Eva Wimmer - January 1, 1985
Liberation
When I came first to Sweden. Well, maybe I went a little bit past to it because I didn't describe how we came to Sweden. I will go back. We were sitting in, in this position for--this was going on for one week. For one week, we were sitting over there. And this was going on with the food back and forth and, and not sleeping hardly ever and we thought it's coming towards an end. Finally, it was--I think it was the eighth day they said we are going, we--this was in April of 1945 we are going to be liberated. The Swedish Red Cross is coming to get us with busses and take us over to Sweden. We could not believe. We thought this is a made-up story because we were scared they will ship us to wherever to the chamber, gas chamber, because uh, this place, uh, Ravensbrück had gas chambers just as well as Auschwitz. And we, we said, "Oh my God, this is unbelievable. They are going to take us now with the busses and ship us somewhere." But, we had no choice. Still, every, every uh, the blue uniform what we had, had a white tag with a number. Everybody had a number. We were never called by our names. My number was 172. I was always called 172 and I wish they would allow us to keep those uniforms, you know, to, to have it as, as, as, in a, in a--you know, I'm sure that they would need it now for this the place. I'm sure some people had something left, but, unfortunately, we didn't. We had to leave everything behind. So, we walked out. They told us to go out from this barrack. All of us in one place. And this was in Ravensbrück. And a little further down, we saw busses. I think it was twenty-six busses. Big, nice, beautiful busses. Uh, there were nurses and there were soldiers, German--I mean Swedish soldiers with uniforms who, the driver was a soldier and a few others uh, in taking care of us. Well, they put in as many in the busses as uh, they had seats for. We were sitting normal, like normal people for a change. We couldn't believe it. Here with those filthy uniforms. Our hair was already growing back a little bit because it was a year. We were almost a year in Auschwitz. So, we look a little half decent. Of course, very thin, run down uh, I was--I don't remember how many pounds underweight and so many of us were very, very sick, but we made it to, to, to--we came first to Denmark. They took us and on the busses they talked to us in German because we couldn't speak Swedish so the...whether the Swedish people they sent for us they could speak German. And they explained that the Swedish Red Cross, which is Folke Bernadotte, who lost his life, unfortunately, in, in Israel, he was the one uh, who took us over to Sweden. We were on the busses. We got some food. They were very careful. They didn't gave us food which they knew which was uh, now our bodies wouldn't be able--our stomachs wouldn't stomach this because they knew that we didn't have those foods. So uh, they gave us little things like crackers. Things like this delicate food. And we couldn't believe. We, we, we said we were sitting and my sisters and I said no. This is not, this is not possible they are taking us, God knows, they just want eh, you know like cheat us and, and here you have something good and over there they, they will kill us. And we were very frightened, very scared, but we made it with the trip to Denmark with the busses. In Denmark, we arrived. They were waiting for us. The schools were out at the time so what they did--our transfer was the 500 girls. There were many, many other transfers from different barracks from Ravensbrück. So, what they did, they, they empty out universities and public schools, junior high schools in Denmark and they make place for us, until they transferred us to Sweden. So, they treated us very, I must say, decent. For a change, we saw yes, it's a miracle. We are here in a free country. We are alive.
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