Louis Kaye - May 9, 1983
Concentration Camps 2
When you were transferred from one camp to the other...
Right.
...how were, how were you transferred?
When I was transferred from one camp to the other, from, from, from one camp to the other by train. I bypass my city, I remember like today. And then they took me to the camp at Cz?stochowa. Then they, then they took me by train to Buchenwald. Then Buchenwald to Dora, they took me by train and they just dropped me off at nighttime over there in Dora and they were, they was watching 'em like about half a dozen German and about twenty dogs. Big dogs was watching. Going out of the train, make sure you don't go out from the line, we go out of the line they jump and they bite you up and everything. Big dogs they watch me. And then I was in Dora, I was working by the railroad and I was working by the power lines for Zwei and before the liberation 1945 they took us for a week, a march like the, the American come in, the Russian come in, everybody come in. They took us like around, they took, they didn't have no place for us to go. So, we used to go through fields. They used to have... For sugar they making the, how, how you call this? Uh, like radish, doing sugar?
Wife: Sugarcane.
Sugar cones or something.
Sugarcane.
Sugarcane. Yeah. Used to go by a farm and I used to jump into the farm, big piles and take one. And I was standing here and they shooting people here and I was lucky. I was, near me they shoot people and I would run back. This happened eight days before they liberate. And for eight days we just go around every day for thirty miles. And we don't go no place, because here was the Russian, here was American, the French ??? they used to take us around and around. See the more we talk I remember things.
So, they would take you?
No, where they take me where?
Where you saying you were going around and around?
They took me out from the concentration camp from Dora and they took me around, around. Every day I was uh, we were put on another farm.
I see.
They didn't know what to do. By the end they killed lots of people. They thought maybe they're going to take 'em here, they couldn't go here, they go back and forth. Everyday we walked about thirty miles, no water, no nothing. And then later on they give us to eat uh, like a pie... a little soup, a piece of bread. Lots of people got uh, died on the road, tried to get water from the, dirty water and everything. Like I say, I jump in trying to get carrots, you know, people got shot near me, and I was not shot. And I run back. And I don't know, I don't know myself how I lived through. Like I say, when I would come out from concentration camp, I didn't know nothing. I didn't know where I'm going, I didn't know what's my name, I didn't know. It was nothing. Then I was, I was eating first all kind of meats from... the army they give me. First it was coming down American army, then the English army. From the English army they give the warehouses. Can't afford the meat, they used to give me an Englishman ??? meat go in the hospital for two, three months. Don't agree with me. Lots of people died eating so fast and everything ??? their body. They don't eat nothing for years.
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