This is my identification document from the labor camp Gorlitz.
In July 1944 they sent us to Christianstadt [now Krzystkowice in western Poland]; this belonged to Gross Rosen. There were several workplaces in Christianstadt and I was allotted to the forest commando.
We went to a forest where we knocked down trees and pulled out the stumps. When we left it, there were roads there. They didn't have an asphalt covering - that wasn't finished - but they were graveled.
After that, we worked in a munitions factory and in a sandpit, where we loaded sand onto trucks. That was terrible drudgery.
In February 1945 our camp received transports from eastern areas that had been liquidated. When I saw the state those girls were in, I persuaded a friend to run away with me.
Another girl joined us, so we managed to escape from the death march the third day of marching while we stopped on a road surrounded by woods.
On the way we claimed to be from the Sudetenland and that we were escaping from a Czech camp. But in three days we were informed on by a farmer and they came for us because I was having hallucinations, as I had a high fever, probably dysentery, and, in my delirium, I was speaking Czech.
Well, in short, they caught us and took us to the Niesky camp, which was a camp for Aryan men only. We were there for about three days and were then taken to labor camp Gorlitz.
The last day of the war we felt something in the air. The camp was in a big mess, everything was over but in fact wasn't because the fascists were still there.
At a roll call we had there at the end of World War II, the Lagerfuhrer [camp commander] offered to take us to the Americans. They wanted to go to the Americans themselves so they would get better treatment.
He horrified us by telling us everything that the Russians would do to us. We were afraid to stay in the camp, because it was said that the Germans would place mines in it and set it on fire, so we left with them.
There were twelve of us, with horse and cart to carry their provisions, and we escaped with them. The cart was full of margarine, marmalade and bread. We met the Red Army only on our way to Prague.
