Hermina Vlasopolos - April 9, 1984
Arrival of the Russians
Mm-hm.
..."for a big freedom banquet which was planned of the same night. All of us had worked with the Frenchmen, worked with the Frenchmen and Italians in the same plant section were invited. We were really looking forward to that dinner, but later in that, in the afternoon planes, airplanes arrived from France in order to take home all their men as well as the Italians, and those planes would not wait. So Tonio and Nicolai ??? again, were again at the gate, but this time to say goodbye. They had given away the food for the planned dinner. With his big smile, saddened a little, Tonio repeated for the last time "Le kapo écrire un lettre et ???" The other wished me good luck and I wished them as we parted happy and sad at the same time. I still didn't know what was going to happen to us. It started to get dark. The greatest day of my life was, was in its twilight. I was confused and saddened by the departures of those few men who in the last five weeks had become more than brothers to me. I was sitting on a bench looking at the open gate when I saw the Communist entering in the camp. The Communist was a nickname given to him by the German. This man had worked with us in the factory, he had been in different camps for a long, long time, for ten years some people were saying. He was Czech. When the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia he was fighting in the underground and they succeeded in arresting him. He was always well informed and always tried to cheer us up, telling us the good news about the war and giving us some hope. He came forward like the other men, gathered us around him, stood up on a bench and started to talk. First he told us how lucky we all were that the war was over and that we had survived. Then he continued in a more formal tone, "In the name of the liberated Republic of Czechoslovakia, I declare you free today. You stop being animals with a number, you are again human beings with a name." Tears were rolling down his hallow cheeks and all of us were crying silently as well. He had become the mayor of the town of ???. As soon as the Russians would arrive they would work us out together some kind of passport which would enable us to get home. So the arrival of the Russians just couldn't pass on observed all of us the day before. Still prisoners were at the edge of the road in order to greet them. The ditches were full of Nazi flags, those Nazi flags and swastikas signals of the darkest year in modern history. The German population of the town quickly got rid of them. Those flags laying in ditches covered with dust and mud. The Russians arrived in trucks singing and screaming "Na Berlin!" It was in May but it was still cold in that mountainous region. I had my camp coat on my shoulders. On the upper left side of my coat there was a white piece of cloth with my prisoner number. A Russian officer jumped down from one of the trucks and came toward me holding up his bayonet. I was stunned and scared, unable to understand his intention. Was I supposed to die now that my life had just been given back to me? And as he came closer caressed my cheeks and with bayonet cut my prisoner number off saying in broken German, "Kreig kaput, Hitler kaput, alles kaput, nicht ein Gefangener mehr, du frei." "The war is kaput, Hitler is kaput, everything is kaput, you are not a prisoner anymore, you're free." He jumped on another truck, saluted, yelled "Na Berlin" and his laughing face faded out of view. Well some of the Russians remained in town and they started to rape women and to..."
Yeah, yeah. What--after the war, after you were liberated did you, did you go back home, or did you?
Yes, I went back home. It wasn't--after three days we had to face another very serious problem, it had become a habit, you know, the storming of the kitchen and so on.
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