Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Saul Raimi - July 7, 1982

In Buchenwald was terrible conditions because the roads actually wherever those Allies closed in, it was--a road went to uh, Buchenwald. That camp was overcrowded, too tiny ??? which was for--so you can imagine what's typhus, people were just dying from, from that filth and from, from, from lack of room. We were just sleeping in bunks, like herring pushed together. It uh, it was--actually it was normal for, for so many prisoners because they were from hundreds of camp. They would bring 'em in. Wherever the uh, English or the French or the Russian fought, they brought them into uh, Buchenwald.

Mm-hm.

And then finally then the uh, the American close in on Buchenwald and they start to evacuate Buchen... Buchenwald. And like I say, we were up there I don't know how many weeks--I can't remember all the details--we were sent to Flossenburg. Flossenburg was a terrible camp. I was only there a few weeks. For us it was like an internment camp. Also we were on the run actually. Wherever the Allies closed in from all sides you know, they actually--they were, they were actually running with us. They were no--actually uh, instructed for them what to do. They did it on the road, you know, the SS. And like I said the final stages a few weeks before we were liberated that walking and that--with those ??? and the minute you stopped for, for a second, you couldn't walk, right away they'll--the roads were littered with dead people. And, and...

They would just let you lie or they would shoot you?

No, the minute you lie down, you stop, stop walking, then a bullet--they shoot you right away. The roads were just--tons upon tons were laying on the road like uh, shot and uh, it's hard to ??? that the Germans being so clean and so disciplined how they could let those cor... corpses rot. Of course, later on I imagine the local population or whoever did it, they cleaned 'em up. But the minute you stopped, you went from the group you couldn't walk, they shot you right away.