Michael Opas - [n.d.]
State of Health
Mm-hm. To what do you attribute your survival...
Luck.
...after all of these camps?
Luck.
After Buchenwald what happened?
After Buchenwald--well, in Buchenwald I was really a, a walking skeleton.
You were down below seventy-five pounds?
Below--I was only sixty-nine pounds--sixty-eight or sixty-nine pounds. I was a really bones and skin, bones and skin. A walking skeleton. I couldn't--I could hardly walk. If I had to go down a, a step--because from the barracks we had to go down--I had to help me with my hands. I put down one foot and then the other one. I couldn't walk anymore. I was so weak.
Had your leg healed from when they opened it up and cleaned out the swelling?
Oh this was in Budzyn yeah. Oh this--after a few weeks it, it healed.
Okay, I just wondered if there was any effects from that.
No, it's--no, it wasn't effect from this--no this was nothing to do with this. I only had it repaired here in America already. Yeah, when I went--I had a, a foot operation once. So he did--the doctor noticed that it was so, dangled or--like, like an amateur, it was, you know. It was pointing down. So he noticed what it is. He asked me. I told him. He said, "Well, I will fix it." I had here--cut here the bone on one foot...
Mm-hm.
...where it was outgrowing. So he fixed this too. But in, in, in Buchenwald when I, when I was--I mean after I was survived, after the liberation...
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