Bert Dan - November 17, 1982
Forced Labor Building Roads In Poland
Mm-hm.
But unfortunately very few people had that. And uh, we went back and forth and already 1944 to that camp. And then we were all sent out to different places. Like my group with thousands and thousands of others, we were sent to, to, to Poland. And I was over there in different loca...localities like, like uh, ??? and I don't recall the bigger cities, you know. And what we were working over there is on the road--we were fixing the roads and they took us out to, to uh, build roads made out of wood. Actually, you know, they took us in a tremendous big forest and what they made us do--you had to cut out trees and only four men were allowed to a tree. Now those trees were unbelievable. You know, they were very hard to lift them up and we had to cut off the, the branches and carry 'em, four guys to one tree and we had to carry 'em uphill and lay them down to build the road. You know, and this takes the weeks and weeks and weeks to build a road of I don't know how many miles. You know, it was an unbelievable. And over there we were under the command of a Hun...Hungarian uh, group of soldiers who were like, you know, here I would say something in that order. You know, they were actually roughnecks, you know, and...
Mm-hm.
...and they were really trying to give us a very, very difficult, hard time. And several of us died over there in that camp because they just couldn't take it--the food was next to zero and the work was incredible, absolutely incredible. You know it was so hard that--I, I myself, you know, as I told you before, you know, I'm not a weakling--I wasn't a weakling at that time and I don't know how I survived. I really--many a times I'm thinking about it, "How did I do it that I'm still here?" It, it--you know, it was impossible the work you had to do over there. And--but--and I survived because I am here to tell you the story.
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