Tag #150300 - Interview #78249 (Galpert Ernő)

The Soviet troops came to Austria in late March 1945. I had typhoid and was delirious. There were two-tier plank beds in our barrack. I was on the lower tier. On my last working day we were digging a trench and the Germans were training young boys to shoot nearby. I remember an officer yelling, 'The Russians will be here soon. Just pull yourselves together!' We could hear the cannonade already. I lost track of what was going on around me or how long I was delirious. I remember when my cousin Aron sat on my plank bed and said that the camp was to be evacuated and that we had to escape since they were going to burn down the camp. I was in no condition to walk. I told him to leave me and move on when we heard someone shouting, 'The Russians are here!' These words sort of eliminated any signs of disease from me. The six of us crossed the front line. There were bullets whistling around. We were afraid of being killed by a German or Soviet bullet. Finally we bumped into Soviet communications operators that were laying a telephone cable. They were trying to show us to lie down using gestures, but we kept walking. One of us was wounded on his hand. We covered 16 kilometers. Now, recalling this time, I cannot imagine how we managed to get to Szombathely in Hungary [about 20 km from the Austrian border]. This town was liberated from the fascists.