Henry Krystal - September 19, 1996
Sachsenhausen
And Sachsenhausen was also a, a terrible camp at that time because they kept sending people in there, just as they had in Buchenwald. And uh, we, the, the things were as terrible as usual, plus disorganized. Now there was Buchenwald uh, Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald both had a structured old camp where the political prisoners were running things and so on. And maybe some of the prisoners were able, of our transports were able to make contacts with them, but I was just not up to that kind of standard by that time, I was really run down. And so uh, I didn't even know exactly what was happening. And after some time they marched us out on a death march again. And this one friend that was with me on the train and I somehow got caught in a column that was composed mostly of Russians. And with them we started out on a death march westward, I presume, uh. And we would march uh, all day and then they would put us either in a barn or in a woods, they would surround the woods and put us in that woods. Sometimes they would give us a couple of potatoes.
This, we're still in the winter? This is, now it's 1945.
No, this was, this was now uh, in uh, March. Oh, eh, I know exactly. We were marched out of Sacs...Sachsenhausen on my birthday, April 22. And, uh.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn