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Emerich Grinbaum - January 8, 2001

So-but they're all Red Cross trucks.

Red Cross ???. The Red Cross always send to the camps, but theynever give us. I know that. So-and they give us. And you know, and I praisemyself that I was mature enough not to eat much, especially from the meat,it was you know, and from other things. We ate some, some you know, some crackersor something different which easier. We ate a little meat. My father was indesperate situation- he wanted to eat all. We didn't let him eat, my brother.We didn't let him because we knew and we were right. Everybody got a littlediarrhea, a little bit. My father got the severe diarrhea but he survived.But a lot of people died at that time. Because we stayed uh, uh, I'll tellyou later on. So that was the 29th. Thirtieth, we started hearing uh, cannon,cannon sounds from cannon, cannon. So, some, some, something is coming veryclose, c...close, so it's very close. And the most dramatic situation in mylife happened that day, the 30th of April. And I'm still shivering when I,when I'm trying to tell this. We were laying about, we didn't care much. Youknow, there was such an apathy and, and. Somebody is yelling out, "The Americans"something they recognized. So we were on a top hill. But faraway there wasa road and highway, some kind of highway. And we get out f...got out fromthe, from the cars, from the cattle car and we saw the American cars and tanks,tanks. There were no SS already, they left already. The, the last two daysthey were even-the, the one guard already left, I don't know, he, he didn'tcare. And can you imagine, 2,000 people all of a sudden, they were I don'tknow who could, they were down, downhill and jumping up on the, on the carsand, and the tanks and they didn't know, these guys didn't know what, theyprobably knew because they were in the uh, uh. And that was it you know, andthat was it. I remember they trying to explain to them in Yiddish I rememberthe Polish, a lot of Polish. I remember like now. "Zeks Juhr" uh, six years...

Yeah.

you know, the Polish, poor guys they were from '39.

Yeah.

"Huben mier geplugen," so we suffer. And something like that,but they, they maybe they, somebody understood that. So that was, that wasit. So they still was uh, they, they didn't stay there, they got back. Sothey uh, collected some of the SS guys who stayed there. And they opened,opened some of the uh, uh, uh, the train has, had some food for us, but theynever give us. So they open the fo...the, the, the uh, door uh, and, and gaveus some bread, so they give us additional bread. And we stayed there stillon the, on the, in the cattle train because there was nowhere to go. But wewere, we were free. And some people uh, some people get-got out to look fora village or somewhere. So if, next day or two we were a little bit betterso we also walked, uh. And we found a village, but not much was there. Sowe just, we just walking a little bit, we found somewhere a village. And thename of the village at that time I remember, Staltach, that's the only thingI remember. Staltach. That's in German.

S.t.a.l...

Staltach.

t.a.c.h?

T.a.c.h. That's all I remember. So we were walking and we stayedthere in the, in the train for at least four or five more days. And then theAmerican came.

The Americans had left then.

Left, but some guards stayed there you know, stayed there. So,some, but they...

Did you encounter any of them, did you speak to anyone?

I don't think so, no. They, they were some, some officers, somesoldiers there, but you know, but they took over, but they're just guardingor something.

Were they white?

There were blacks too.

They were both.

Black, both. There were blacks too.