Tag #137927 - Interview #78465 (Egon Lovith)

Dachau was an awful place and they had a crematorium as well. In those awful circumstances in the dirt, because of unhealed wounds, I got typhus but I didn’t tell anybody. I didn’t want to reveal my sickness because no one knew what happened to sick people. It was a horrible seven-kilometer march to the work site, in the snow, in wooden-soled shoes, and being worn out. We had to walk 7 km back to the camp again in the dark. If the snow caught somebody’s wooden soled shoes he twisted his ankle and fell down to the ground screaming. The next thing we heard was the firing of bullets; the person was shot down. We didn’t even have time to see who it was because the guards were driving us on, ‘Los! Los!’ I was trying to walk as fast as I could because whoever got behind had something bad happen to him. I was a fit guy and marched at a good pace but I was getting so dizzy from my illness that I bumped into the first officer guard. This was a tragic mistake because he turned around right away and hit my mouth with the butt of his gun so that all my teeth fell out. Since then I have dentures. I felt something salty and warm in my mouth and I thought I was going to pass out. Later I found out that this officer was a Dutch fascist who had joined the SS.