Marton Adler - July 13, 1989
Liberation
When you got off the boxcar at Belsen, what confronted you?
Well, it's the same thing, too. I don't know for how many were dead in the boxcar. But from what I'm reading is, they made a deal that Belsen should be liberated, they made a deal that they will give over Belsen to the Allies and the fact that I was there maybe two days and the British did come in and the way we were liberated, our barrack, they lined us up for counting just like every day, except this time, there was an SS man and a British officer. Now that is a fact. And they counted us and here's what the German said. In so many words. "You are no longer under German command. You are now under the British. You are free." And then the British said something whether in Polish or whatever, English, I didn't know. And that's it. And then they started celebrating, singing "Roll Out the Barrel," that song I remember and we were free, but the war was still on, the war was--I mean all of the you gotta understand I learned that here. In this country. I didn't know it then.
Did people cheer?
Oh, yeah. Sure.
They did at Belsen?
Oh, definitely, oh sure. Oh yeah they cheered, they took revenge. They had some guys flinging down from two story buildings on the pavements some of the Kapos I mean but I was still a kid and these people. There were all kinds of, Belsen, Belsen had every nationality you could think of Frenchman, Belgians, you name it plus all the other things that where we were when we came to Belsen, they put us in an army barrack. When we came to Belsen, it was already said that we were gonna get free. I mean behind the scenes. I didn't know it then. And then those that were able-bodied, I mean they were in pretty good health, they didn't have the typhus and they wouldn't bulldoze with the bulldozers with the living, I mean the living with the dead. They sent us to Celle, a town that's not far from Belsen. That's near Hannover. And they let us stay in some other, some type of barrack so it was, we were liberated, but we didn't move from Belsen to Celle, 'til the war was over. That I remember distinctly. [It was another three weeks, May 8, 1945.]
Is that where this displaced persons camp was, at Celle?
Oh, they were all over.
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