The Road to Liberation
ON JANUARY 17 I took my first steps toward liberation. The day was bitter cold and everyone was restless in the barrack. We’d been released from work earlier than usual. Our guards, whose arrogance and aggression had abated in recent weeks, looked nervous as they tugged chests and supplies back and forth. Everyone could sense that something was about to happen. The gas chambers hadn’t been used for weeks. News had already reached us of the Allied victory at the Battle of the Bulge. In the last couple of days we’d heard the rumble of artillery fire in the distance. But now the Russians were getting close to the camp. You could hear the thundering of the cannons. In the barrack, everyone was talking at the same time. Then the woman in charge of us appeared with news: “We’re leaving tomorrow. The camp is being evacuated. Those who can walk are to follow. The sick are to stay behind.”
That night I thought about our imminent departure. Martha, Rachel, and I had been at the camp for a long time. The duration of our stay was almost enviable, considering that most of those we had arrived with were dead. We were a genuine team, a team of strong-willed, hardened optimists. Our bizarre circumstances had only reinforced our bond. Even when the bombs had started to fall, we operated as a group, huddling together for protection in a ditch. We huddled together at night now, too, ever since the barrack windows had been smashed.
The next morning we had to get ready for the journey. Because Rachel still had problems with the wound in her lower leg we weren’t sure she would be able to join us. She could manage a short distance, but we still didn’t know how far we would have to walk. Not even the barrack leader knew. On the other hand, Rachel wasn’t really sick enough to be left behind in the infirmary. And even if she was, most people were convinced that the SS would shoot anyone who stayed. They’d done the same to sick people often enough in the past, to make sure they didn’t fall into enemy hands and testify to SS crimes. Weighing all this, Rachel decided to join us.
As everyone packed their belongings, I hurried to the Schreibstube to collect the extra clothing I kept there for the dance evenings. When I returned, I gave Martha and Rachel spare skirts and a sweater to help them dress against the cold. I myself put on a pair of long trousers and two skirts, then rolled a pair of long socks over my trouser legs, making sure they were closed tight. I wrapped a rag around the bottom of each leg, covering my trouser legs and the tops of my boys’ shoes. Then I used part of an old blanket, laces, and a hairpin to create a pouch around my waist, which I stuffed with a towel, some rags, extra gloves, and, of course, my songs and poems. In addition to being useful for carrying things, the pouch also protected me from the icy wind. We used the rest of the blanket to wrap Rachel’s lower leg, keeping it extra warm and sturdy. As always there was a shortage of food, but if we were careful we would probably have enough bread to keep us alive for a few days. We also tied our drinking bowls to our belts. We could fill them with snow and drink it when it melted. Our preparations were in order, but we were still worried about Rachel. She dragged her leg when she walked and couldn’t rely on it for support.
As dusk began to fall, the SS arrived. “Schnell, schnell, raus.” Searchlights glared down on us from the watchtowers. The evacuation had started.
We entered a different world as we left the camp. It was cloudy and dark with no stars, swirling snow, crackling footsteps. In spite of the presence of thousands barely a word could be heard. I liked being outside in the snow and started to hum. Eighteen months in Auschwitz had been long enough. We were going home, heading west, although I wasn’t sure about our exact destination. On either side of us, armed SS men were lined up in warm winter clothing, Alsatian guard dogs at the ready. We passed bare trees silhouetted with snow. Drab lines in ashen gray with dirty white edges. It looked like a picture from Grimm’s fairy tales. Stark and eerie and strangely serene.
The reality of the situation was much more savage. Trigger-happy Russians marched behind us, American Flying Fortresses roamed above us, and hordes of armed SS men confined us on either side. Looking around I thought to myself: stupid Germans. Who in their right mind would deploy so many well-trained soldiers, armed to the teeth, to accompany a bunch of ragged beggars, instead of deploying them in defense of der Heimat against the advancing Russians?
A nearby gunshot brought me back to the present moment. Stragglers and dropouts were being shot dead. A woman in front of me was pulled to the side of the road and killed with a flash and a loud bang. Almost no one looked up or back. The SS hurried us along. The Russians were close. Many of the prisoners fell behind. The pace slowed down. Too many of us were malnourished, suffered from leg cramps, weren’t dressed properly against the cold, and were frozen stiff; some had shoes that pinched. As prisoners were unable or unwilling to continue, more and more executions took place at the side of the road. There were corpses everywhere.
After hours of walking Martha was doing well, but Rachel was having a hard time with her leg. We talked about what to do. Rachel knew she couldn’t keep it up much longer. How much farther did we have to walk? It seemed the Germans would be tired too and in need of a break. Then the report reached us that the Russians had penetrated German lines. We had to keep going, pick up the pace. By that point, Rachel had to drag her leg so much she could barely walk. Without our help she would be finished. As the three of us marched arm in arm, Rachel talked about leaving us. Martha and I didn’t argue with her. She was a realist. Rachel asked us to go to her home, find perhaps a brother or sister. Her parents had been sent to the camps a long time back. “Tell them that I enjoyed being with you and that we laughed a lot. The café at the end of the street is where Pierre lives. I don’t know if he’s with someone else now, but kiss him for me and tell him I still think about him often.” This was her last will and testament. “It’s time to let me go. You won’t make it if you have to drag me along. Soon the pain and the fear will be gone. I’ve made my peace. I love you dearly. Kiss me and adieu.”
I stared into her eyes for what seemed an age and saw a warm tranquillity. She said nothing, and I kissed her on the lips. Martha’s face was awash with tears, and she too kissed Rachel. We kissed her again and again. We said nothing. I stepped out of the line and asked a nearby SS man in German if we could take a moment to say good-bye to our dying friend. He was a little baffled; prisoners weren’t supposed to talk to SS, but he nodded almost imperceptibly and motioned to a spot at the side of the road with the remains of a wall. Rachel hobbled toward it together with Martha and me. We laid her down, ran our fingers through her hair and over her face, promised to carry out her wishes, and kissed her for the last time.
The SS man waited for a moment but quickly rejoined the advancing column of prisoners. When another appeared, ranting and raving, pointing his rifle, Martha and I hurried back to the line. I looked back, saw a flash, and heard a bang. Rachel sat up and fell over, her hair still fluttering in the wind, a final gesture of farewell. After that all I could see was the snow. Nothing else.
Martha and I continued on in silence. What was there to say? Our tears turned to ice on our cheeks. After forty minutes or so, orders were given. We didn’t hear them, but everyone stopped. I bumped into someone in front of me, who treated me to a string of abuse. Then it registered. A rest period! We’d been waiting for hours. For Rachel it was too late. People sat in the snow or sought shelter against a wall adjacent to a couple of bombed-out houses. We were close to the remains of a small village.
The Germans tossed us a few lumps of bread, and scuffles followed. Martha and I watched from the sidelines. We still had bread from the camp, and Rachel had given us her portion shortly before we said good-bye. It all seemed so unreal, like a dream you wanted to wake up from but couldn’t. Then a group of Germans passed us on the road, some pushing a handcart. Refugees from the east. “The Russians have broken through,” they shouted. Everyone was too tired to react.
That night we slept outside in the biting cold with only a couple of walls to protect us from the wind. Martha and I stayed warm by snuggling up together and rubbing each other’s face and hands. We kept our shoes and clothes on. After a year and a half in Auschwitz, our first day outside the camp had come to an end.
The journey continued the following morning. When we woke there were corpses everywhere. Many had succumbed to the bitter cold. It was tempting to let yourself slip away in sleep. Some even died while they were sitting.
That kind of death wasn’t for me, but I could imagine how tempting the soft white snow must be. When we stopped for a break around noon on the second day it started to snow again. I sat at the side of the road and stared at the thick snowflakes, swirling down. Some blew past me, caught by the wind, or turned in another direction. The snow muffled loud noises, making everything seem at peace. I wasn’t bothered about being snowed under, slowly but surely. I was mesmerized by the perpetually tumbling flakes, by their soft, ethereal beauty. I thought of Rachel, who must be completely covered with snow by now.
After a while, a clamor of commands disrupted the tranquillity. I looked up. It was time to move. I brushed off the snow, found Martha, and marched on. All my joints were stiff.
An hour later we suddenly had to stop because of the thunder of artillery fire up ahead. We sat at the side of the road in small groups. The artillery fire intensified. Shells exploded in several places around us. You could hear them coming: first a high-pitched whistle, then a flash of light and an explosion. It was just like thunder and lightning. The higher the pitch of the whistle, the closer the shell. At one point, a shell exploded nearby, and one of the SS guards was hit. He fell to the ground with his face in the mud, his helmet still in place. When we looked over we saw that both his legs had disappeared. There was no sign of them, just a shoe with a foot in it a few yards from his body. It was amazing what a single shell could do! I was stunned. This was the first time I’d seen them in action. It was hard to imagine that I had made such effective things when I was in Birkenau. In those days it was about production and planning. Then it was still theory, but now I saw them practically. It was a shame the Russians didn’t have better aim. The soldier’s family would receive a handsome certificate with old-fashioned ornamental letters, telling them their son died a hero’s death, for his people and the fatherland. They were just being fooled. There was nothing heroic about bad luck, about being blown to pieces by sheer accident. That was not how heroes died.
At night we lay on the open road. Martha and I huddled together like spoons to keep warm. I’d built a wall of snow around us to protect us from the wind. It was like an animal’s den. A shallow pit, my rucksack as a cushion under my head and rags as scarves around our heads to keep in the warmth and keep out the snow. Lying there warm and at rest in the snow I was reminded of past holidays in Sauerland near Winterberg or skating on the lakes in Oisterwijk, not far from Den Bosch. Once again I imagined how tempting it would be to submit to the snow and not get up.
Early the next morning the guards woke us with their usual clamor. We were half covered in snow and stiff when we got to our feet. But some didn’t move. Tired or dead? It was hard to tell. Most were dead. The rest would follow soon enough, with or without the help of the SS.
On January 23, after six days on the road during which we had walked more than fifty miles, we arrived in the village of Loslau, where we were packed into an open-top coal train. We continued our journey by train, traveling both day and night. It was amazing how well the railways still functioned amid the disorder. There was plenty of water and coal. If a station was bombed, the train was diverted along other routes via other stations. The Allies tended to bomb the big stations and ignore the smaller ones, forcing the train to make the occasional detour while continuing on its way.
The conditions on the train were abominable. In my car alone there were 160 hysterical prisoners, packed together without food or drink in temperatures of twenty below. Some died of exhaustion. Others we strangled to get a bit of space for ourselves. Every morning when the train stopped, the naked corpses were thrown out of the car, after we removed their shoes and clothing and searched them for food. You could hear a thud as each corpse hit the ground. Now and then you would hear something crack. But the sound no longer affected us. The most was fourteen in one night. We urgently needed more space in the car and more clothing to protect us against the cold and the wind.
Of course, no one alive was allowed to leave the wagons. If you tried, as some did, the SS shot you dead on the spot. It still amazed me that so many SS guards continued to bother themselves with a bunch of decrepit, undernourished prisoners instead of fighting at the front or returning home. I still thought it was a stupid strategy. The train sometimes went into reverse after a stop, instead of moving forward. It was clear that the front couldn’t be far off and that the Russians were advancing apace. Our journey was taking us farther and farther west.
We crossed over the Oder-Neisse line, between the advancing Russians and the withdrawing Germans, until one night we stopped at a railway yard near Berlin, where we were treated to a spectacular show: an intense air raid on the city. We finally arrived at Camp Ravensbrück, completely exhausted from cold, hunger, and thirst. Of the 160 people who had been packed into our car, almost half had died on the way. We were lucky that our train wasn’t targeted by airplanes. Such attacks happened often enough, but we had been spared. When we arrived everyone was indifferent, listless. My feet were frozen, and all my toes were black. Martha was at the end of her tether, but she too had survived the brutal journey. Only just, but that was what counted for now.
In the camp it turned out that I’d picked up typhoid at some point, in addition to my frozen toes. Typhoid could be fatal and I was brought to the infirmary, but my illness wasn’t considered serious enough, or at least not advanced enough, and I was told to go. They no longer had vaccines against typhoid anyway. When I told the female doctor in charge that I was a nurse, I was allowed to stay and help in spite of my illness. I also had something to eat, although it wasn’t very much.
In the chaos I lost track of Martha. She had probably been crammed into one barrack or another. The camp was bursting at the seams. Tents had been put up to house the influx of new arrivals. Tents in January! But it was still better than the street.
Fortunately my feet returned to normal after a few days. They still tingled a little, but the blackness disappeared. Work in the infirmary began to organize itself, and I got on well with the doctor. We talked a lot. She was also a prisoner. Her father was once a communist, and that made her a subversive. I told her that my parents were Jewish, and that that made me extremely dangerous as far as the Nazi regime was concerned. We both laughed. She was from Düsseldorf, which wasn’t far from Kleef. We both longed for the days of our youth, for humanity, and we chatted a lot in the midst of all the commotion.
Then one day the typhoid flared up. My temperature went through the roof, and because of my poor physical condition I was on the brink of death. Now that I was seriously ill, I was allowed to stay in the infirmary as a patient. The “subversive” doctor insisted on it.
Quite unexpectedly, the Swedish Red Cross appeared at the camp completely unannounced and was permitted to hand out packages at the gate to Scandinavian prisoners. Ravensbrück’s once systematic German administration was now creaking at every joint. The influx of new arrivals and the lack of organization in the camp gave me the opportunity to convince the German in charge of the distribution that I was Danish. The doctor helped by going along with my story, and I managed to get my hands on one of the packages.
Back inside the hospital, after sneaking a sausage and some crackers from the well-filled package, I handed it over to the doctor in exchange for an injection to fight typhoid. She had apparently kept some antiserum aside for herself as a precautionary measure, but now she was willing to trade it for the package, in order to satisfy her permanent hunger. She too had to stay strong if she wanted to help the multitudes of needy patients. The antiserum and the extra food helped me back to my feet.
The package from Sweden saved my life. My health returned after about five days, and during a walk outside the infirmary I bumped into Martha again in the mud and chaos. From that moment onward we stayed together.
After only three weeks in Ravensbrück we had to move on, this time to the Spreewald, a wooded region near Berlin, where we helped dig trenches. Martha, myself, and a number of other prisoners were brought there by truck. As we drove through Berlin we saw the consequences of the endless bombings. Much of the once-magnificent city was in ruins, and the atmosphere was oppressive. Entire rows of houses had been reduced to rubble. Women on the street wore anxious gray faces, some pushing carriages or wooden carts filled with furniture and firewood. A man with stubble on his chin stood with one arm of his jacket hanging empty. Women waited in line at a functioning pump or tap. There seemed to be a shortage of everything.
It was apparent that Berlin was getting ready to defend itself against the advancing flood of Russians. The cars that were still running belonged to the army. Groups of soldiers were dotted here and there. Paving stones had been piled up to form a dam. Sandbags lined the entrance to the metro. A tram was lying across the line, blocking the road.
We arrived at a crossroads with a huge cannon in the middle guarded by an older soldier and group of boys in black uniforms, fourteen- or fifteen-year-olds. They were wearing black caps instead of helmets, and armbands with swastikas. The soldier put us to work immediately, not clearing rubble, but filling burlap sacks with sand from a nearby bomb crater. We were ordered to bring them to the crossroads and piled them up as protection for the soldiers and the cannon.
The people on the street and the young soldiers looked on with curiosity as the handful of prisoners went to work. And vice versa. At one point a man with crutches and one leg who seemed to know one of the boys with the black caps tried to convince him and the others that it was time to quit and go home. He pointed to his missing leg. The two exchanged words, voices were raised, they swore at each other, yelled about betrayal. The man slunk off.
In the afternoon, after we’d been lugging sandbags for half a day and our work was showing signs of progress, I got the chance to talk to one of the boys who was standing near the group. I asked him why the cannon had such an incredibly long barrel, and he was surprised that I spoke German. He told me in a slightly uneasy voice that the cannon was a Flak, a Fliegerabwehrkanone, used for shooting at planes high in the sky. Now it was being deployed to keep the Russians away from the streets surrounding the crossroads. While I pretended to rearrange the sandbags for better protection, I took a good look at him. He was still a child. I smiled, and for a moment he smiled back. When he was summoned back to his group—talking to prisoners wasn’t allowed—I noticed he’d left a couple of cigarettes on the ground. For me? I quickly shoved a sandbag in front of them and grabbed them.
We worked until it was almost evening, then returned to the truck, where we were given something to eat and loaded into the back. As we rode, the headlights turned off, we could hear planes droning and the thunder of exploding bombs in the distance. It was a familiar sound. There was nowhere to take cover, just as in Auschwitz. A truck was no protection. And just as I did in Auschwitz, I didn’t let it worry me and tried to stay calm. The thunder was still quite far away. I chatted with the others, but it didn’t evolve into a real conversation. Everyone was too tired and cold.
As I snuggled up against Martha, I let my mind wander. Hitler had to be here somewhere, perhaps in the Reichstag or in a luxury underground bunker where he was having a party with champagne and music or drinking coffee with his girlfriend Eva. Perhaps they were dancing. A Chopin waltz? Certainly not that degenerate jazz and swing. Could he dance? I didn’t think so. In the newsreels I’d seen he looked as stiff as a rake, his movements spastic. Eva was a different story. She was beautiful and nimble, that was what Kurt had told me.
Or was he doling out orders from his residence, still intent on the Endsieg? But orders to whom? There was not much left of what was once the most powerful army in Europe. A couple of boys trained to use a Flak and the remains of a military unit here and there. They couldn’t stop the bombings. No one mentioned the Luftwaffe anymore. Why die for nothing? The man with the crutches was right, but nobody listened, at least not yet. And here I was, having helped to construct Berlin’s defenses.
The truck stopped suddenly, and we could see the dark silhouettes of abandoned houses from behind the tarpaulin. Debris on the street prevented us from moving forward any farther. We had to sleep in the back of the truck. It was a reasonably quiet night, the bombings still far off on the other side of the city. Two armed soldiers kept guard, but I thought how easy it would be to escape. Whole neighborhoods were in ruins, I spoke the language fluently, and I was wearing ordinary clothing underneath my camp uniform, clothing I brought from Auschwitz. I wouldn’t stand out among the city’s defeated inhabitants. But why take the risk? The Russians would arrive before long, and I didn’t have any papers. They might think I was German. It was better to meet the Russians as a German prisoner. With these thoughts careening through my mind, I fell asleep.
I used to visit Berlin regularly. It was a handsome, vibrant city with elegant people and many cultural venues. The songs from that era were well known and were even sung in the Netherlands. Berliners had a sense of humor, were quick to laugh, lighthearted. The Berlin that I remembered was different from the rest of Germany. Other Germans were more disciplined, more serious, always ready with a polite bow. Although Berlin was the capital and housed the Reichstag, it wasn’t typical. It was cheerful, both edgy and relaxed. There was music everywhere, not only in the concert halls, but also in parks, on the street, in basements.
Shortly before the war I saw a film about Berlin directed by Curt and Robert Siodmak based on a screenplay by Billy Wilder. It was called Menschen am Sonntag. It was a silent film with music that focused on couples in love and how they spent their Sundays in Berlin, flirting in pedal boats on Wannsee Lake, picnicking in the park. I knew that Berlin well. The beautiful houses, broad streets, well-dressed people, packed trams, cigarette smoke, parks. I’d walked its streets, sat at its café terraces, visited its basement cabarets, talked and laughed with its inhabitants. But that world was gone, gone for good. The only appropriate music now was funeral music. It was criminal how the Nazis had brought this beautiful city to hell.
The sight of the ruined city, streets, and neighborhoods, the purposeless soldiers, the people wandering with their troubled faces, didn’t fill me with satisfaction as it did most of my fellow prisoners. Even Martha was elated, but all I felt was sadness, sadness at a world that had been lost, a world left in ruins.
We spent the next two days clearing rubble from the road, filling wheelbarrows with our bare hands, and sleeping in the truck. And then at last we reached the Spreewald, just south of the city. It was a beautiful area, filled with nature trails and waterways. Berliners often came to hike or fish. But now the Germans were apparently trying to transform the forest into a line of defense against the advancing Russians. The truck delivered us to the banks of a tributary, where we were given shovels and ordered to dig trenches.
The work was easier than expected. The soil by the river was soft, and there weren’t many stones or roots, and our guards weren’t so stern and loud anymore. Everyone was nervous about what lay ahead. The first trench had to be thirty feet long, parallel to the river and near its edge. We were told to pile up sand on the river side, and a machine-gun post was installed on the mound. Then we started the next trench. Everyone knew it was a lost cause. But deserters were still being shot without mercy by the SS.
After a few days we stopped working, even though the trenches were unfinished. We were loaded back into the truck and departed for Hamburg, at least that’s what we thought. To our surprise we ended up in the salt mines next to Bergen-Belsen. Telefunken had a factory there, and we were put to work assembling lamps. We spent a week there, then left, as unexpectedly as we had arrived. This time we were really heading for Hamburg. After traveling for days on poor roads full of potholes and on detours through the countryside, we arrived in Wandsbeck, a labor camp and a branch of the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg. In Wandsbeck I was ordered to work in a rubber factory, but the regular bombings caused power failures so frequently that they eventually moved us to another workplace nearby, a furniture factory where I was expected to cut out rifle butts using a band saw. The same power shortages there led to yet another change of work, this time in the Strassenkommando, or street detail, clearing rubble in Hamburg, rubble from buildings bombed by the English.
At six in the evening on April 30, 1945, a selection was made, and a group of prisoners was brought to Hamburg’s central station. The majority of people were Scandinavian. Only Martha and I were not. I then remembered that I had passed myself off as Danish in Ravensbrück; I must have continued to pass. I hadn’t had a passport in ages, and it was possible that I was still listed as Danish on one or another list of prisoners. I’d been using the name Crielaars, which might sound a little Danish to a German ear. If a German had heard me and Martha speaking Dutch in Ravensbrück, in the midst of all those other languages and in the general chaos, he could easily have mistaken us for Danish. Whatever the case, from the moment rumors began to circulate that we were being picked up by the Swedish Red Cross, I understood the situation. Martha and I quickly buttonholed an English-speaking Dane and asked him to teach us a couple words of Danish in a hurry. Formalities were the most important, such as “My name is . . .” or “I was born on September 20 in Copenhagen” and “I’m tired.” I decided not to say anything else. If I ran out of words, I would pretend to faint.
At last, two trucks arrived with Swedish plates and whitewashed tarpaulins with red crosses. There were no further checks as I had feared. The head of the Swedish Red Cross simply walked up to the German guards and handed over some papers. Communication was difficult, but the young man who taught us a few words of Danish was deployed as an interpreter, and that sped things up. The entire group had to get into the back of the two Red Cross trucks. It was organized in five minutes.
Then the engines started and we drove off. The young Danish “interpreter” smiled at me. When I asked him why there were only Scandinavians in the group, he told me that the Swedish Red Cross had made arrangements with the Nazis to collect Scandinavian prisoners from the camps. Many of them were policemen who had refused to arrest Jewish citizens on German command. These policemen were now being freed. I stared at him in amazement. What luck! Martha and I buried ourselves in the blankets we found in the back of the truck as we left Hamburg central station.