Larry Wayne - 2005
Death march and escape
Let me take you back for a second. You said, first on a death march there were, people would drop dead and they would shoot them. Right?
Oh yes, yes to make sure that they are dead because if you get somebody and they just fall down and then try to run away.
So did they bury people as well?
No, they just left them where it was. It was win...middle of the winter. January 17, 18, 19, all these days, you know, middle of the winter, cold winters in Poland, Germany. Me and my brother Jack, you know, over the night we stopped in a, in some kind of deserted place and, and we were cuddled up like lovers to keep some warmth between us.
And did you talk about what was--to your--to each other about why this was going on...
No, no.
...at any point?
No, we just kept thinking of surviving, that's all. No, none whatsoever, any types of why, what and when or what should we do. Oh, we think of escaping a few times.
Did you?
My brother did at a later time in Germany, got shot in his knee.
He got shot, yeah. But it, that was before the liberation, just before.
Right.
Right.
Oh, he got shot in his face, I got shot in the knee.
So each of you were shot escaping?
Yeah, he got shot to his face and I tried to escape and they were, shot in the knee. But I wasn't able. They took me right back to the camp. I was lucky I did survive.
So you were able to split up at this point.
Yeah, from Flossenburg, I said, like uh, the last uh, I would say like a month and a half maybe we were split up. I was different places, he was different places.
Was it really awful to finally be separated from everybody in your family?
You know, the truth you, you, you just didn't know what it means. Nothing. Not really. You gathered support from each other, but, you know, it, it was so bad that it really, uh... When you get hit on the head and the feeling you get another hit on the head you don't even know what happens. It doesn't matter, that's how it was.
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