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Joseph Gringlas - January 14, 1993

Were you worried about that?

Yeah. If-I knew, you knew it, if you don't, you're not able towor...stay on your feet and do something, you'll be finished. So I was-mybrother was still, still okay. I don't, I don't know how. Because I told youhe was in Ostrowiec still. At the time was in Blizyn, he was in Ostrowiecand he could, he, he was, he was, had money and he had-buy some food. ButI, sudden...to Blizyn and Birkenau and then Nordhausen and then going throughtwo, three weeks on the train, that I think was, I, I was almost finished.So they didn't want me to go to, they wou...let me stay in Nordhaus...in Dora.Not anymore to the, going to the working. Because I was, I wasn't able todo work anymore. So I thought I'm ve...they didn't want to kill me eitherbecause they didn't, probably at the time they-any eh, I mean, using ammunitionwas a bit too, too much for them, they needed it. So they, they didn't killbecause to, to-I'm not going to survive anyway. So.

Did they give you food?

Yeah, they give us a little food, whatever ration they gave you,yeah.

But even, even...

Yeah, yeah, they still give you.

when you...

Mm-hm. Yeah.

were sick they gave you.

Yeah, I was not working and still got, got that ration. But Ididn't, they knew that I, I going to fall anyway whether they're going touse me for the work. I wasn't able to. So that was a few, after a few weekslike that in, I was laying, laying, laying and so-and then Americans camewith the planes, bombarding Nordhausen. One-I'll never forget that. And evenin the barr...the, the Americans didn't know there was, they didn't know thiswas barracks like con...camps. They thought it looked like soldier-building,big buildings. So there was evening, about four or five o'clock in the eveningthey throw the bombs and, and we-I and my brother run thr...I was in higherfloor. It went through. It was not-steps you couldn't walk through becausethe bomb came through, it, it slide through like a, because the steps wasbricks, falling like, falling on top of the brick-of the steps. You slidethrough and we said we're finished, you know. And we walked out from the buildingand the whole kitchen corner was a kitchen building, the whole kitchen wasburned to death. And lot of the guys were hit. So we went out and we cameback, we're going back to whatever's left, we saw it was like burnt corpse,corpse, human be...the, the, from the camps cause the American hit the, thebomb. They hit that barrack, that building.