Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Berek Rothenberg - May 20, 1984

And we--they sent us to the bath house and we took--they give us a good hair cut and they give us a good hot bath and they give us civilian clothes and they put us in a new camp with brand new baths, with blankets, with, with--that was a life saver. And we stay--over there we didn't work. And they give us the food and we stayed over there about, about three weeks. And then they took off the German guard and then Czech guard came. And then I heard something the war comes to an end, and then they were running around. They said, "Everybody have to stay inside. You can't, you can't go out," and something. And outside was fighting--they already was fist fighting. The Germans with the, with the--and I think the Polish army came in over there. The Polish army and the Russian. And they liberated us. May the 8th. Two days ago, Tuesday. May the 8th in 1945 I got liberated. Then the Russian when they came in, they didn't--they were against camp. They don't want to make no camps. So right away they want to--he says, "You want to eat? Go in the kitchen, peel potatoes, you know, go in the bakery, bake bread." And then they brought in Germans--prisoners what they captured. They cleaned the toilets and everything. They--the--for us, they wanted to, to work in the kitchen or work in the bakery. So then they said, "Are you from Poland?" They send you back to Poland. "Are you from Hungary?" Send you back to Hungary. "Are you from Romania?" They send you back to Romania. Yugoslavia. They want--they didn't want no camps, they want to send us away. Then I was thinking to myself, "Why do I have to go to Poland? Who I got in Poland? I got nobody." So I tried to get out from the camp and I got out from the camp and I went to Prague. And from Prague--I stayed in Prague and was the Red Cross. And trucks came every day--the Russian trucks and they picked us up by the line where we standing in for food, and they still took us to the railroad station and they want to ship us back. And then from Prague I run away to Pilsen.