Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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John Mandel - May 26, 1981

Let's see, where was I? Do you, do you remember any form of active resistance that you could identify as resistance?

The only time that uh, there was uh, uh, some kind of a form of resistance was the very last uh, day or two in the concentration camp in uh, in Ebensee. Um, Ebensee is located in the Austrian Alps and they--the Germans uh, the reason they had this camp there was because they were carving into the mountain there uh, uh, some uh, factory, some uh, facilities where they had heavy machinery. And the way I--the way I remember it was that they were going to build their V-2 bombs there you know, those rockets. And they never were able to quite finish that facility. But uh, I--we were told this later that they had wired those caves in a, just before uh, we were going to be liberated they were going to herd us in there and uh, they were going to just detonate the whole thing on, on us and destroy us in those, in those caves. And there was--I don't know how, but there's, there were some people that, that managed to get a hold of some weapons. And uh, they were--they brought us out into the center of the field and they were going to march us out, and, and march us over into these uh, facilities. And uh, I guess the, the, the people uh, that had these weapons stopped them. So again, I was lucky.

Did you have a weapon?

No.