Aaron Salzburg - July 24, 1984
Conclusion
By the...
By the, by the, by the English. The English were already there. A young Hungarian--two brothers were shot. Also a German airplane, a light airplane, came from nowhere out from the forest. That's the only thing they had more than likely. And uh, they start to shoot with a machine gun and they killed a, a young Jewish fella through a window--he was sitting by the window, and he was killed. A lot of our people died. Then, then the English came in and start to feed us with food, which was not uh, uh, very good for us--it was too much fat, and all that thing. People were dying like flies. Dying like flies. I myself was sick, and uh, before you know it, the uh, we opened a nice little uh, Revier--what it's called a makeshift, uh, hospital, and uh, I walked in that hospital. Sure enough I recognized a fella--tall fella. Maybe six foot--over six foot tall. We were sitting--we were in the same block, and he was a doctor--a Jewish doctor. I shared him a piece of that uh, beet, sugar beet a few days before. I couldn't believe it. Some French doctors, and even a Jewish doctor.
How would you um, characterize the treatment of your liberators, the British?
The British? [pause] I uh, I hadn't see anything wrong with them. Uh, I think uh, I think they were nice people. I'd seen some individuals uh, which uh, call us once in a while a mean name. Uh, lining up in the front of a German store--a bakery to get bread, because uh, after two or three weeks they took us to Celle, and over there we were free people--we could go out to the city, but they didn't like us to move around with the Germans. Uh, we were dressed differently uh, maybe diseased--I, I don't know what it was. And besides, they might have like the Germans better than they liked us. Uh, so once in a while you got in a line among the Germans to buy some bread, or get a bread, or piece of bread or whatever and uh, they would kick us out and I heard the uh, people were uh, much better treated in the American zone, but I don't know anything about American zone. I know that uh, when they came in, in Celle and uh, and uh, we registered, registered the sick people to go to, to Sweden and uh, they treated us very nice. Uh, I was up on the blocks--higher, way up on uh, the maybe the uh, forty-fifth floor. And uh, they would assign me as a lame--not walking--patient. And they would make these German officers, German officers to carry us up--way up there--all the way up to uh, to the Red Cross uh, automobiles, so um, ambulances. Uh, this much as I know about the English. Uh, I understand that when they came in and they have seen these heaps of skeletons, that a lot of them cried. This is what I was told, at least.
Were, were you um, in the hospital with typhus?
No, I, I as I uh, I recorded, I was struck with typhus in Sandomierz, and got it over, without any help. Five of us got it over. One--I and another survived. Three survived. Two had to go away to the gas chambers from Sandomierz after they survived the typhus.
Um, uh, what happened uh, after you were liberated? You went to Sweden?
[interview ends]
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