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In January we were evacuated and we left our base in Gliwice. We were taken one evening, it was already dark. I don't know what time it can have been. Perhaps 5pm. Then we walked all night and all day. On the way we met a whole huge column from Auschwitz-Birkenau. That was that death march. I don't know exactly where we joined up with them. We walked in columns. The Auschwitz camp as such was liquidated sometime around 18 January [evacuation of the prisoners went on from 17-21 January 1945]. I don't know how many people were on the march then. An innumerable number [at least 14,000 prisoners were marched along that route]. I remember that I got diarrhea on the way too. But anyone who broke ranks - a bullet in the head. Terrible, that was. I don't know how I survived it.
We had provisions from our former camp in Gliwice, jam and bread, so on the way we could eat that. But the things that went on on the way, it's obvious. Diarrhea, because the people from Auschwitz were incredibly hungry, and before they set off on the march they had been issued with food. And they'd been walking from Auschwitz, I don't know how many days [they walked along the route Auschwitz - Tychy - Mikolow - Gliwice, approx. 55 km]. I don't remember how long we were walking, but more than 24 hours, I think, and we reached somewhere near Kedzierzyn at night, the Blechhammer camp in the Silesian sheet metal works in Slawecice [approx. 25 km from Gliwice].
They were to pick up the next huge camp from there. We stopped in this one shed, on the fringes of that camp. One night I think we slept on bunks. In the watchtowers there were guards, I remember that still, as if it were yesterday - they were Romanians and I think Latvians, at least that's what all the prisoners round about were saying. A special international brigade of the SS was guarding us. I didn't see any Germans there.
The next day the guards suddenly started shooting at us into the shed from the watchtowers. I was lying on the middle bunk, and up top was Mandel, a friend from the camp in Gliwice. Kiwi Mandel, that's what they nicknamed him. And that Mandel was wounded in the leg. I don't know why they were shooting. There was general pandemonium. We were afraid to go out of the shed, but sometime later that same day we noticed that they had stopped guarding us - they had left the watchtower and fled, evidently, because we couldn't see anybody there.
We had provisions from our former camp in Gliwice, jam and bread, so on the way we could eat that. But the things that went on on the way, it's obvious. Diarrhea, because the people from Auschwitz were incredibly hungry, and before they set off on the march they had been issued with food. And they'd been walking from Auschwitz, I don't know how many days [they walked along the route Auschwitz - Tychy - Mikolow - Gliwice, approx. 55 km]. I don't remember how long we were walking, but more than 24 hours, I think, and we reached somewhere near Kedzierzyn at night, the Blechhammer camp in the Silesian sheet metal works in Slawecice [approx. 25 km from Gliwice].
They were to pick up the next huge camp from there. We stopped in this one shed, on the fringes of that camp. One night I think we slept on bunks. In the watchtowers there were guards, I remember that still, as if it were yesterday - they were Romanians and I think Latvians, at least that's what all the prisoners round about were saying. A special international brigade of the SS was guarding us. I didn't see any Germans there.
The next day the guards suddenly started shooting at us into the shed from the watchtowers. I was lying on the middle bunk, and up top was Mandel, a friend from the camp in Gliwice. Kiwi Mandel, that's what they nicknamed him. And that Mandel was wounded in the leg. I don't know why they were shooting. There was general pandemonium. We were afraid to go out of the shed, but sometime later that same day we noticed that they had stopped guarding us - they had left the watchtower and fled, evidently, because we couldn't see anybody there.
Period
Interview
Leon Glazer
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