Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Nathan Nothman - November 30, 1982

Attempting to Escape

So we worked on that--I remember occasion we worked on, on the railroad and there was a German--he was very vicious, one German--and he was so vicious he killed so many of us. He didn't care how, what. And when the air raid came from United States bomb us, 17--what is it, B-17 that time?

Mm-hm.

That bomb exploded next to us. And he was buried alive the German, he was buried alive. So I said, "This may be somebody..." He was buried alive, completely buried alive, and we could just run. Regensburg was big city and we were on the railroad, we could run. But we still didn't--we were not organized, we didn't know where to go because they could spot us because we got the uniform. So we came back together there and we work there maybe from January to March, April, something like this. And we walk, we walk due to I would say the border. They were going Landsburg that was in Germany. And then Freilassing, Laufen, Laufen is the border, Austria, Germany. So when we walk, the order came in to shoot Jews. So what they done, they always took the last three, four lines out of them and shot them. One occasion I, I will never forget it. My friend said, "We're running away, it's no good." All right. But, you know, I saw that my friend hiding and I cannot find a place. Not good enough for me. So I hide too, I mean, good fair place. So they caught him and not me. But they didn't--they want to grab us so we run. Because everybody went already. There may be about hundred feet away. So we run to that and we got--everybody have a, have a blanket on the set and they hit me here, so they cut that little blood vessel. I, you know, somehow stopped it, so I don't see no blood. And when we walk, the German political or, or, or Communist--I cannot say what was it--he looking for the guy who got hit--me. He couldn't find me. Then he come to me, "???, are you, are you uh, that guy?"


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