Michael Opas - [n.d.]
Leaving Buchenwald
Okay. What did you do after the two months?
Well, I, I was still in, in Buchenwald. Well, we, we started walking to the, to the villages around the camp there. There were villages. We were--we start--there were a lot of things to--we had a lot of--we, we didn't have any soap, for instance. No, we had soap--soap we had. But we didn't have any, any decent food. Only condensed milk or, every--canned food. And, and then finally, you know, it gets to you. So we start--you have--you, you, you get spoiled after, after pretty much starvation. So we tried to get some better food. We went to the, to the villages--to the Germans. With soap--we, we got a big box of soap. I couldn't use it--so much soap. So we figured we're going to trade in. We went to the, the, to the village there and to--we traded with the Germans. So they, they gave us good food. They gave--they cooked very dinner even for us. They, they claimed that they didn't know nothing about it. I say, "How could you tell me that you couldn't--it's only, only about maybe three or four miles away from, from the camps. You didn't, you didn't hear what's going on? The Krematoria was working day and night. The, the chimneys were, were, were full of, full of smoke--of human smoke. How can you tell us that you didn't..." They swore, they swore--were swearing they didn't see nothing, they didn't hear nothing. What else could they say...
Mm-hm.
...to us? But they were nice. I mean, they tried to, they tried to uh, compensate with food. They baked us a cake or they cooked a dinner or something like this.
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