At this time I think I want to stop for a minute to try to convey to you the impression that I gained at that time from these three guys. It’s hard for me to describe it accurately because
A) I was sick, terribly sick;
B) my perception did not function at all—I had a high fever, I’m trying to remember to the best of my ability.
The degree of shock, their shock, surprise, questioning on their faces: Where did these people come from? How did this happen? Within a few minutes this combination of emotions got transferred into the demonstration of concern, of care, of interest; a demonstration of wish and good intentions that was conspicuously demonstrated to each and every one of us.
Before I realized just what was happening, the strong arms of that young man with the white armband grabbed me, I don’t know why; he probably didn’t know how many lice I had on my skull. [Laughter from audience]
He pulled me out of that car and then the other soldiers started pulling people out of it.
I forgot to tell you. When the first soldier opened that sliding door, some bodies—our bodies—fell on him from the railroad car. They were dead. Naturally that came as a surprise to them—to us, you know, it was a matter of an everyday event.
He pulled me out and I didn’t know what was going on. I was out of it—the first thing I knew, I am riding on a truck. The next thing I knew I was standing in front of a gun which was run by a gasoline-fed engine. They were spraying me with white powder, lots of it. Later on I found out that was the procedure of DDT, delousing. Believe me, they had to waste an awful lot of powder on me.
After this, they pulled me and took me into a room. By then the village of Hillersleben had all of a sudden gained 2,500 newcomers from that train, and many of them needed hospitalization—I assume the majority needed hospitalization. I was placed in a semi-private room, two people to the room. Well, later I found out that the second and third floors consisted of wards with 70 bunks and 70 beds, and here I have a semi-private room, because they could talk to me, and I could talk to them [in English].
After God knows how many medical examinations and everything else, the drastic change in my diet was really very, very easy. Going from no diet to a diet is a drastic turnabout, but it’s an easy process. Again my food had to be supervised very carefully because many people, liberated people, got extremely sick and many died because of their food intake not being planned or controlled. A good Army [officer] with a cocked .45 pistol in his hand expressing his desire that the German peasant, the German farmer, the German citizen starts cooking for these people, the survivors—many of these people weren’t ready for that food. It played havoc. But as time went on, I got better and better and I got rid of my typhus and my fever dropped.
Now I assumed a new duty. Often, as the day went on, one medic after another [would come and say], ‘Hey, Bob. Will you please come with me to the 3rd floor? We have a problem with ‘Tommy,’ ‘Billy,’ etc. There’s a problem, he can’t talk to us, and we can’t talk to them.’ I found myself acting as a translator. Little did I know that was going to be the beginning of something big.
My recovery was very nice and satisfactory. They called this ‘normalcy.’ I have a problem with this word, ‘normalcy’—what is normal? What’s normal to you doesn’t have to be normal to me. I think it’s only a setting on a washing machine.
John Fransman was born in Amsterdam just three weeks before the start of World War II to a large Anglo-Dutch Jewish family.
John Fransman
The American soldiers took us in trucks to a small German town called Hillersleben and housed us in an apartment block which, we were told, had been [German] army officers’ quarters. They had been emptied of their families to house us, the survivors of the train. We felt very honored. One of the first things the Americans did was to put us through showers, then to dust us thoroughly with a white powder (DDT) to disinfect us, and they gave us new clean clothes. In our new apartment, I found my first toy; it was a wooden model airplane, but it had the German Luftwaffe symbols on it and I was not happy with it; I soon broke it.
Uri Orlev, a young teen from Warsaw, also remembered the first days of freedom in a German home.
Uri Orlev
On the wall there was a picture of Hitler and another one of a German soldier. My aunt took the glass off Hitler's picture and put it as a mat in front of the toilet bowl so that each time we peed, we would step on it.
In 2011, a survivor who actually lived just 100 miles south of our high school came up for the last school reunion and addressed our students, and her fellow survivors and liberators.
Bruria Bodek Falik
The Germans with the machine guns were standing opposite us. We stood there for I remember several hours, or maybe for two hours, but you know for a thirteen-year-old, being in a world so unimaginable and honestly incomprehensible, it felt like a very long time. And there were rumors among us that somebody was negotiating with the Nazis to let us live, instead of being shot. And suddenly [they] were sent off; we were just left alone, and they disappeared.
We went into the village of Farsleben to look for food. I remember coming to one of the [German] families and one big, tall, blonde woman. When she came out she was really scary, we were little and skinny and hungry, and she was very scary, but it looked like she was more scared of us! Then she asked us in German, ‘Who are you, who are you?’ And I spoke some German from school and home; I said, ‘We are Jewish, juden,’ and she put her hands on my head and she felt for something. I didn’t know what she was fully looking for, but when I came back, and I told my grandparents and my mother, she said, ‘Oh, she was looking for your horns!’ This was a stereotype [they had] of Jews in primitive areas, that Jews have horns! So these were my childhood experiences when I was about your age. Not a long time after that, maybe just a day, all of a sudden we see a row of people—they looked like shadows on the hill. Then we realized they were really people in uniforms, they were the American soldiers who liberated us! They were on the hill; they didn’t want to come down because they didn’t know, and rightfully so, whether we had diseases that they would not want to be exposed to. But they were rolling food down for us in cans—being from a small town in Hungary, not too many people outside of the big cities knew that food came in cans also—so they were rolling down cans, with bread in it, and beans, and chewing gum, and you name it, everything was in cans, and that was again, such a strange thing! Beans in cans, can you imagine?[*] So this was so joyful for us that we were actually dancing with the cans, because some of them were big enough that my little brothers put them on their heads!
After that, we were taken to Hillersleben. My grandfather, may he rest in peace, passed away in the hospital. He was seventy-eight years old. He was a rabbi, he was the rabbi in our town, and he always prayed every morning that he would die a free man. And God really granted it to him—he died where he rested, a free man! Every year, [some of] my family go and visit his grave [in the cemetery at Hillersleben].
I grew up, I saw the world, and I question the reason for what we had to go through and what six million people have been killed for. I don’t have an answer. If I can suggest something to you, look for the answer.
Catharina Soep was twenty-two years old, from Amsterdam. She and her family had been sent to Bergen–Belsen in 1944.
Catharina Soep Polak
All of a sudden I see these big, burly, tan guys, coming over the hill, in uniforms; they had no idea who we were! They were totally flabbergasted, they had no idea what a concentration camp was; they never heard of them. And then they smiled; they all had these fabulous, white, straight teeth—and some crazy thought came in my mind: they must have all seen the same orthodontist! And right away they took over.
A widow at age 21, Lisette Lamon was from the Netherlands; she had married Catherina’s brother Benno, who was killed at Mauthausen. She was nearing her 25th birthday.
Lisette Lamon Soep
It was a beautiful, ba
lmy morning in April 1945, when I entered Major Adams’ makeshift office in Farsleben to offer my services as an interpreter. It made me feel good that I could show, in a small way, the gratitude I felt for the Ninth American Army, which had liberated us as we were being transported from Bergen–Belsen concentration camp.
Orders found by the Americans in the German officers’ [rail]car directed that the train was to be stopped on the bridge crossing the Elbe River at Magdeburg, then the bridge was to be blown up, also destroying the train and its cargo all at once. The deadline was noon, Friday the 13th, and at 11 a.m. we were liberated![*]
With the liberation had come the disquieting news that President Roosevelt had died, and while I was airing concern that the new President, Harry Truman—a man unknown to us—could continue the war, a sergeant suddenly said, ‘Hey, you speak pretty good English. I am sure the major would like to have you serve as his interpreter.’
Major Adams had not been told of my coming so he was startled when he saw me. No wonder! There stood a young woman as thin as a skeleton, dressed in a two-piece suit full of holes. The suit had been in the bottom of my rucksack for 20 months, saved for the day we might be liberated, but the rats in Bergen–Belsen must have been as hungry as we were and had found an earlier use for my suit. For [seven] days we had been on the train and this was the only clean clothing I owned.
Major Adams quickly recovered from his initial shock and seemed delighted after I explained why I had come. He asked how his men had treated us, and I heaped glowing praise on the American soldiers who had shared their food so generously with the starving prisoners. Then he took me outside to meet the ‘notables’ of the German population, and with glee I translated orders given to them by the American commander. The irony of the reversal of roles was not lost on me or the recipients; I was now delivering orders to those who had been ordering me around for so long! The Germans were obsequious, profusely claiming they never wanted Hitler or agreed with his policies and hoped the war would soon be over.
When asked to come back the next day, I was delighted but hesitated, wondering if it would be appropriate to ask a favor. Major Adams picked up on my hesitation, so I asked him to help me contact my family in America. We had immigrated to the U.S. in 1939, but after six months I returned to Holland to join my fiancé, who was in the Dutch army. My parents knew that eight months after we were married my husband was taken as a hostage and sent to Mauthausen concentration camp, where he was killed in 1941, but they did not know if I was alive, not having heard from me in more than two years.
Major Adams gave me a kind glance and said, ‘Give me a few lines in your handwriting, written in English, and I will ask my parents to forward it to them.’ When he saw the address on the note he looked at me, his mouth open in total amazement, and then he started to laugh—his parents and my parents lived in the same apartment building in New York City!
And so it was on Mother’s Day that his mother brought to my mother my message:
‘I am alive!’
Sara Gottdiener of Hungary was 12.
Sara Gottdiener Atzmon
It is impossible to describe the liberation. The heart and the mind were frozen and could not awaken and rejoice so all of a sudden. Maybe the defensive system of our body protects us, so the heart and the mind will not leap too high from joy. Also, we were afraid that the murderers might come back.
It is hard to describe the warm smiles and the empathy these soldiers showed us in our terrible condition. We felt that love and compassion flowed from these combat-fatigued soldiers; they bestowed on us so much kindness and sympathy. For the first time after going through sheer hell, I felt that there was such a thing as simple love coming from good people—young men who had left their families far behind, who wrapped us in warmth and love and cared for our well-being. Even today, as I am writing these words, I feel that I want to kneel before them, embrace and thank these angels, who have given us life.
Sgt. Gross and his tank and crew had been left with the train for a period of about 24 hours.
George C. Gross
I believe that the ranking officer of the Finnish prisoners[*] introduced himself to me and offered to set up a perimeter guard. I think I approved and asked him to organize a guard, set out pickets, and handle the maintenance and relief of the outposts. However it happened, the guard was set up swiftly and efficiently. It was moving and inspiring to see how smartly those emaciated soldiers returned to their military duties, almost joyful at the thought of taking orders and protecting others again. They were armed only with sticks and a few weapons discarded by the fleeing German guards, but they made a formidable force, and they obviously knew their duties, so that I could relax and talk to the people.
A young woman named Gina Rappaport came up and offered to be my interpreter. She spoke English very well and was evidently conversant with several other languages besides her native Polish. We stood in front of the tank as a long line of men, women, and little children formed itself spontaneously, with great dignity and no confusion, to greet us. It is a time I cannot forget, for it was terribly moving to see the courtesy with which they treated each other, and the importance they seemed to place on reasserting their individuality in some seemingly official way.
Each would stand at a position of rigid attention, held with some difficulty, and introduce himself or herself by what grew to be a sort of formula: the full name, followed by ‘a Polish Jew from Hungary’–or a similar phrase which gave both the origin and the home from which the person had been seized. Then each would shake hands in a solemn and dignified assertion of individual worth. Battle-hardened veterans learn to contain their emotions, but it was difficult then, and I cry now to think about it. What stamina and regenerative spirit those brave people showed!
Also tremendously moving were their smiles. I have one picture of several girls, specter-thin, hollow-cheeked, with enormous eyes that had seen much evil and terror, and yet with smiles to break one's heart.
Little children came around with shy smiles, and mothers with proud smiles happily pushed them forward to get their pictures taken. I walked up and down the train, seeing some lying in pain or lack of energy, and some sitting and making hopeful plans for a future that suddenly seemed possible again. Others followed everywhere I went, not intruding but just wanting to be close to a representative of the forces that had freed them. How sad it was that we had no food to give immediately, and no medical help, for during my short stay with the train sixteen or more bodies were carried up the hillside to await burial, brave hearts having lost the fight against starvation before we could help them.
The boxcars were generally in very bad condition from having been the living quarters of far too many people, and the passenger compartments showed the same signs of overcrowding and unsanitary conditions. But the people were not dirty. Their clothes were old and often ragged, but they were generally clean, and the people themselves had obviously taken great pains to look their best as they presented themselves to us. I was told that many had taken advantage of the cold stream that flowed through the lower part of the valley to wash themselves and their clothing. Once again I was impressed by the indomitable spirits of these courageous people.
I spent part of the afternoon listening to [Gina’s story], who had served so well as interpreter. She was in the Warsaw Ghetto[*] for several years as the Nazis gradually emptied the ghetto to fill the death camps, until her turn finally came. Since the prisoners had little food, many died on the purposeless journey, and they had felt no cause for hope when they were shunted into this little unimportant valley siding.
Gina told her story well, but I have never been able to write it. I received a letter from her months later, when I was home in San Diego. I answered it but did not hear from her again. Her brief letter came from Paris, and she had great hopes for the future. I trust her dreams were realized.
We were relieved the next morning, started up the tank, waved goodbye to our new friends, and followed
a guiding jeep down the road to rejoin our battalion. I looked back and saw a lonely Gina Rappaport standing in front of a line of people waving us good fortune. On an impulse I cannot explain, I stopped the tank, ran back, hugged Gina, and kissed her on the forehead in a gesture I intended as one asking forgiveness for man's terrible cruelty and wishing her and all the people a healthy and happy future. I pray they have had it.
Gina composed the following words about her liberation shortly thereafter, while recuperating at Hillersleben.
Gina Rappaport Leitersdorf
We were liberated by the American Army on the 13th of April. It was the luckiest day of my life. At that moment I was bathing in the river[*] when I saw the first American soldier from afar, what a joy! I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was sure it was a dream, but still it was true.
A few minutes before the American soldiers arrived we were told that we should have to go on foot over the Elbe River. But the American Army saved us from a sure death, which we will never forget. I was also sad this day because I remembered how many people of value had died and couldn’t see the liberation... I shall never forget what I owe to the American Army. I hope I will be able to estimate its right value, what the Americans have done for us. Now, after five years of suffering, I shall know to appreciate the more my liberty.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A Train Near Magdeburg Page 25
