Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Herman Marczak - May 12, 1982

We don't know exactly what happened. Around ten o'clock--yeah it was so nice. And there was, there was rumors there was an SS doctor from Dora--a captain, a high SS officer--but he was a medical doctor. And he was very ni...very--he was, he was the only German who, which I saw some kind of a human feeling through all those years. And we were sitting in front of the barracks the day before or a few days before. The sun--was just such beautiful weather we were warming up on the sun and he said, "Do you come from Dora?" We said, "Yes." "You are Häftling?"

What does that mean?

A Häftling means in German like a, a prisoner or something like that, or a prisoner of war or something like that. "So it, it won't take long anymore, you will be free in a few days," he said. "Just, just keep on living, keep on breathing," he said. And uh, the next day around ten o'clock in the morning we saw--they opened up the gate because I was in the first house. Was--I was, I was hanging around in the first house by the gate. Came in a Jeep and I saw the uniforms, then I saw it was two British officers. And a German commander from the camp was sitting next--in the middle of those two. And they drove up to the--to their command post and they, they uh, announced something in English, which nobody understood what they said, and then in German. And then they ask if there's people here who can talk--somebody who can talk English and some other language. So we had a Palestinian with--who knows--a guy who came to Poland, he was living in Palestine. He was a British subject.

Oh.

And he came to Poland to visit his grandparents and he got stopped over the war. So he raised his hands that--he said he was a....

A Jew?

Yeah, a Palestinian--an Israeli. At that time it was a Palestinian.

Mm-hm.

And he said that he was a British subject. Went over to the officer and told him so and so. They took him right, right up and gave him a uniform and told him to announce--and he knew several languages--so they announced that from that moment on that camp falls in the--on supervision of the second British army. And all the Germans will find themselves in the areas should surrender and turn over their weapons and things like this. And that was, that was the liberation. That was April the 15th 1945.