Selected text
In January 1945 Soviet and American troops began to advance. The front line was approaching Auschwitz. We were formed in columns and marched to Mauthausen under convoy having weapons. We were not given any food or water on the way. About 5 thousand people left Katovice, but less than a thousand reached Mauthausen. Many died of hunger. The convoy was shooting those who were too weak to go. They shot them in the head and pushed corpses aside the road. There was a crew walking behind us. They buried the corpses, but later they stopped doing this. It was already cold. It was January. We were in our camp robes, and our convoy allowed us to wrap our blankets around our shoulders. We slept on the ground or sometimes they took us to abandoned stables or sheds. People happened to freeze to death at night.
We didn’t work in Mauthausen. Occasionally guards chose few inmates to clean up the territory, but we didn’t go to work systematically. We were provided one meal per day: it was some kind of soup with half-rotten beetroots. There was no bread. We spent almost all time lying on our plank beds. There was no heating in barracks. There were many barracks. There were English prisoners-of-war in one barrack. They were treated a little better. Once per month they were allowed to receive food parcels and they got better meals than we were. In our barracks inmates died of diseases and emaciation every day. We understood that the front line was coming nearer and that the end of war was close. There were rumors in the camp that Germans were going to exterminate all inmates before leaving the camp. We didn’t consider escape. There were guards on towers who shot inmates even when they came out of their barracks at a wrong time. There were patrol dogs running across the camp. They jumped on inmates, bringing them down and tore them to pieces. We were too weak to walk away and we understood it well. We were lying on plank beds shivering from cold. We were weak and knew that death was unavoidable; one way or another we were going to die either from hunger or the guards would kill us. It lasted until 8 May 1945. On this day US troops entered the camp. This was our liberation day.
We didn’t work in Mauthausen. Occasionally guards chose few inmates to clean up the territory, but we didn’t go to work systematically. We were provided one meal per day: it was some kind of soup with half-rotten beetroots. There was no bread. We spent almost all time lying on our plank beds. There was no heating in barracks. There were many barracks. There were English prisoners-of-war in one barrack. They were treated a little better. Once per month they were allowed to receive food parcels and they got better meals than we were. In our barracks inmates died of diseases and emaciation every day. We understood that the front line was coming nearer and that the end of war was close. There were rumors in the camp that Germans were going to exterminate all inmates before leaving the camp. We didn’t consider escape. There were guards on towers who shot inmates even when they came out of their barracks at a wrong time. There were patrol dogs running across the camp. They jumped on inmates, bringing them down and tore them to pieces. We were too weak to walk away and we understood it well. We were lying on plank beds shivering from cold. We were weak and knew that death was unavoidable; one way or another we were going to die either from hunger or the guards would kill us. It lasted until 8 May 1945. On this day US troops entered the camp. This was our liberation day.
Period
Location
Austria
Interview
Tibor Gohman