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Szymon Binke - June 16, 1997

What was Mühldorf like?

Like any other camp. But there already, well, my father wound up working, we got lucky. My father wound up working, see in, in, in Europe they store potatoes for the winter in Kopsel [container] they call it. They bury 'em and they cover 'em with, with uh, uh, straw and uh, and uh, uh, dirt, to, to keep 'em from freezing. And in the winter they open it up and then, then and take out as much as they need and then they cover it up again. Well, my father wound up on a work detail doing that and I wound up on a work detail working for a, for a, a, some kind of a church, a Catholic church. There was a bunch o' nuns in it. Did uh, maintenance work, you know, cleaning and, and there the nuns were very good to us. That's when I got sick. That's when I was sick. I was lucky I was there, otherwise they wouldn't have let me work. They'd probably uh, stick me in a hospital or do something. But they were good. They used to give me water and stuff like that, you know and they'd, they'd help us with a little food now and then too.

So was it a church in Mühldorf?

Yes, must have been in Mühldorf, yeah. It was like a, they had a hospital there too, you know. It was like a cloister they call it.

Do you remember any, did they ever talk to you, any of the nuns?

Probably would talk to me. They'd, they'd call me and she'd tie the piece o' bread and throw it at me or tell me what to do. But they never, you know, never talked uh, any personal, no, no conversations. They were afraid too, because uh, I guess they were afraid for the uh, German guards. Yeah, that was a small work detail. Probably maybe fifteen of us.

And you had typhus, you think?

Yeah. That's when I got sick. I believe, it was never diagnosed, now, but I believe I had typhus because I was burning up, very weak, I couldn't get enough water in me. I, I drank 'til I, 'til I could feel it here, but I was still thirsty. And uh, about two weeks, I don't know, it went away and I was okay.

So they saved your life?

Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's the time that uh, my father dragged me to this uh, hospital because my uncle was there and when we got there uh, closed the door and said, "Come back tomorrow."

That means, so you were, you were still with your father and...

I was with my father all the time.

And the other uncles, except for one...

They were gone. They were, two of 'em, two of 'em stayed in, in Lager 4, in Camp Number 4. The oldest came with us to Landshut and Mühldorf. He got sick in Mühldorf and was, wound up in the hospital and was sent back to Lager uh, Camp Number 4, back to Kaufering. Because by then it was a, a sick camp, a hospital camp, whatever you want to call it. I guess they stored 'em there. Not that they gave 'em any medical uh, uh, attention. It's just, it was a storage place. See, like I told you before, in Germany they didn't have any gas chambers, so they couldn't uh, mass uh, couldn't do any mass executions unless uh, shooting and they didn't do it in Kaufering. They just let 'em die.

And the other uncle had stayed in Birkenau.

Those, no, no, those, which one? Th...both, yeah. We don't know what happened to him.

But he didn't survive.

No.

And in, in Mühldorf did you, did you encounter Wehrmacht as well?

The last few weeks I think. We had some, we, we started gettin' some old, older uh, guards and I believe they were from the Wehrmacht. They weren't, in fact, [laugh], one day I'm going on that uh, command, on that work detail and we, we took a chance, you know, because the guard seemed halfway decent. Instead of taking a long way, it was about a seven kilometer uh, walk to work and back, so we took a shortcut going through a farmer's uh, yard, [laugh] and there's this doghouse and a big dog in front of it chewing on a bone. Well, one of us, I can't remember it was me or somebody, somebody scared the dog away and stole the bone from him. The dog ran away from him.

And ate the bone.

And ate the bone, yes.

And do you think people were still behaving like the animals, the way you said before? You said...

When?

When you were in, in Mühldorf.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Nobody watched out for anybody except for family.

No, no. Family, yes. Well, our family was close. Well, we, there's, in Mühldorf there were only three of us, Sol, my, my oldest uncle now that survived, my father and I.

And do you know what kind of things they were working on in Mühldorf?

Also underground uh, factories. If you didn't have a, a, a work detail like we had, you, you were carrying uh, cement or mixing cement or you know.

And what were the conditions like there?

Same as everywhere else. There we had a, I remember we had a, a coal-fired uh, stove in the middle of the barracks and were heated. I remember that. Because we used to steal a potato once in a while and we used to bake it or cook it in, in that. So I remember we had fire in those.

Was that a delicacy?

Oh! Anything was a delicacy. Anything you could consume was a delicacy. You didn't go for luxurious things. Anything you could uh, put in your mouth was uh, uh, prolonged your life uh, for the next uh, day or so.

Were you thinking...

My father had dysentery and a lot of people died from that in, in, in Mühldorf. And next to our camp was a Russian prisoner camp. They got some rations, they got some packages from the Red Cross. And I remember in, in, in Europe they used to tell you if you, if you have uh, uh, dysentery you, you eat uh, uh, co...cocoa. You know, cocoa from, you just eat it with water or something and you drink it you'll, it, it stops the dysentery. And I bought some cocoa for my father from a Russian prisoner. You know, we smuggled it across the, the fence. Because there the fences weren't uh, uh, there was no electricity in those fences. And uh, I can't remember what I gave him, probably gave him a piece of bread or some potatoes or something. He gave me a little package of this uh, and my father just ate it as a powder and it helped him. It stopped the dysentery.

How did you find out that the Russians had cocoa?

Uh, we, we found out that they were gettin', that they got that, they weren't gettin' it steady. They got this uh, Red Cross packages and they had either chocolate or cocoa or you know something that...

That, that probably saved your father's life.

Yeah. Yeah.

And at Mühldorf were there more piles of bodies and was there...

Uh, there already, they used to bury 'em, because I guess it, it wasn't uh, winter anymore. It's already spring by then.

But were there heavy casualties there?

Yes, yes, yes.

And how long were you at Mühldorf?

'Til the end, 'til May uh, probably another three months, four months, or something like that.

Were you con...thinking about survival at this point?

We were always thinking about survival. You don't wanna die. You don't much care, let's put it that way, but, you, you try and do the best to survive. You'll steal, you'll rob, you'll do anything to and you don't want to go through the pain of starving to death. [pause]

So a, a bullet would be better?

Oh yeah, definitely. It's quick, probably painless. The bullet uh, travels faster than the sound, so you don't even hear it. If it hits you in the right spot you're dead before you know it.

But starvation was...

Yeah, that's tough.

And what about news of the war. Did you hear any news of the war?

Nah. Uh, well we knew it was close to the end, because they used to bomb the heck out the uh, uh, Mühldorf is a big uh, uh, railroad uh, uh, crossing. I guess it's a big, a lot of railroad cross there. And every day they used to come and bomb. And on the other side of our uh, you know, on one side there was this uh, uh, Russian prisoner-of-war camp and on the other side of the fence was a, a small air field. And the American planes used to, I guess, yeah, they must have been Americans, because they had the white uh, star. They used to come down, almost land on the wheels, run on the wheels and, and uh, machine-gun the uh, the uh, airplanes that was sittin' there. And then they took off again. So they didn't have any uh, once in a while you heard some uh, anti-aircraft uh, go off, but very seldom. In Mühldorf they used to come almost every day at noon. We used to love it, used to enjoy just watch 'em come, come around and they'd dive bomb.

You weren't worried that they were going to bomb you?

No. Nah. First of all the, the, the guards used to hide and we, we didn't have to work. We were free. Then when they, they bombed that uh, uh, uh, railroad crossing, so they had a lot of uh, loaded uh, some, some of the trains, well, there were, the trains were loaded. Some of them had food. Well, they, they took us to work and to repair the uh, the uh, uh, tracks. And we, we found a lot of food th...there from the, you know, from the bombed out uh, cars and stuff.

Was food the central thing...

That was the thing. Nothing else mattered. If you had a, if you were in the camp, you had a decent supply of food, you were in a good camp.

So, and Mühldorf was a decent camp?

We got lucky. I didn't have to go to work in the uh, uh, its underground factory. I worked uh, like I told you in this uh, cloister, in this uh, I think it was a hospital with, with it was like and it was taken care of by nuns. And my father was in this uh, potato uh, uh, detail, where they were digging up the potatoes from, you know, the stored, stored potatoes for the winter. So he'd come home with a f...couple potatoes, I'd ,uh, bring home something, you know and it wasn't, Mühldorf wasn't too bad for us. Because we got lucky to get a decent work detail.

And what happened after Mühldorf?

That was it. We got on the, then they put us on trains and God I don't know how many days we were on that train. A long time. But uh, we wound up in uh, Seeshaupt.

Well, what was that train like?

Terrible. Started out 150 of us in, in, in each car, standing up. You, you couldn't even take a deep breath, because one on top of the other. After about three days I think there were thirty-five of us left. We had plenty o' room to lay down. We put the dead bodies down and we sssss, laid down on 'em to have some cushioning. Not they were that soft, they were nothing but bones, but a lot of 'em got killed too through uh, from the uh, strafing. See, at one time we were stopped on the railroad, on the, on the train and on the other uh, track there was another train going the other way. Our car was face...was right next to their loco...locomotive. And what they tried to do is hit the locomotive, knock out the trains. And uh, I guess they were strafing the locomotive and a couple of stray bullets came into our car. I was standing up talking to a kid and when we heard them shooting we dropped down to the floor and after the plane went through I tried to wake him up. He caught a bullet in the back of his head. I think that might have been already in Seeshaupt, because we just kept going back and forth. We didn't go anywhere.