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We walked from morning till night. One day American planes flew by. We came to Mauthausen concentration camp. We stayed there few days. The Soviet army was advancing on one side and American troops were coming from the other. Groups of 500 people began to be taken to Gunskirchen concentration camp. It was in the woods. There 6 or 7 barracks for 800 hundred inmates, but they forced about 1500 of us in them. It’s hard to imagine now how two of us fit on plank beds for one. I made friends with a guy from Mukachevo and another one from Budapest. We were the same age. We were in the same barrack and tried to stick together. Once a day we were given some junk food consisting of some slop water and rotten beetroots. Sometimes there was a piece of cabbage. We were given one loaf of bread for ten of us for a day. I don’t know whether there was flour in this bread, but there was sawdust for sure. It didn’t cut, but crumbled. We were allowed to leave barracks at certain time. There were containers with water outside. It was dangerous to drink this water: almost all who dank it fell ill with enteric fever.
There was a toilet for 10-15 people, but all inmates of a barrack were taken to the toilet at the same time. It even happened that some inmates dirtied their clothes failing to wait until it was their turn. It was not allowed to step aside or leave barracks at unscheduled time. The camp was surrounded with towers with guards with weapons on them. They started shooting if they saw an inmate coming out of a barrack at the wrong time. This was not all: there were also patrol dogs in the camp running across the camp watching that inmates didn’t leave their barracks. 5-6 attacked a person like wolves pushing him down. We were so weak that we couldn’t fight back, but I don’t think that even a healthy man would be able to do something. Through the windows we saw dogs tearing people apart. It was scary. They dropped corpses into a swamp near the camp. If somebody died inside a barrack we pushed a corps out through the window and then they took it away from the yard. It’s hard to say how many corpses there were in this swamp. Maybe more than water.
There was a toilet for 10-15 people, but all inmates of a barrack were taken to the toilet at the same time. It even happened that some inmates dirtied their clothes failing to wait until it was their turn. It was not allowed to step aside or leave barracks at unscheduled time. The camp was surrounded with towers with guards with weapons on them. They started shooting if they saw an inmate coming out of a barrack at the wrong time. This was not all: there were also patrol dogs in the camp running across the camp watching that inmates didn’t leave their barracks. 5-6 attacked a person like wolves pushing him down. We were so weak that we couldn’t fight back, but I don’t think that even a healthy man would be able to do something. Through the windows we saw dogs tearing people apart. It was scary. They dropped corpses into a swamp near the camp. If somebody died inside a barrack we pushed a corps out through the window and then they took it away from the yard. It’s hard to say how many corpses there were in this swamp. Maybe more than water.
Period
Location
Austria
Interview
Ladislav Roth Biography