Simon Kalmas - May 25, 1982
Liberation from Buchenwald
Of course, there was all kinds of nationalities. There were Ukrainians and Russians and Germans and, and all that. So they decided to put all the Jews into one barrack. It was a three floors barrack--three-story ba...uh, barrack, with the intention to blow it up with us in it. We didn't know, we found out, five minutes later. As we went into that camp--apparently that the, the Russians knew about it, the Germans knew about it and they organized themselves outside. Somehow they got in touch with the outside. And we heard it's a--over the loudspeaker that everybody, we should go into safety because there's a Flieger alarm. It means uh, uh, an air raid. After that air raid--took about five minutes--American tanks came in. And those Russians and those Germans had weapon with them. And they took the SS that they were sitting around the--they dropped their weapon and we were saved at this moment. That was April 11th, 1945.
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