing and rejoicing
    and celebration.
    Freedom came as something that happened, but did not
    affect us immediately.
    So we went into the forest, not knowing what to do.
    I remember there were some guns and pistols laying around
    in the forest.
    Obviously, the Germans were retreating already
    at that time.
    We tried to carry some of these weapons with us,
    expecting that we may have to hide in the forest
    and defend ourselves, but quite frankly,
    the weapons were too heavy for us to carry.
    And we came to a little town--
    the town's name is Ludwigslust--
    only to discover as we walked into the town--
    I think looking for some shelter, maybe for something
    to eat--
    that the town was still in German hands.
    I remember us walking, coming around the corner,
    and on the opposite side of the street,
    there were two German officers with a woman walking,
    and they were still in uniform and armed.
    And they looked at us and we looked at them,
    and they moved on, and we jumped over
    a hedge and hid in a little shack that
    apparently was used by a painter to store his paint.
    And we were just hiding over there,
    waiting for darkness to leave the town and hide in the forest
    again.
    So here we are liberated, but really did not recognize then.
    And towards the evening, as the sun started setting,
    American GIs came walking into town.
    And we were liberated.
    And that-- we were liberated.
    We then knew that the times of oppression and pain
    and beatings were behind us.
    And rather than saying, me, let me talk about myself,
    I really didn't know what the future held.
    I recognized that most likely I was alone.
    I recognized that most likely my parents did not survive.
    I recognized that I was really unprepared.
    I was obviously unprepared for freedom and self-sufficiency.
    At the-- and I was driven only to contact my relatives
    in the United States in the hopes
    that my brother may have survived.
    And when the family was separated back in early '42,
    my father instructed all of us to contact our relatives
    in New York, because this is how we would find each other.
    So that's how it happened, a day of pain and misery, and then
    a low-key development that snuck up on us.
    Wonderful day, a day I shall never forget,
    a day I remember with great joy and great pleasure.
    But it wasn't a day that held the kind of excitement
    that one would expect to see in the movies.
    It was a day when freedom came, liberation came,
    unannounced and unexpected.
    OK.
    We have about two minutes left.
    Did--
    Well, let me talk a little bit about what happened next.
    Once the Americans came to town in Ludwigslust, the five of us
    decided to-- we didn't know what to do.
    We really stayed in this little shack in which paint was
    stored, slept, and went around to the American--
    to the kitchens that cooked for the American soldiers--
    which by then occupied the town--
    and begged for some food.
    There were really no arrangements.
    And I'm not complaining.
    I'm just recognizing there were no arrangements
    to take care of us or the hundreds of other prisoners
    that were liberated then in the camp, in Wobbelin.
    American soldiers were quite generous
    and helpful and sympathetic.
    They gave us food, they gave us whatever they had,
    including Hershey bars.
    And after a few days of that existence,
    Americans then started making arrangements
    to ship the various liberated prisoners to their homes.
    Where we were liberated was to become the Russian zone,
    and the Americans were, of course,
    expecting to retreat from that area
    on the other side of the river.
    So the French were sent home to the West,
    and the Italians went down South.
    And the Poles and the Ukrainians, the Czechs,
    were shipped East.
    We were-- while we are Jewish, we were still Polish.
    One day, the Americans gathered us from this little shack
    and put us on a truck with other people of Polish origin,
    and sent East towards the Russians
    whose lines were right outside of town.
    And the Russians didn't want to accept us, didn't want to,
    whatever the reasons were.
    The guards standing there on the roadside
    did not allow the truck to pass, so we were brought back.
    The British came and put us on their trucks
    and took us to a town called Lubeck.
    And I must tell you, on that road something happened
    that was a part of the liberation.
    And I think it was the day when I really realized that the--
    Let's wait.
    OK.
    We have to put--
    OK.
    After the Russians refused to pass the truck with people
    from Poland and turned us back, by some arrangement,
    British soldiers showed up with trucks.
    And we were, all of us, placed on a number
    of trucks driven by British soldiers
    and taken West towards a town of Lubeck.
    Obviously, into that part of Germany
    that was to be British zone and not the Russian zone,
    or the Eastern zone.
    Something happened on this trip that I remember
    was great emotion.
    Because even though it happened maybe a week
    or eight days after the liberation,
    it was that punctuation mark that really made
    me realize that I'm whole again.
    Or, I can at least hope to be whole again.
    We were sitting on the back of the truck
    as the trucks were moving.
    And behind us was, obviously, another truck
    with two British soldiers and their uniforms
    driving that truck.
    And the truck, because of various obstacles,
    the trucks would stop every once in a while and move.
    And the few of us that were sitting in that truck
    spoke Yiddish to each other, Jewish Yiddish.
    And at one point, the drivers of the truck behind us
    started blowing the horn.
    The truck stopped.
    And they came out running, speaking Yiddish to us,
    telling us that they were Jews, and being surprised and happy
    that they had found Jewish survivors,
    because somehow, they didn't expect to find any.
    And I remember the feeling of seeing people in uniform
    with authority, with guns, with hands
    on the wheel that could make a truck turn left or right,
    that were Jewish.
    And it was the moment when I realized that I was equal.
    It was the moment when I realized
    that the days of humiliation and fear,
    and the days when I was treated as somehow subhuman,
    were behind me, because it was possible for me,
    it was attainable for me to feel that there were no limits,
    and possible for me to really understand that I was free.
    Maybe that's how long it took for me to really understand
    what liberation was.
    That's how long it took for me to really comprehend
    that liberation was more than just being
    able to go out of the camp and cross the barbed wire.
    Liberation was something that had to happen in me.
    I had to realize and understand that liberation was also
    a feeling of sufficiency and equality,
    and that that happened that day with the British soldiers.
    Anyway, life went on we.
    We were settled in a DP camp in--
    Let me ask you a couple things.
    OK.
    One--
    Sandra, you heard the beeps?
    Yeah.
    What?
    Did you at some point--
    did an American soldier share his rations with you?
    Can you describe--
    Yes.
    I'm obviously going to back in time.
    On May 2nd, the evening of May 2nd,
    which was the day of our liberation, that evening,
    as we were hiding in this little shack hoping to be undetected,
    to be able to somehow escape in the darkness
    back into the forest, the American soldiers marched in,
    and we were liberated.
    And we just stayed there and did not leave the shack.
    And the following day or two--
    which I, who was very weak and very skinny,
    and I'm sure looked terrible, I spent my days
    sitting in the sun and resting and trying to warm up
    and trying to recover.
    Young American soldiers-- who did not look young to me;
    they looked like giants or angels--
    would come by and give me food, give me a bar of chocolate,
    or share some food that they had.
    Yes, that's what happened.
    I'm sure they felt sympathy for this little teenager who
    was half alive and half dead.
    And I'm sure they recognized that we deserved pity.
    I'm sure they also recognized that we
    may be one of the reasons why they risk their lives
    for the Germans.
    And also, you saw children for the first time?
    Oh, you are-- you have seen some of my other stories.
    Yes.
    When the American soldiers left Wobbelin, and some of us
    were concerned that there might be a repetition of the stories
    that we had from our parents of what
    happened during the first war, and were
    concerned that the Germans might come back, we left.
    We walked through the forest where there were many--
    there were weapons and abandoned trucks.
    And as we walked through the forest,
    came out into a clearance, or a little side road,
    and there were refugees there.
    I don't know whether they were German--
    I expect they were Germans.
    They could have been Lithuanians, or whatever--
    wagons with horses and lots of refugees,
    with women and children.
    And I remember walking and seeing two young children.
    They might have been like my grandchildren
    now, three or four or two.
    And I was surprised, how a child-- to see a child,
    to see how a child looked, because I
    haven't seen a child for three or four years.
    I knew that children exist, of course,
    but I haven't seen a child.
    And it was a special experience to see a child,
    to remember how a child look.
    And to see how really beautiful and innocent they were.
    I was kind of like seeing a flower that one has only
    read about.
    And I remember going down on my knees
    in front these two little children and looking at them.
    And they were not afraid of me.
    I didn't touch them, but they were just there.
    And when I stood up, I did feel a little bit more human.
    I did feel that I-- the anger, and the desire maybe
    for revenge, have left me.
    I did feel a little bit more human.
    I also felt sad, I must add, because I'm
    sure I realized that they were no Jewish children around.
    They were no Jewish children of the year of age three or four
    or five or seven or eight any place in central Europe.
    But, yes, I saw two children.
    There were more children, but I saw these two,
    and I looked at them.
    And I, to this day, I remember how
    surprised I was to see how a child look, because I forgot.
    And that experience was one of those many experiences
    that I'm sure was led me to a path of healing and becoming
    free.
    You are, of course, have seen some of my other stories,
    and that's not fair.
    When the Americans came into the camp,
    can you describe to me your physical condition, how
    you looked, what you weighed?
    In that camp in Wobbelin--
    which was, as I said, the 10th camp in my history,
    and I have been in camps by 10 years--
    I have basically deteriorated very badly physically.
    I couldn't walk very well.
    My hip hurt me.
    And I was really very weak and reaching
    the state in which a prisoner no longer cared
    whether he or she survived.
    Now, I did not reach that point.
    I still-- when I saw people running out
    of the corner of my eye, I still got up
    and went looking what was happening.
    But I was in very bad shape.
    And I think if I wasn't liberated, in a matter of days,
    I would have been one of those bodies that
    was laying in mountains of dead in front of the toilets.
    I would guess that I had maybe a week or 10 days left.
    And if I wasn't liberated and was not given additional food
    and was allowed to rest and sit in the sun,
    I wouldn't have recovered.
    OK.
    We're very close to running out of film.
    And I think we should reload, and then
    move on to the DP camp.
    OK.
    What is DP camp?
    Pardon me?
    Tell me about DP camps.
    Yes.
    After we were brought by the British military two to Lubeck,
    which is in northern Germany, I found my ways within a few days
    to a displaced person camp run by the British
    in a town called Neustadt.
    It was located in the former German submarine school,
    and there were many people.
    Jews were in the small minority.
    There were people there from--
    there were Frenchmen.
    There were Italian soldiers who were interned by the Germans,
    somehow, after Italy changed sides and declared war
    on Germany in 1943.
    There were some Yugoslav former prisoners of war.
    There were Poles, Ukrainians, as well as Latvians,
    and Lithuanians, and Estonians.
    Within a matter of days--
    no, within a matter of weeks, various people left, went home.
    It was made possible for the Frenchmen to go back to France,
    and the Italian soldiers, somehow,
    were able to move back to Italy.
    And the Yugoslavs left.
    The Poles and the Czechs--
    the majority of the Poles and almost all the Czechs
    went back east, home.
    And after a matter of six weeks or so,
    the people that were left in camp were Jews,
    a few Jews, a few Poles who-- and Ukrainians--
    for whatever personal reasons, did not want to go back.
    And the Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian families
    of people who escaped from the advancing Russians, people
    who, in large part, I believe, were
    cooperating with the Germans.
    And of course, as I got to know some of them, some of them
    did serve in the German military in Estonian divisions
    or Latvian divisions.
    Life in the DP was really a waste of time.
    There was nothing much done there.
    We were, of course, provided for by
    various charitable organizations and the sponsorship
    of the United Nations.
    UNRRA was the organization that really was responsible for it.
    The British managed it.
    But it was not a meaningful, or useful, or purposeful time.
    It was just kind of time of waiting.
    For those who were willing and able to go home,
    it was a time of transition of weeks or days
    until they could get on the train
    to go back to Czechoslovakia.
    So after a relatively short time,
    it was not only a wasted time of waiting
    but for the Jewish people in that particular camp
    and generally in camps in the English zone
    was a time of waiting in a relatively hostile environment.
    The Poles-- I don't want to single them out,
    but the Poles who were there still
    had certain anti-Semitic attitudes.
    And I remember an occasion where a group of Polish performers
    came to perform to entertain the DP people,
    and the comedy included various anti-Jewish jokes.
    The Latvians and Lithuanians who were mostly kind of in charge
    to administer the camps were obviously
    people who cooperated with the Germans.
    So it was not a time of healing.
    It was not a meaningful time.
    It was a time of waiting.
    Some of the young Jewish people managed to get into a situation
    where they could smuggle themselves into Palestine.
    It was illegal at that time because Israel was not yet
    free.
    Others were just waiting.
    I had made contact with my relatives in America.
    I knew they were sponsoring my coming to the United States.
    I accepted that as my future, and I was just waiting.
    Towards the end of 1945, both because I
    felt that living in the American zone
    would make it easy for me to immigrate the United States
    and because of the really unpleasant frictions that
    existed in that camp where the majority of the people
    were not sympathetic to us, I moved on to the Americans zone
    and to a DP camp in the American zone.
    The situation was different there.
    By whatever circumstances, the Jews
    were in separate camps which were Jewish displaced persons
    camps.
    It was still a time of waste.
    It was still a time of waiting, but at least there
    was an opportunity for us to nurture each other, to somehow
    help each other in healing to give us a sense of importance
    and value.
    But that was displaced person camp.
    There was nothing dramatic about it.
    There was nothing really helpful.
    It was just a time of waiting and maybe getting well.
    And maybe some of us managed to go to school.
    I was too young to really try to go to university,
    and I was too old in terms of my own experiences
    to start going to high school, even if there
    was an opportunity to do that.
    So it was a time of waste, a time of waiting.
    And in October 1947, some two years and four months
    after liberation, my papers came through,
    and I came to United States, where I started a new life.
    Can you-- overcrowded or was--
    Most of the--
    Let's-- cut for this point.
    Yeah.
    You want to talk about DP camps?
    Yeah.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    Marker five.
    Wait.
    New slate.
    Clearly, there was a difference in how the DP camps looked
    and operated in the first few months
    after the war when so many people were sick, and dying,
    and needed medical attention, and so on.
    But within three or four months after the war,
    things settled into some routine.
    They all were pretty much the same
    virtually all the camps were established
    in former military facilities of the German army, navy, army,
    and military.
    We were housed in former military barracks,
    and our barracks in Germany--
    and not barracks made out of wood,
    but they were stone buildings where soldiers lived before.
    So the living conditions were quite austere, usually
    a number of people to a room, but given our background
    as prisoners in concentration camp,
    this was still much better.
    Food was distributed in kitchens.
    In some places, later, for families it was possible to,
    rather than get in line to get your food in the kitchen,
    to get some supplies, so people who
    had the need to and the ability could cook their own food.
    It was really somewhat of a regimented life, which,
    to those of us that came out of the camp,
    looked like a wonderful time of vacation and recovery,
    I think, to us today, with our background,
    would look very restrictive and kind of a shabby existence.
    But that's what it was.
    We were free to walk around, and we were free to communicate.
    And we are free to involve ourselves
    in whatever civil and civic things were
    organized in the camp.
    But again, I need to repeat that it
    was time of waiting, waiting to go to Israel,
    or waiting to go to America, waiting to find
    the means to live outside.
    It was also a time of growing up.
    I was 18, and my hair grew.
    And I realized that I was a man, and I
    think I must have fallen in love once or twice,
    as teenagers are apt to do.
    But when people ask me to talk about DP camps
    and I try to think of them, I see
    a picture in black and white, not a picture in color.
    Did Ben-Gurion come to where you were then?
    No.
    Ben-Gurion did come to--
    I know now, but where I was, in the camp
    in Deggendorf, which is in Bavaria,
    I just don't remember anything important happening,
    except a time of waiting.
    I needed, for example, dental work,
    I remember, in those days.
    There were no dental facilities.
    I had to wait until I came to America
    to do whatever dental work that I needed to do.
    And I did not see anything exciting.
    I did not see anything great.
    Yes, there were people under Israeli sponsorship
    who tried to organize young people
    and arrange for them to smuggle themselves through the borders
    to go to Palestine, but for those of us
    who decided, for one reason or another,
    to wait until our American papers came through,
    it was a time of waiting.
    Thank you.
    Now we need to be quiet and the record room tone.
    Seven marker, six.
    You have spoken of your loneliness and your envy
    of a normal life, your losses.
    Can you talk to me about that?
    You're talking about in the DP camp?
    Yeah, or even just after liberation.
    Yes, yes.
    Well, yes, of course, I do remember, still
    in Neustadt the fall of 1945, walking through--
    we are free to, of course, go to town, but it was a curfew.
    We had to be in the DP camp at certain hour
    because the British locked the gates.
    But I remember walking through town,
    and I was 17, not quite 18.
    My hair was growing, and my teeth were broken.
    And I saw young German teenagers--
    the fact that they were German was
    unimportant-- going to school, young boys and young girls
    with schoolbooks, and backpacks, laughing and giggling
    as teenagers ought to do.
    And I remember that very great pain and very great sadness
    because I was convinced that that will never
    be part of my experience, and I remember
    that envy that I could no longer be
    one of those young people that could laugh and giggle and not
    be really, somehow, suppressed by memory and experience.
    And that was a very painful experience for a young man
    to know that the normal things that were available to others
    were denied to me.
    And so, yes, there were such times,
    and there was that sadness.
    And those feelings of insufficiency, those feelings
    of somehow being second-rate that were somehow
    planted in me in the war years did not
    disappear the minute somebody said to me, you are free,
    and they were with me for a long time.
    I would not be at all surprised that some
    of those things that happened and some of those experiences
    influence me to this day.
    But in those days, I was especially sensitive.
    And I was especially envious, and I was especially sad
    that I was alone, and lonely, and without any value
    in my eyes.
    And seeing those young people laughing, and smiling,
    and giggling, and going to school--
    people my age-- kind of underlined that.
    What about religious ceremonies?
    Do you remember--
    Yes, I remember there were religious--
    of course.
    In the English DP camps, there was very little of it.
    The DP camp in Neustadt was dominated by the majority
    who was Christian.
    In the DP camp in Germany--
    I'm sorry, in southern Germany where they were primarily
    a Jewish camp, Jewish ceremonies,
    Jewish religious practices were organized
    for holidays or for Saturday.
    I was too devastated by what I saw,
    by seeing the thousands of dead and knowing of millions of dead
    to be sufficiently forgiving to really participate
    in religious ceremony.
    I was not making judgment about God,
    but I was also not making--
    I was also unable, really, to feel honest about myself
    and, at the same time, participate to any great extent
    in religious ceremonies.
    I'm Jewish.
    I'm glad to be Jewish.
    I am glad that my children are Jewish.
    But in those days and to some extent
    even today, I have not made peace with the fact
    that it was possible for me to survive
    and others who were more worthy did not.
    And so I did not.
    I did not embrace--
    I embrace Judaism.
    I embrace the idea of free Israel.
    I did not embrace the religious practices
    that were available to me.
    Let's cut.
    That's it?
    Yeah.
    I'll go back--

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    George Salton discusses being a prisoner of the Nazis; being liberated from camp Wöbbelin in the spring of 1945 and his memories of that day; the prisoners’ fears that the Germans would return; a soldier who shared his rations with George; his attempts to contact his relatives, including his brother; going to the British zone in Lübeck; staying in the Neustadt displaced persons camp (DP camp); the different refugees in the camp; being sponsored by his relatives for immigration to the United States; living in Deggendorf, Germany until his paper to the US came through in 1947; and seeing German teenagers in Deggendorf before he emigrated and his feelings envy, pain, and loneliness, knowing he would never have normal teenage years.
    Interviewee
    Mr. George L. Salton
    Interviewer
    Sandra Bradley
    Date
    interview:  1995 February 23

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 videocassette (D2) : sound, color ; 3/4 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Salton, George Lucius.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Sandra Bradley, a film production consultant for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, conducted the interview with George Salton on February 23, 1995, in preparation for the exhibition "Liberation 1945," which opened in June 1995. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received a copy of the interview on August 25, 1995.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:41:36
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn511063

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    Time Coded Notes (2)

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    Also in Liberation 1945 oral history collection

    Contains oral history interviews with 25 Holocaust survivors and concentration camp liberators recorded in preparation for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's exhibition, "Liberation 1945," which opened in June 1995. The collection includes interviews with: Boleslaw Brodecki, Sonia Brodecki, Jim Cacioppo, Helen Fagin, Suzanne Foldes, Nesse Godin, Henny Gurko, Irving Heymont, John Holmes, Joseph Kahoe, Henry Kanner, Abraham Klausner, John Komski, Pat Lynch, William McWorkman, James Moncrief, Judah Nadich, George Salton, Richard Seibel, Milton Shurr, Alfred Sundquist, Fella Warshau, Nick White, and Alan Zimm

    Date: 1995

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Brodecki

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Brodecki

    Oral History

    Boleslaw "Bud" Brodecki describes being an inmate in Theresienstadt at the time of liberation; being wakened in the middle of the night to people screaming; how people did not know the war had ended; hollering to the prisoners that they were free; how the prisoners were numb and did not react; how the people still did not have food and many continued to die from dysentery and other illnesses; being taken care of by the Red Cross; being liberated by the Russians; being treated for louses; getting soup and clothing; registering to go to Russia because he did not want to return to Poland; going to a displaced persons camp in Landsberg, Germany; becoming a police officer in the camp; meeting his future wife in the camp; courting his wife while they were in the displaced persons camp; getting married in the camp and how 300 people attended, bringing food and instruments; how they got legally married in Landswood, Germany before the religious ceremony; having a son two years later; immigrating to the United States and having to get married a third time because of a legal technicality; additional details about the wedding in Landsberg; welcoming David Ben-Gurion to the camp; and trying to go to Palestine illegally.

    Oral history interview with Sonia Brodecki

    Oral history interview with Sonia Brodecki

    Oral History

    Sonia Brodecki describes how she was in three concentration camps during the Holocaust, including camps in Kindabricka, Kletendorf, and Ludwigsdorf; how in Ludwigsdorf she made ammunition and her whole body was blue-green from the powder; how she was warned on May 7, 1945 that they were going to blow up the camp, but the Russians liberated them the next day; how she had kept up her hope in the camps by envisioning her return home; how she and three friends went to Waldenburg, Germany; going home and learning her immediate family was dead; details on how she felt when she first arrived in her home city; going to the displaced persons (DP) camp in Landsberg, Germany; knitting items in the DP camp to be sent to Israel; meeting her future husband in the DP camp and their courtship; how he wrote her poems; how they married after knowing each other three months; her wedding in the camp on December 21, 1945 and how people brought baked goods and played music; their initial legal marriage in Landshut, Germany; and how the wedding was like starting over again.

    Oral history interview with Jim Cacioppo

    Oral history interview with Jim Cacioppo

    Oral History

    Jim Cacioppo describes being in Linz, Austria when there was a false report of the war’s end and how there was a celebration; driving Major Tuthill to Mauthausen; arriving at the Mauthausen concentration camp; the physical condition of the prisoners; how many of the prisoners died from eating food that was too rich; seeing bodies in the quarry; how the surviving inmates were happy to see them; being shown around the gas chambers and crematoriums by the survivors; seeing piles of weapons; guarding three of the survivors who had killed a German guard; how the engineers dug graves and civilians brought wagon loads of bodies to bury; seeing the German guards imprisoned and how he wanted nothing to do with him; and the number of surviving prisoners in the camp.

    Oral history interview with Helen Fagin

    Oral history interview with Helen Fagin

    Oral History

    Helen Fagin discusses being in her house in Radomsko, Poland when it was bombed on September 1, 1939; living in the Radomsko ghetto until the liquidation in 1942; her parents had already been sent to Treblinka; being with her two sisters until she escaped during a march to the railroad station; staying in the Warsaw ghetto and getting out with Aryan papers; being caught and released back into the ghetto; wandering in western Poland for a period of time; the arrival of the Russians; moving further east; being liberated on February 14, 1945; reuniting with her sisters after a long search and returning to their home town; feeling like they could no longer stay in Poland; not getting their possessions back from friends they had left them with; a group of young Israeli boys who had organized to help survivors and take them to Palestine; travelling through the Carpathian mountains to Czechoslovakia, then to a camp complex in Bratislava (Slovakia), and then to Austria; going to the American zone from the Russian zone; pretending to be Jewish refugees from Greece to pass over to the American zone; taking a boat on the Danube to American sector; living in the Wels displaced persons (DP) camp for a few months; going to Linz, Austria, where the DP camp was full; going to Bad Gastein, Austria administered by UNRRA in the fall of 1945; meeting a kind US soldier in Bad Gastein, Lt Kyle from Dayton Ohio, who brought her a blanket; working in the office because she spoke fluent German; being declared stateless; experiencing a period of feeling empty and depressed; learning English and becoming politicized after she heard the British would not let them into Palestine; her sister’s work at the Bad Gastein hospital; and getting a ticket to travel from Bremerhaven to New York.

    Oral history interview with Suzanne Foldes

    Oral history interview with Suzanne Foldes

    Oral History

    Suzanne Foldes (née Zsuzsi Morvai), born in 1921 in Miskolc, Hungary, discusses being separated from her mother when they arrived at Auschwitz in 1944; her mother’s death in the gas chambers; doing forced labor at the end of the war at a Buchenwald kommando run by I.G. Farben; hiding in the woods with eight others when the guards began fleeing the camp; going into the nearby village (Mishgots?) and hiding in a barn; being fed and hidden by the owner of the barn; the arrival of American troops; the mayor of the town giving them places to sleep; her memories of hearing that FDR had died; being moved into a hotel; GIs visiting them in the evenings; one Jewish GI who brought candles and Challah on a Friday night; some of the group returning to Budapest, Hungary; travelling to an area of south Hungary; going to Prague, Czech Republic and getting back her citizenship; returning to Budapest; finding her aunt and reuniting with her father; traveling on a train when Russian soldiers sexually assaulted some younger women; and getting some of their belongings back from a man who had been in the military security forces and had been kind to her family.

    Oral history interview with Nesse Godin

    Oral history interview with Nesse Godin

    Oral History

    Nesse Godin (née Galperin) discusses living from age 13 to 17 in various ghettos and concentration camps; being on a death march with about 600 women when the group was pushed into a barn, where they stayed for three weeks; being liberated by Russians on March 10, 1945; her physical condition upon liberation; being sent to a hospital in Chinow (Chynowie), Poland for six weeks; suffering from typhoid, dysentery, and frostbite; going with another Lithuanian woman to Łódź, Poland in May 1945; receiving help from various organizations; meeting a woman from her town who said she had been with Nesse’s mother in a camp near the Polish/German border; going to look for her mother; reuniting with her mother in Łódź; reuniting with her brother Yaheskiel Galperin in Feldafing displaced persons camp; meeting her husband Jack in the DP camp; spending five years in Feldafing, during which time she had two children; conditions in the DP camp; her memories of the formation of Zionist organizations in the DP camp; David Ben Gurion’s visit to the DP camp; the response after the creation of Israel; immigrating to the US; and settling in Washington, DC, where her mother’s sister had a small grocery store.

    Oral history interview with Henny Gurko

    Oral history interview with Henny Gurko

    Oral History

    Henia (Henny) Gurko (née Durmashkin), born in 1926 in Vilnius, Lithuania, discusses being deported from the Vilnius ghetto to Kaiserwald concentration camp for two days and then to Dünawerke for nearly a year; being sent to Stutthof, Ponewesch, and Landsberg; being forced to sing at Landsberg with six other musicians in front of the SS and others; singing the Schubert Serenade in German; walking with the orchestra for miles on Sundays to other camps and giving concerts; performing forced labor in Moll, where she was made to walk up and down a man-made mountain carrying rocks and stones; being with her sister during this time; being sent on a forced march; hearing encouragement from anti-Nazi people on some of the farms they passed; arriving at a Ukrainian camp, where the men were very rough; being liberated by the Americans; the hanging of the camp’s leader; the orchestra continuing on for years after the war; being taken to St. Ottilien, a church in Eresing, Germany; going to Fürstenfeldbruck, Germany and staying there for two years; participating in the orchestra; hearing David Ben Gurion speak; Leonard Bernstein conducting the orchestra in 1948; conditions in the displaced persons (DP) camp; learning that her brother Shimshonzaev (Vladimir Durmashkin) had been killed in a camp; finding it difficult to be happy after so many losses; the orchestra performing during the Nuremberg trials in striped jackets; and singing songs from the ghettos about children, because so many of the children were killed.

    Oral history interview with Irving Heymont

    Oral history interview with Irving Heymont

    Oral History

    Irving Heymont describes coming upon a sub-camp of Mauthausen, Gunskierken, in Austria with the United States Army 5th Infantry Regiment, K Company; visiting the camp and the conditions of the surviving inmates; not knowing about the concentration camps before seeing one; testifying to a board proceeding in Paris, France in September 1945; going to Landsberg, Germany where his unit was stationed; going to a German displaced persons camp, which was created for the survivors of Dachau’s sub-camps; the poor conditions in the camp; receiving orders from General Anslau Ralph to clean up the camp; his efforts to improve it; making the camp an all-Jewish DP camp; tensions between Jews and non-Jews; the survivors creating a camp committee, which established a hospital and schools; the nationalities of the camp’s Jews; the role of Dr. Jake Wallaisky who was part of the committee and worked for the Jewish Organization for Rehabilitation; the black market in and around the camp; preparing the camp for the winter; the crowding of the camp and the resistance of the residents to spread to another camp; his relations with the camp residents and the local Germans; holding elections in the camp; sanitation in the camp; the treatment of children in the camp; visitors to the camp, including Rabbi Abraham Klausner; the trouble caused by the camp’s truck drivers; and helping a man find his son.

    Oral history interview with John Holmes

    Oral history interview with John Holmes

    Oral History

    John Holmes, of Chicago, IL, describes coming upon a labor camp with his unit after fighting in the Hartz mountain sector; conditions of the surviving inmates; the German’s abandonment of the camp; his role as a tank commander; exchanging fire with German soldiers while saving the 14th Reconnaissance Platoon; hearing that German troops were scared of black American soldiers; delivering a letter for a woman he met in the camp to her sister in Illinois; being ordered not to feed the inmates; the impact of the experience on his life; and his combat experience.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Kahoe

    Oral history interview with Joseph Kahoe

    Oral History

    Joseph Kahoe describes being with the United States 761st Tank Battalion in Austria when he and his unit saw individuals coming out of a prison camp; being the liaison officer between his company and the regimental headquarters; the conditions of the inmates and being warned not to feed them by his superiors; only seeing male inmates; and being the commandant of the Polish displaced persons camp near Nuremberg, Germany.

    Oral history interview with Henry Kanner

    Oral history interview with Henry Kanner

    Oral History

    Henry Kanner discusses being in Auschwitz working in the laundry when he was 15 or 16 years old; the death of his family members in the Belzec gas chambers; being taken in January 1945 on a death march; conditions during the march, including the extreme cold and the deaths of many of the prisoners; killing a pig on the second day and eating it raw with other prisoners; being put in an open-air train car; arriving at Mauthausen; encountering a prisoner who had once worked for Henry’s father; the man saving Henry’s life by changing his information in the registry and telling him to pose as a Polish Catholic; noticing the SS officers either disappearing or changing into regular Wehrmacht uniforms in May 1945; three American soldiers who were shot down, beaten, and thrown into the gas chambers; the day of liberation; the capture of many of the German guards; leaving the camp on foot with another boy; walking to Linz, Austria; going to Passau, Germany, where they were captured by German farmers and escaping before being shot by the farmers; staying in a displaced persons (DP) camp in Passau (possibly Pocking DP camp); going to a DP camp in Nurnberg, Germany; working in the office with a US Army captain, who was a representative of UNRRA; conditions in the DP camp; details on the emigration of people from the camp; immigrating to the US, where he had relative; getting married and having three sons; and feeling lucky as well as guilty to have survived.

    Oral history interview with Abraham Klausner

    Oral history interview with Abraham Klausner

    Oral History

    Rabbi Abraham J. Klausner discusses being attached to the 116 Evacuation Hospital during WWII; entering Dachau concentration camp in May 1945; arriving at night, and seeing the devastation in the morning; the efforts they all made to bring the survivors back to life; helping to organize lists to name survivors as well as their places and dates of birth; how people were helped to get to Italy where they could get on ships to Palestine; finding Hungarian women survivors in a displaced persons (DP) camp in the Alps; learning how former inmates hid prayer books while living in the camps; finding a Polish Hebrew library in Munich, Germany that had been confiscated by the Nazis and taking a few books at a time and distributing them to people; finding the Klausenburg rebbe in Dachau, nursing him back to health, and bringing him to Feldafing DP camp; seeing Jewish and non-Jewish survivors in the DP camps; the administration of the camps; the DP camps Feldafing and Landsberg am Lech; the issues with the mixed nationalities in the camps; segregation in the camps; the lack of freedom in the camps; the compulsion people felt to find their family members; a center that was set up in Munich where people could search for family on lists; the efforts to reconnect children with their parents; finding a printer in Landsberg and getting books published and distributed; helping to establish a newspaper in Feldafing along with journalist Shalatin Levy from Kovno (Kaunas, Lithuania); meeting with David Ben Gurion in Munich, and taking him to St. Ottilien hospital, Landsberg, and Feldafing; and working near Dachau for several years with the US Army.

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral History

    John Komski discusses being taken to Dachau concentration camp from camp Hersbruck and staying there for 20 days; being made to shower, but not being given anything to wear except a blanket; being in an area separated from the rest of the camp; finding on April 29, 1945 that the camp gates were open to the rest of the camp; finding clothes and standing for 2-3 hours for roll call, but no SS came; how the fighting began in the afternoon and then there was silence; some prisoners running to the gates, and some getting guns; a US soldier who came into the area and commanded that the guards surrender or be shot; how thousands of prisoners gathered and many had flags of different countries; seeing a glorious sunset with dark clouds in the east; some people lighting fires and cooking food; many of the former inmates dying from eating too much; being moved to a displaced persons (DP) camp; not being allowed to leave the DP camp; being very sick and moved to an American hospital; going to a DP camp outside of Munich in June 1945; UNRRA officials forcing people to be repatriated to their native countries; going to Garmisch, Germany; meeting an artist who was a former prisoner of Auschwitz, and receiving help from him; meeting his future wife; drawing and painting scenes from the concentration camps; and immigrating to the US.

    Oral history interview with Pat Lynch

    Oral history interview with Pat Lynch

    Oral History

    Pat Lynch discusses being an American nurse attached to the 123rd Field Evacuation Unit during WWII; being near a subcamp of Dachau; how the nurses did not go into Buchenwald because the conditions there were too terrible; going into the camp and being shocked by how horribly sick the survivors were, with typhus and TB; Germans from the area who were conscripted to work in the kitchens and laundries of the various DP camps; the young Hitler youth who marched in cemeteries; moving from tents to real buildings in the summer of 1945; praying often to St. Jude about the conditions; seeing a big difference in some of the survivors between March and August as they regained some strength and bodyweight; seeing a lot of Russian children in the summer; treating some pregnant women; being told that the women officers in the camps were often more cruel than the men; and her long working days during that time, which prevented her from speaking more with the patients.

    Oral history interview with William McWorkman

    Oral history interview with William McWorkman

    Oral History

    William McWorkman discusses being with the 12th Armored Division during WWII; going through Weilheim, Oberau, Innsbruck and south to Bringer Pass; entering into Landsberg concentration camp; seeing hundreds of dead prisoners; interacting with the former prisoners; the arrival of the 493rd Field Artillery Battalion; being told not to get too close to the prisoners because of typhus; giving the former prisoners clothing and food, but not too much food; the battalion surgeon who said not to overfeed them or they would die; the attempt to triage the survivors; General Allen, commander of the 12th division, entering the camp and later ordering all males in nearby village to walk through the camp; and his regret that they did not spend more time comforting the living.

    Oral history interview with James Moncrief

    Oral history interview with James Moncrief

    Oral History

    James Moncrief discusses being a Lt. Colonel during WWII; working as a staff officer in general headquarters when the 11th Army overran Buchenwald; leaving supplies and a medical company at the camp; being sent to the camp by Captain Bennett; conditions in the camp; the crematoria; and the US soldiers’ awareness of the camps.

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral History

    Rabbi Judah Nadich discusses being a chaplain in the US Army during WWII; being stationed in Paris, France, where among other activities, he helped 600 Jewish survivors go from Germany to illegal ships in Marseilles to get to Palestine; being asked to be the liaison officer to General Eisenhower to coordinate efforts to help the Jewish survivors in August 1945; being stationed in Frankfurt; the Jewish survivors in the American zone and the displaced persons camps (DP camps); differences between the DP camps; the unforeseen problems in the DP camps; inspecting the DP camps in August-September 1945; food and medicine in the DP camps; the running of the camps by UNRRA ,the Joint, and the military; immigration of the refugees; and visiting camps with David Ben Gurion.

    Oral history interview with Richard Seibel

    Oral history interview with Richard Seibel

    Oral History

    Colonel Richard R. Seibel, US Army veteran and participant in WWII, discusses being on a patrol when he came across the concentration camp Mauthausen; his lack of knowledge about concentration camps before seeing Mauthausen; reporting back to General Daiger who asked him to take supreme command of camp; the two Americans in the camp, one of whom was Lt Jack Taylor of the OSS; his memories of the camp; seeing corpses piled up; the unrest in the camp and division between the inmates; a former prisoner, Premislav Dobius, who was the interpreter for army; how the Jewish survivors wanted to be separated by their religion, not by nationality as the others were; members of a Swiss Zionist organization who arrived demanding the Jewish survivors be given their own space; the prevalence of typhus and TB; the deaths of hundreds of people after liberation; 400 Wehrmacht soldiers who were brought in to repair the sewage and water system; the conditions of women prisoners; the camp’s former SS commander Franz Ziereis who was absent from the camp before liberation; and the capture of Ziereis.

    Oral history interview with Milton Shurr

    Oral history interview with Milton Shurr

    Oral History

    Milton Shurr, US Army veteran and participant in WWII, discusses being part of a displaced persons team (DP2 unit) attached to the 1st Army beginning in the fall of 1944; being in Verviers, Belgium; his previous work as the head of a Jewish community counsel in Oklahoma City; the approximately 500 displaced persons; contracting hepatitis; rejoining the regiment in April 1945 in Wetzlar, Germany; going to Buchenwald; seeing barracks with two-story bunks and 6 people in each slot, buildings full of clothes and shoes, and piles of bodies; disinfecting survivors with DDT; the high rate of death for survivors; one of his colleagues who spoke German and acted as an interpreter, and how this affected the officer’s mental health; his work with administrative tasks; Allied prisoners being sent home; the desire for many survivors from eastern countries to not return home; the work of the Red Cross to reunite families; being told by the Joint to take care of about 2000 children; being in Buchenwald until the area of Thuringia was turned over to the Russians; and paying the Poles in the DP camp with cigarettes to run trucks.

    Oral history interview with Alfred Sundquist

    Oral history interview with Alfred Sundquist

    Oral History

    Dr. Alfred B. Sundquist, a major and physician with the XVIII Airborne during WWII, discusses being stationed a few miles from Ludwigslust, Germany; being instructed to go to a small concentration camp (Wöbbelin) and report back; arriving in a jeep, and seeing that the Germans had already left; conditions at the camp, which took up a few acres and had no crematoria and a couple of barracks; seeing corpses piled up and prisoners with striped uniforms who were too weak to get up; seeing the physical results of starvation in the former prisoners, including the loss of teeth and swollen legs; seeing evidence of cannibalism; writing a report recommending survivors be sent to apartments in Ludwigslust; many survivors dying from complications from starvation; the 82nd Airborne connecting to the 18th Airborne; the civilian Germans from the town being made to dig graves and attend funerals for the camp’s victims; taking pictures of the camp (he donated these pictures to USHMM); his thoughts on the local Germans of Ludwigslust; and his thoughts on Hitler’s mental health.

    Oral history interview with Fela Warschau

    Oral history interview with Fela Warschau

    Oral History

    Fela Warschau discusses being in a labor camp outside Hamburg at end of March 1945; being forced to clean streets after the city was bombed; being taken by train to Bergen-Belsen; the conditions in the camp; staying together with two friends and her sister; sharing a single potato amongst themselves for several days; liberation; survivors being disinfected and given different clothes; staying in Bergen-Belsen for two months; German doctors and nurses who were brought to the camp to work; her feelings of satisfaction seeing Germans being forced to help bury the dead; finding two of their cousins; hearing that her father had died at Auschwitz; going to Feldafing displaced persons camp; life in the DP camp; signing up for ORT courses; the tendency for survivors to marry each other; getting married in 1946; the differences between the American and British leaders of the DP camps; the children in the DP camp; and her thoughts on emigration.

    Oral history interview with Irene Weber

    Oral history interview with Irene Weber

    Oral History

    Irene Weber discusses being liberated from a prison in Czechoslovakia at the end of WWII; the Russians who liberated the prison; being deloused and sent to a hospital; being given a change of clothes and a little money; her decision to not return to Poland; staying in an apartment with a friend; registering as a Czech citizen; going to Prague in an attempt to leave the country after the communists took over; going to the American Zone of Germany; staying in Landsberg am Lech displaced persons camp; the crowded conditions in the DP camp; living in Rosenheim, Germany; working on a farm to pay rent; attending an ORT school for nursing in Föhrenwald; graduating and then working in a hospital in the DP camp in Pokcing where she cared for survivors; continuing to live in Rosenheim and taking the train to get to her job; and receiving assistance from UNRRA and the Joint even while she was working as a nurse.

    Oral history interview with Nick White

    Oral history interview with Nick White

    Oral History

    Nick White discusses being with the VI Corps, part of 7th Army, when he saw Dachau for the first time on April 29, 1945; going to the camp with his colleague Englehardt, who was a photographer and took pictures of the camp; seeing a trench in the camp filled with dead SS soldiers killed by American infantry which had been in the camp before them; being overrun by the survivors who were joyous to see them; giving out caramels and k-rations to the survivors; conditions in the barracks; a large room that led from the gas chambers where several thousand bodies were stacked up; the high rate of mortality for the survivors after liberation; finding 39 boxcars with corpses inside; and his incomprehension of the inhumanity they found.

    Oral history interview with Alan Zimm

    Oral history interview with Alan Zimm

    Oral History

    Alan Zinn discusses being sent from Buchenwald in January 1945 to Dora concentration camp; conditions in the camp; seeing American planes at end of March going to bomb Nordhausen; being taken by train for six days to Bergen-Belsen; the Russian POWs who set up a tribunal in the camp after liberation and executed about 50 SS guards; being liberated on March 29, 1945; the delousing of the inmates; the deaths of many survivors from typhus and other diseases; returning to Łódź, Poland in June 1945; meeting his future wife in Łódź; going with his wife and her two sisters to the displaced persons camp in Landsburg, Germany; reuniting with his brother; and immigrating to the United States.

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