Nathan Nothman - November 30, 1982
Transfer to Flossenburg
We were walking to Trachenau--it's about fifty kilometer Czech border. And they put, put us to boxcars, so many of them. There just 100 to a boxcar that we couldn't, we couldn't even stretch a leg. And they took us to Flossenburg. All, all ??? onto the side. Hundred, 100 kilometer from ???, something like this. When we arrived to Flossenburg, 25 percent was mentally disturbed, dead. Crazy. I mean, they just lost it, they just lost it. The outside was so cold, but inside was ninety degree--we would work together. And that, and that SS came in and they start to hit us, and hit us. And we know that the, that the end of the war is there. But how can we survive? And they took us to, to Flossenburg. We can't leave. Now we're supposed be de-lousing. That means we would stood by the tank, they change us, we took a shower there, and we're supposed to run barefooted on the snow to the barracks. And they gave you shoes like this. I mean, that uniform. It was nothing. No, nothing, completely. We were freezing. A lot of people died. It, it--that Flossenburg they were quarantined four blocks. There was a lot of non-Jewish people. They had a shot--they have uh, uh, needles--poison needles. When somebody sleep, they go in and just give you a needle. Punched it through and that person die. So they killed a lot of them. So we would watch--we were on the watch not to let this happen. Where they were three, four ways and they marked them here, one and a half. One and half is, can work. One is excellent. One and a half is fair. Two is--about two and a half, three, they cannot be work. So they took a lot of friends of mine to that con...gas chamber in that--burned them. I with another friend--two of my friend and myself, you know, we're from Kraków--we, we made uh, like uh, friends. We came to Regensburg. Now Regensburg is a big city and we work on the railroad station. And the Nazis--and the German prisoners, the German prisoners, the politician, po...political and the Communists--where they have uh, you know, the head of that politicals. I forgot how they go up and down. But they were ruthless. They were vicious. And they were on the top. They eat--they give us the dirt and they eat everything. When it come to soup--to give the soup--he give you from the top plain water, and they take, they took it from the bottom. And they were a lot of Poles, but they were all uh, political.
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