Saul Raimi - July 7, 1982
Death March from Auschwitz
And I was in Auschwitz--well, to describe Auschwitz, I was ??? and in uh, January '45 when the Russians closed in, we were uh, evacuated from Auschwitz to Buchenwald, which in Germany. But to describe that march, it's hard to believe how anybody survive it. People were just dying from cold, from January cold, from walking in the cold with ??? And then, they loaded up on trains--Holstein cattle trains. And we drove on those trains to Buchenwald for about ten days. Half of that transport died. But I remember one fact that finally we driving through Czechoslovakia in April they, they throwed us bread. Whatever they went to work in the morning, I mean, on overpass.
Mm-hm.
They throw whole lunch at me and at that time it was ??? actually hungry.
Yes.
And they throwed that their own lunches and bread. Unfortunate you couldn't get too much because there were so many of un... those hungry prisoners.
Yeah.
??? whatever fell in the car, that by the time we got a crumb... I mean, fell in the car, it was actually crumbled to pieces, so nobody could uh, benefit from it. And like I say, ??? was dead people when came finally to Buchenwald. And at Buchenwald, I was there about from end of January 'til the end of March and this is when the Allies, the Americans, pulls into Weimar. That was not far from Weimar. And then they put us on trains supposedly to go to another camp. On the way, that train was bombed completely.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn