Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Saul Raimi - July 7, 1982

And ??? we find our way to another camp called Flossenburg. That was a death camp that was undescribable what was going on there. I mean, to tell all the details from the day--actually, every day was a story, I guess a death story by itself. It's hard to, to--I could sit with you for hours, I wouldn't be able to tell you the sufferings which we went through every minute of the day. And how, and how one survived this, it's really a miracle that anyone could survive. But the worse part came when the Americans closed in on Flossenburg. It was in Bavaria. That was when they send out transports and walking. We have to walk day and night for weeks without any food. If you survive that, you could live. And finally on April 23rd in the morning, I was liberated by the Americans. I, at that time, I was in an American hospital for quite a few weeks. They told me that my weight was eighty-one pounds. At that time I was nineteen years old. Anyways, when I--no, I was twenty-one years old.

What, what were the conditions like at uh, Flossenburg?

Flossenburg was a camp. In Flossenburg you actually walked around and the smell of death because that uh, crematorium where they burned the bodies. It was right in the camp. It was just horrible but after a while, you, you got uh, used to it or--relations were here like in every, in every ??? like place of death. And people were just dying like flies. And you had to go out and work in a ???. That was in a uh, uh, in a uh, like a--where we, we chopped actually uh, uh, fall out of uh, uh, rock, rocks.

Mm-hm.

And we had to grease this pit. We had a pit for the--and they were standing with dogs and the guards with dogs. And constantly had to go on the move. You ???. People were just dying, dying like flies, like flies every day. Just terrible.

And, and you were on the work detail with the rock?

Right.