Herman Marczak - May 12, 1982
Traveling to Bergen-Belsen DP Camp
At Bergen-Belsen, yes...
Yeah.
...it was run by that Rosensaft.
Yeah, it was run by him, yeah. So me and few friends--there was no transportation--we were young at that time. It was nice. The weather was never as hot as here, in June, July. We got a German woman who, who, who--we would--we walked around and she called us into the house one time and we told her a little of our story. She said, whenever we feel hungry--we want to have some food we should come over. They had a uh, a farm--a large productive farm.
Uh-huh.
So we went there to eat whenever we felt like and we got a little stronger and healthier. Then we...
She sympathized with you.
Yeah. How she was in the war nobody knows, you couldn't trust it. But anyhow. Then we started to, to, to, to walk back to Bergen-Belsen. When I came back to Bergen-Belsen I find out that people go to Sweden. I remind myself, I had a teacher in school--she had a brother in Denmark, and she used to go for vacations to spend in Belgium, you know. And she used to tell us how different those countries was from Poland, how nice it was there. So I, I tried to get interested to go to Sweden.
You had no desire to go back home and see your home?
No, no, it was--once somebody tried to talk to me and I knew what happened at home. Because some people who went home, they were not home--they didn't know, you know. If you don't see it with your own eyes, it's different. But I knew I didn't have to go back.
But perhaps your mother went back.
I knew, I knew they were not alive. I didn't have the slightest--I thought maybe if my brother would be alive--he was three years younger than me--then eventually we will find each other. But from the rest of the family I knew they were not there. I haven't got nobody. So.
Did you, did you ever find anybody who um, were witness to the death of your mother and...
No we knew exactly what--like I told you, the young people, we knew exactly what happened. The Polish informants they told--they came back and they told exactly what happened. They take those people in, in those trucks to a wooded area by ??? and never ever came back. Nobody came back alive from there. We knew it. So I remind myself this story, so I said, "Why, why not go to Sweden? Get out. What do I have to stay in Germany? I have an opportunity to go someplace." So the Swedish they wanted to take only sick people.
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