Miriam Troostwyk - May 28, 1998 and June 3, 1999
End of the War
At this point, had you heard of any of the names of the camps yet?
No.
We're now in...
No.
1945. Nothing?
No.
Nothing had...
No.
filtered out.
No.
Um...
I knew there were camps, maybe Theresienstadt, maybe they knew that.
Uh-huh. The Red Cross camp.
Yeah.
That was known as the...
But I don't think uh, the other camp, Dach...uh, Dachausen--Sachsenhausen...
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
We knew that names from Germany...
???
because I had cousins who went from Germany in that and uncle who went in there. But they came out and they had the opportunity to go via England to the States...
19...
in the war.
During the war?
Because it was in the beginning, in ...40--1940 or 1939.
All right. So you were--you're tracking the progression of Canadian troops and British troops and Russian troops and...
Well, we--I didn't see the, the Russians.
But what I mean, in the map, you had all...
Yes.
these pins on the map.
Yes, that was only Russia. From Poland...
Oh, I see, see. I...
and they went up to Russia, the battle in Russia.
Now, so when did you have it--a--an, an inkling, a hint that um, that the British were finally coming?
The British were not coming.
Who came?
The Canadians did.
The Canadians, I'm sorry. I...
Well, the Canadians came a week before the liberation, let's say, the tenth of April.
Uh-huh.
The Americans were in Nijmegen in 1944.
Uh-huh.
Maastricht uh, in the south, was liberated by the Americans. The Americans went ...til Nijmegen uh, but they couldn't come over the Rhine. And I think there was a discussion uh, be--between Eisenhower and Montgomery. And that was with the Bridge Too Far. There was a Bridge Too Far in uh, near Arnhem. And...
And then came Mad--Mad Tuesday, is the name of it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dolle Dinsdag.
Uh-huh.
And that was when we went out, uh, everybody was there. And at night, then we went back. And that was the, the disagreement, what Montgomery had with um, Eisenhower. So Nijmegen was only fifteen kilometers--I think it is eleven kilometers from Arnhem.
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