After observing the situation in Ebensee, the tank unit left and reported back to headquarters. The war would not end for another two days, and they left to liberate other camps, such as Gunskirchen and Mauthausen. After a short while, an American jeep full of officers arrived to assess the horrendous situation in Ebensee. There were decomposing bodies piled high in the square, sick and skeletal inmates who were naked or only partially clad, a typhus epidemic and lice infestation, thousands of starving people. I heard an officer on his radio discussing the next steps. For these men from the 40th Infantry Division, it was their first experience with a concentration camp full of walking skeletons. Their first act was to sanitize the camp and eliminate the typhus bacteria, and to accomplish this, all the barracks had to be burned to the ground.
I was content simply to watch the events as they unfolded. There were no more SS guards, no more Kapos, and no one could harm me. Many thoughts went through my head, and some memories of events with which I could barely cope. I realized that I would need help to get back on my feet before I could deal with any other issues, such as where I would go from here, and how I would get food and shelter.
While I lay on the ground, I could hear the sound of heavy trucks slowly coming up the road. The trucks rolled through the gates, bringing dozens of soldiers with them. The soldiers’ reactions were amazing to see—they wanted to help us, but they didn’t want to touch us. I felt ashamed that anyone had to see me in my filthy, helpless, demeaning condition. I felt exposed and vulnerable. The officers ordered the soldiers to spread out through the camp and assess which prisoners needed to be attended to immediately. Other trucks brought female nurses, hospital tents, mobile kitchens and supplies, and canvas cots. A big water tanker arrived, and the soldiers set up showers.
A female nurse wearing a mask picked me up. She cut off my filthy shirt and sprayed me with DDT to kill my lice infestation, then started to wash me under the showers. I felt so ashamed to be attended to in this condition, and I needed much more than one washing to remove the dirt. After the shower, I was laid on a canvas cot in the hospital tent. It was heavenly, even though all my bones ached from months of lying on wooden planks. Eventually, doctors made the rounds, examined each one of us, and recorded their findings. I had a superficial exam because there were so many patients to attend to and so many issues to be addressed elsewhere in the camp.
The kitchens were set up and meals prepared. I could smell the aroma of a stew, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to eat it. I couldn’t walk and I feared getting caught in a stampede of starving people. The smell of the food brought anyone who could still walk to the kitchen, and I could hear the soldiers shouting, “Hold it! Hold it! The food is not ready!” Nobody listened. The soldiers tried to rope off the kitchen area, but this didn’t help much. One soldier took out his pistol and fired into the air. I knew that even bullets would not hold back the mob. The soldiers just did not understand that they were dealing with starving people who had lost all sense of normalcy. Eventually, they began to ladle the stew into bowls and distribute it to the inmates, who wolfed it down. Soon their bellies were protruding, and within minutes some men’s stomachs had ruptured and many died on the spot. There was a terrible irony in the fact that so many had survived hunger only to die now that food was finally available. The kitchen unit quickly stopped cooking hard-to-digest proteins and turned to bread and scrambled powdered eggs to feed the liberated prisoners. In the hospital tent, I received water, crackers, and powdered milk.
My first night sleeping on the cot in the tent was a restful one. When I awoke, I saw large trucks carrying big bulldozers on trailers. The soldiers used these bulldozers to dig five deep trenches. At noon, US military police brought a group of local civilians to the trenches and told them to carry the dead, with one person holding the hands and another the feet. The townspeople were all dressed up in their Sunday best. Men wore suits and ties, and women wore summer dresses. They held scarves to their noses because of the stench; in many cases, flesh came away in their hands as they touched the bodies. The people looked horrified. When they dropped the naked cadavers into the trench, they looked like rag dolls. Somebody’s father. Somebody’s son or brother. Thousands of nameless bodies were disposed of in these mass graves.
The townspeople could not keep up with this work for more than two days, and the Americans determined that they had to find a faster way to complete this gruesome task. The bulldozers were then used to finish the job by pushing the corpses into the mass graves. The bodies were covered with lime and then earth. Rabbis and chaplains arrived to say prayers for all the dead.
Four days after our liberation, the doctors gave us a more thorough exam. I was taken to a civilian hospital with a few others to be checked for tuberculosis. The tests turned out to be negative, and I was brought back to the camp in my paper hospital gown. I had no clothes or shoes. My trusty boots, custom-made by Mr. Guttman from my hometown, had endured through one year of working and walking and had saved my life many times, but they’d finally fallen apart. Eventually, the army found a warehouse full of Hitler Youth shirts, breeches, and boots, and they distributed these clothes to us. How absurd it felt to wear such an outfit!
Before the camp was administered in any organized way by the American military, inmates who were still mobile were able to come and go as they pleased. Some went to forage in homes in the town of Ebensee, and they came back to the camp with civilian clothing and food. I felt quite deprived when I saw these men in normal clothes while I was in my Hitler Youth outfit. Five days after liberation, the American military closed the gates and we were no longer allowed to leave the camp.
All inmates had to go to the camp office and register with their name, birthdate, country of origin, and desired postwar destination. I worried about going home to Moldava all alone. At the time, I didn’t know if it was still part of Hungary or had reverted to Czechoslovakia. Should I even try to go back? What would happen if I set out into a world that had rejected me a year before? I had troubling thoughts because I knew that even if I got back home, my family would not be there to take care of me. I was liberated, but I didn’t feel free.
A month after liberation, an announcement came over the loudspeaker that a truck was leaving the next day for Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and those who came from those two countries were to leave on this transport. Thus, the decision was made for me. When the trucks arrived, I saw one with a sign for Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and I got on with about forty others. The truck left the camp and descended through the town of Ebensee and onward. I thought how lucky I was to have survived this hellhole. Never did I want to see this place again. I looked forward to returning to Czechoslovakia.