Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Ruth Muschkies Webber - February 2, 1987

When were you liberated?

I was liberated by the Russians in 1945, I think it was January the 27th, the exact date. The Russians came in after being about ten days or two weeks without the Germans. The Germans were the last selection the people that were able to leave were the last march left and we were supposed to be killed. But the Russians advanced a little bit too fast and the Germans wanted to save their own lives...ran away and left us behind.

Your father told you you would be killed then?

Right. But naturally he did not know that the people that stayed survived because the Germans had to run away to save themselves. Now during that time, I think a day or two after the Germans returned after leaving us they returned and they drove into the camp and they started screaming "raus, raus!" to everybody and whoever managed to run out during that time they indiscriminately shot. So there were some killed. But then they continued and escaped. I guess it was like a group of Germans that felt that they hadn't done their, hadn't completed their job and they returned to finish it so they went around the camp and then they left. I didn't manage to make it out at that time and I survived. So the Russians came in and we were very happy to see them.

You were still in the children's block?

We, all the survivors, the children and the elderly people that survived transferred over to one barrack in the beginning of the block where the elite of the prisoners lived, because it was a warmer block. It was in the winter, it was very cold and we were all together in that block. The people from that camp, oh no, the Russians were across the street in a barrack and there is where I saw the infants that were born in Auschwitz towards the end.

So the Russians got all the children together and filmed and photographed you?

Yes. Yeah, this is well they took a lot of pictures and they took a lot of photographs. This is one of the pictures that they took and some of my friends and myself, I'm right over here...got in on the pictures. I guess...

You're in the back row?

Yeah, I'm in the back row. Just part of my face shows. It was an incline. It's not that I was that tall, so it seemed that I was that tall but I really wasn't.