Emerich Grinbaum - October 3, 2000 & January 8, 2001
Liberation
So--but they're all Red Cross trucks.
Red Cross ???. The Red Cross always send to the camps, but they never give us. I know that. So--and they give us. And you know, and I praise myself 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 crackers or something different which easier. We ate a little meat. My father was in desperate 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 little diarrhea, 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 tell you later on. So that was the 29th. Thirtieth, we started hearing uh, cannon, cannon sounds from cannon, cannon. So, some, some, something is coming very close, c...close, so it's very close. And the most dramatic situation in my life 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. You know, 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 was a road and highway, some kind of highway. And we get out f...got out from the, 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 days they were even--the, the one guard already left, I don't know, he, he didn't care. And can you imagine, 2,000 people all of a sudden, they were I don't know who could, they were down, downhill and jumping up on the, on the cars and, and the tanks and they didn't know, these guys didn't know what, they probably knew because they were in the uh, uh. And that was it you know, and that was it. I remember they trying to explain to them in Yiddish I remember the 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 was it. So they still was uh, they, they didn't stay there, they got back. So they 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 they never give us. So they open the fo...the, the, the uh, door uh, and, and gave us some bread, so they give us additional bread. And we stayed there still on the, on the, in the cattle train because there was nowhere to go. But we were, we were free. And some people uh, some people get--got out to look for a village or somewhere. So if, next day or two we were a little bit better so we also walked, uh. And we found a village, but not much was there. So we just, we just walking a little bit, we found somewhere a village. And the name of the village at that time I remember, Staltach, that's the only thing I 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 stayed there in the, in the train for at least four or five more days. And then the American 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, some soldiers there, but you know, but they took over, but they're just guarding or something.
Were they white?
There were blacks too.
They were both.
Black, both. There were blacks too.
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