Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Nathan, Bernard, and Samuel Offen - September 3, 1987

Americans

NO: So we were collecting the bread for, for the dead person. I dont know, I don't remember, we couldnt eat that because I was very sick. I had diarrhea, and uh, maybe I weighed maybe 40 or 50 pounds. I couldnt walk. I was just laying and I was so...and then I saw. One day I saw, was quiet in the camp, and I saw tanks are moving up, with big white stars. I thought that this was the Russian army. I looked through the window. I had mine, my bed near a window and I was them coming in and I thought that they were the Russians. But somebody said that they were Americans. Anyhow, they...when we were liberated, when the American came in, the first thing I think, if I recall, they dig ditches, they brought in tractors, they dig ditches, and they brought in the Germans from the villages and they had to bury, bury all the people. Thousands of people, they had to bury them. Right then in Mauthausen. And then, they took us to the hospital, the Americans. The Red Cross came. The sold...the GI came and uh, they stripped us naked. And I recall that they let me have the belt when they took me to the ambulance. And I was holding that slice of bread in my hand. He didnt take it away from me and he let me go to the hospital with that slice of bread. I know when they got me to the hospital I think I got 15, 15 pints of glucose. I know they were giving me glucose for days and days. But people were dying in the hospital already, right and left. [pause] Because I guess they didnt know how to, the doctors didnt know how to uh, help anybody like this who was starved for five, six years and how to, how to bring him back to health. And being in the hospital a few months, I guess, and Sam came, came to visit me and, um...

BO: I remember you were telling me something that you almost died because uh...

NO: Oh yes, the doctor said to Sam that I won't make it. The doctor said...

BO: That other people were eating so much food and that they couldnt handle it because of uh, their systems were not used to those kinds of foods.

NO: Well, yes, we had...just lucky, just lucky.


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