The Girls Of Room 28_ Friendship, Hope, And Survival In Theresienstadt Part 8

Liberation.

November 8, 1944 (from Otto Pollak's diary) (from Otto Pollak's diary)On awakening, the first snow. Meet with Marianne Deutsch, Helga's friend from Room 28. She tells how she got out of being transported. How her father intervened so that M. gave P. the order to switch papers. In fifteen minutes she was off the list.November 19, 1944Four weeks ago today Helga entered the sluice. Quarter after nine, last goodbye from my child.November 20, 1944Forty-nine Dutch arrive, nothing but rags and neglect. Most don't know their own names or where they have come from.November 22, 1944Spent a bad night, constantly thinking of my child. Does she have all her things? Is she perhaps freezing? This morning at six, as a kind of symbol, a young black and white kitten came running into the room; wouldn't leave my side.

In mid-November 1944, the commandant ordered that urns with ashes of those who had died be disposed of. The task was a.s.signed to a group of about twenty children, among them Ela Stein and thirteen-year-old Horst Cohn from Berlin. As one of the boys who had hauled the wagon for corpses and bread through Theresienstadt, he was immune to death.

"Death didn't frighten us," he recalls, "and certainly the ashes of the dead didn't. We knew that there was a crematorium where the dead were incinerated, and that the ashes had been kept. We knew that each corpse was burned individually. It was pushed in at one end by a Jewish prisoner; the temperature was close to forty-five hundred degrees. Everything burned, even the bones. And at the other end stood another prisoner with an iron pole, who swept out the ashes, put them in a cardboard box, and closed it up. Next to him was someone who filled out the label: name, place of birth, date of birth, date of death."1 And now these children were to see those boxes, the urns of the dead of Theresienstadt, with their own eyes and feel them with their own hands-thirty thousand boxes, stacked on shelves that reached from floor to ceiling, all in strict alphabetical order.

"The moment I entered the columbarium," Horst says, "my eyes were drawn almost magnetically to the letter H H-my grandparents were named h.e.l.ler. And I walked over and in the very same moment I spotted two boxes side by side, at eye level. One read 'Gustav h.e.l.ler,' the other 'Ettel h.e.l.ler'-my grandpa and my grandma!"

Upon his arrival in Theresienstadt in May 1943, Horst had found his grandparents in the last stages of starvation. They had begged him for something to eat, and he had been unable to help them. A few days later they both died, on the same day, in separate hospital rooms. Their grandson had felt both shock and relief. "Because they were released now from the agony of starvation," he says. "It is one of the worst torments a human being can know." He continues: I grabbed both boxes, took Grandpa and Grandma under my arms, and kept them there while I loaded other boxes on the wagon outside. No one said a word. None of the other children had bothered with the names.Then the wagon started to move and I helped pull, but always with both boxes firmly under my arms. Then we came to the Eger, where we were ordered to open the boxes and empty the ashes into the river. We formed a chain and pa.s.sed the urns from hand to hand. But I was standing down at the river and emptied the ashes of my grandpa and grandma into the river with my own hands. I'm glad I did. I buried them with my own hands. And I watched as the ashes from all those boxes spread out into the river, watched the river carry them away. And the Eger flows into the Elbe, and the Elbe flows into the North Sea, and the North Sea merges with all the oceans of the world. And I know that Grandpa and Grandma circle the world forever and ever. They are there. They will always be there for me. In my mind, the spot where I emptied their ashes into the river is my grandparents' cemetery.

By the end of the war some thirty thousand Jewish prisoners had been incinerated in the crematory that stood in the Jewish cemetery.

Their ashes were kept in cardboard urns.

During the late autumn of 1944-it was already very cold-the Germans ordered some of their young prisoners to carry out another special job. Ela Stein was among them. "We were supposed to help them hunt. They gave us two sticks and chased us out into the cold water, where the animals were swimming-I think they were pheasants-and we had to drive them off. And when they flew away, the Germans shot them. It was Rahm and Haindl and a couple other SS men. I think they had visitors from Prague. We had to do this for a long time. There we stood in the ice-cold water. Some girls were very ill afterward."

Ela was lucky, because her mother, Marketa, did all she could to keep her healthy. Marketa was a thoroughly practical woman and was a.s.signed to all kinds of work. Now and then she managed to "organize" food of one sort or another-cautiously and at great risk. Sometimes she made pickles for the SS, sometimes she plucked geese for them. And when the sheep from Lidice-they had been brought to Theresienstadt after the ma.s.sacre in May 1942-were slaughtered in the winter of 1944, she helped butcher the meat and was able to smuggle a piece of it into her room. She preserved most of it in fat. " 'We'll keep that for the day our family and friends return. They'll need it,' my mother always said. And we began to save all sorts of things for that moment."

In the winter of 1944, Eva Landa and her mother arrived in Gutau, which was then a Polish village. Auschwitz and the concentration camps at Stutthof and Dorbeck, on the Vislinskij Zaliv River near Gdansk, were behind them. Their numbers had been reduced, and the work they were forced to do-digging tank trenches ten feet wide and twelve feet deep-was much too hard. For Eva, the worst part of the war years began now, in Gutau. She remembers: The first freeze came early that year, and it began to snow. We had no warm clothes, sometimes not even shoes. Wooden sheds were built, but we had to sleep on straw strewn over the bare ground. There was a stove in the middle of the shed, but we had nothing to heat it with. It was terribly cold. There was a brook not far from the sheds, where we could wash until it froze over. We were given no food until our work was finished-turnip soup and a piece of bread. Many of us came down with typhoid, diphtheria, and other diseases. We were plagued with lice, but had neither the strength nor the means to do anything about it. There was no light, and it got dark early.On November 22, 1944, my mother died of hunger, total exhaustion, and lice. My mother had fought so long for her own life and mine, but could hold on no longer. She was forty-five years old-I was thirteen at the time. By then I had almost no hope that I would survive.A week after my mother's death, we were told that those who had no shoes or who could no longer work could stay in the camp. I was barefoot and so I stayed in the camp. When the others had left the camp, the rest of us were counted. They chopped off a shock of our hair, so we wouldn't be mistaken for workers. Then we were led to the train station-or so they told us. We marched all day and all night. And I didn't have any shoes.Suddenly we were ordered to turn around, and we had to go back the same long, weary way. I don't know how long it took, because I hadn't seen a watch in years. Those who were still in the camp were very surprised to see us return. They thought we would be murdered. But we evidently did march to the train station, except there was no longer a train station, nor were there any trains. The Red Army was very close by. We could hear the thunder of their cannons.When I returned from this "excursion," I could no longer stand up. I couldn't support myself on my feet, which were black and festering. The camp physician wrote down my number and said that they would have to amputate my feet, that they would never heal. But there was no longer any chance of getting away from the place, since all the roads were closed because of the approaching front line.I had wonderful friends in the camp-Gita Torbe, Eva Pollak, Resi Schwarz. They helped me so much. Without them I wouldn't have survived it all.On January 20, 1945, we were given orders to get ready to march. This applied of course only to those who were able to walk. No one knew where they were headed. The Russians were close by. Anyone who could walk left the camp. I stayed behind, lying on the straw. And then the very worst part began.The SS men began "inoculating us for typhoid," so they said. In reality it was phenol that they were injecting. But they did it clumsily, or didn't have enough injections. At any rate I wasn't given one, and no one died of it.The very same evening they then ordered us to go to the camp cemetery, where trucks would be standing ready to transport the sick. I couldn't stand on my feet, so I stayed behind in the camp, lying all alone in deep straw.Meanwhile, my comrades had marched to the cemetery where the trucks were supposed to be waiting for them. But it was a lie, of course. There were no trucks. And on the way to the cemetery the SS men shot them all. They beat some of them to death with their rifle b.u.t.ts to save on bullets. The blows weren't always fatal. Despite everything, a few of them managed to survive.Meanwhile, I lay hidden in the straw. The Germans didn't find me. They were in too much of a hurry! That night, it was January 21, 1945, something incredible happened. The Germans simply ran away!The next morning the few survivors came back to the camp. Among them were my comrade Anita Fischer and her mother. They had spent the night lying on the road unconscious and had now come back to the camp. [Anita's name now is Anita Frankova, and she works at the Jewish Museum in Prague.] We had nothing to eat, and those who could still walk went into Gutau to beg for food. A lot of Poles helped them and even let them into their homes. But I only know what I was told, since I couldn't stand up, and I had to make do with what they brought me. The Lithuanian women, who had more energy, cooked potatoes on top of the stove and gave me the hot water. It tasted wonderful.The next day a Red Army soldier, maybe twenty years old, suddenly appeared in our shed. He greeted us, but we couldn't understand him. Then came a military doctor who treated my feet, which had turned completely black. After a few days we were quartered in the house of the mayor, who presumably had fled. The war wasn't over yet. But you could feel the end was near.Theresienstadt, December 23, 1944 (from Otto Pollak's diary) (from Otto Pollak's diary)The first Slovak-Hungarian transports have arrived. Four hundred people. Nine who had died on the way were carted away. As a Christmas present we are given three ounces of bacon, a white roll, a pound of potatoes, and a boullion cube. What might my poor child have gotten? It has been two months to the day since Helga left.December 24, 1944An Aryan transport with furniture and archives arrives from Hungary. Also members of the Hungarian government, or so it is said.December 31, 1944Nine o'clock in the morning. Meet with blue-eyed, blond Eva Winkler, Helga's friend, who I a.s.sumed was a mischling. mischling. Her father is a carpenter. Evidently that's why she wasn't included in the October transports Her father is a carpenter. Evidently that's why she wasn't included in the October transports.January 1, 1945Driving snow this morning. I'm constantly thinking about my child. In the afternoon Helga's friends Marianne Deutsch and Anna Flachova come by with their good wishes. It hurts more than it helps, because Helga isn't here.January 5, 1945Frieda's thirty-fifth birthday. How is she doing, I wonder? Does she think we're still alive? In her last Red Cross letter she wrote: Take care of little Helga until I'm able to see her again. If Frieda only knew that my only child was taken from me on October 23rd and that I no longer have any way to watch over my precious girl. I'm constantly plagued by my conscience asking whether I shouldn't have left with my child after all, whether I didn't betray Frieda's last words of advice by putting Helga in the care of her counselor. The head of Helga's home advised me not to go on the transport. R. Sticker and Dr. Altenstein told me that we wouldn't be able to stay together and our only time together would be on the trip itself and that my sacrifice would be in vain. All these objections wouldn't have kept me from joining my child on her journey into the unknown if I had both legs and could have carried my own baggage. I know what moral, psychological, and material support I provided for my child in Theresienstadt.

The transport of October 23, 1944, carried 1,707 prisoners away from Theresienstadt, among them Helga Pollak, Handa Pollak and her aunt Hanika, the counselor Ella Pollak, Eva Stern, Laura imko, Kamilla Rosenbaum, and Greta Hofmeister.

"None of us knows how long we were in Auschwitz," Helga Pollak says as she describes her experiences.

From the moment the train came to a halt beside the ramp, most of us were in shock. Had it been three days, or maybe six? At any rate, they were days without any food, any warmth, any blankets, any mattresses. We now lay jammed together on wooden bunks, six to a bunk that was made to hold four. No one paid any attention to us, and no one spoke to me.I walked around the barracks and wept. A kapo kapo asked me why I was crying, and I said, "I want to be with my mother." And the asked me why I was crying, and I said, "I want to be with my mother." And the kapo kapo, a woman, asked me where my mother was, and I replied, "In England." She was so surprised that she gave me half a head of cabbage and a packet of margarine. I shared it with the people on my bunk. We were given something to eat, but we had no dishes, no spoons and things of that sort. And so we had no way to hold our food, which was always soup.Once, at some role call or other, a band marched pa.s.sed us. They were playing music! I thought I must be in a madhouse, I've gone completely crazy. Another time the camp elder, Edith, a Slovakian woman, came in and asked us if we were hungry, and we all said we were. Then she asked who would help fetch a bucket of soup. There were several volunteers, and four in our group went with her. Eva Stern and her sister Doris were among them. They did not came back. Four other women brought the bucket back.Then Mengele came into our barracks, and we had to walk backward past him completely naked, with our hands raised. He selected several of us, either pregnant women or those who were too old or too thin. And then it was off to the baths again. And then we stood all day in rows of five and waited.When it got dark, we were rushed to a train. Many transports were processed there, and I was in a panic for fear I might lose my group. We walked past tables and someone handed us bread and sausage. Once we were in the dark, we all sat down on the floor. I ate my bread and sausage right away, because I told myself that this way no one could take it away from me, which is what had happened to the food I brought with me from Theresienstadt. It even happened with a couple of chocolate drops that I hadn't eaten because I wanted to bring them to my niece Lea. But they took all my things away the moment we arrived, and then, too, I never saw Lea in Auschwitz.Handa Pollak has never forgotten her arrival in Auschwitz, either.After the first selection that took place immediately on arrival, we were sent to the showers and what happened there came as a horrible shock. It was as if we were in some awful nightmare. We had to undress and were shaved. The moment the women were shaved bald I no longer recognized them-they were like a band of monkeys. What I saw weren't familiar human beings. I could somehow make out familiar voices, but couldn't attach them to faces I knew. I became hysterical. No one could calm me down. I began to do strange things. We were given a jacket, but to me it seemed like trousers. I wanted to slip into the sleeves as if they were trouser legs. And when that didn't work I grew more hysterical. I'm actually a very calm and composed person. But that night... It's a wonder that I didn't go mad.We were given a few pieces of clothing-a light dress, a pajama jacket, a pair of socks. But no underwear, and it was October. We were in Poland, and it was very cold. We grabbed shoes at random from a big pile, without any regard to size or whether they matched. The shoes I got were much too big. But that wasn't so bad. It was much worse if someone got shoes that were too small.Then we were taken to our block, with its three-tiered bunk beds. But whereas we had slept two to a bunk in Theresienstadt, here it was six, all under one blanket. Anyone who wanted to roll over had to ask the others first; it would have been impossible otherwise. That's how close we lay to one another.After a week there was another selection. We had to undress and march past an SS doctor, with our hands raised. I had no problem pa.s.sing, because I was tall for my age. But as Tella walked past him, she had to stand still. It was a frightening moment. We didn't know whether she would make it. He checked her over. Tella was very thin. He hesitated. Then he let her pa.s.s.We were taken to another camp, close to the Auschwitz train tracks. We were given underwear and a piece of bread. And then we were loaded onto trains again. They took us to Germany, to Oederan in Saxony, near Chemnitz. There we were brought to a factory. It was directly beside the tracks, which meant that trains could be easily loaded and unloaded. And there we got off.

In January 1945 the SS ordered ten wooden barracks to be built in Theresienstadt. Children were also put to work constructing them. Flaka had to break up the ground with a rake, but her gloves had so many holes that she froze terribly.

No one knew why these barracks were being built. All anyone knew was that the SS attached great importance to them, because they drove the prisoners to work at a feverish pace. Little Marta Frohlich pushed heavy carts of loamy soil up a narrow wooden ramp, sometimes under the watchful eye of Commandant Rahm, who stood nearby, legs astraddle. "I always trembled when I saw him. One time my cart upended, and everything fell out. I was horribly afraid." But her comrades quickly came over and helped her deal with the accident, and nothing happened.

In February 1945 more mysterious construction projects, closely guarded by the SS, were begun. Sealed storerooms were to be built in the casemates of the fortress, and next to them, in a section of the ramparts, a "duck pond" was to be created. At least that's what they were told. But the engineers managing these projects soon became convinced that they were for something quite different: a deadly trap into which the SS would drive the prisoners the moment the planned liquidation of the ghetto had arrived. There was talk of gas chambers; ever since the arrival of the Slovak-Hungarian transport on December 23, 1944, everyone in the ghetto knew what awful things had been happening elsewhere. And so the prisoners began to sabotage the construction work. But these efforts were of little consequence because of new developments, of which the prisoners were becoming increasingly aware.

Aware of their imminent defeat, the Germans were growing uneasy, and they were divided about how the remaining prisoners at Theresienstadt should be handled: Kill them all and liquidate the ghetto? Or create alibis and hide the evidence?

"One day I saw smoke somewhere and I went to find its source," Horst Cohn recalls. "And then I saw six SS men burning filed papers out in an open field. One of them turned around and saw me. And all six of them instantly pulled out their pistols and fired at me. I ran away as fast as I could, at the speed of lightning, but in a zigzag, hitting the ground again and again, like the way the rabbit gets away from the fox in the story. Then I reached a house and hid. I've always said that the Brothers Grimm saved my life."

In early February 1945 there suddenly came word that a transport with twelve hundred prisoners was to be sent to Switzerland. "Are they crazy?" Ela can clearly remember even today how outraged her mother was. "They can't believe we're going to fall for that! That a transport is actually going to Switzerland! After all that has happened! After so many people were forced to leave and not one of them has ever returned!" Ela and her mother did not volunteer for that transport.

Among those who were put on the list for this transport were Eva Winkler and her family-but not because her parents were anxious to get on it. Karl Rahm had personally added their names. Up to the last moment the Winklers doubted that this transport was really going to Switzerland and fearfully awaited their departure. "But when we saw that we were traveling on a real pa.s.senger train and not in those cattle cars," Eva says, "we gathered fresh hope that it might perhaps be true."

This time they were not disappointed. The train was bound for Switzerland and brought its pa.s.sengers, among them Horst Cohn and his parents, safely over the border. Postcards that arrived in Theresienstadt a few days later confirmed the incredible news for those left behind. Was their long-awaited liberation actually close at hand?

The drone of airplanes, which could be heard ever more frequently now, bolstered their hopes. As did the s.h.i.+ny silver strips, more and more of which rained down on the ghetto-they came from Allied planes dropping strips of tinfoil to avoid being picked up on German radar screens. The residents of the ghetto took notice. Two of these tinfoil strips can be found in Vera Nath's alb.u.m, along with the words "Forbidden to pick these up."

When Adolf Eichmann showed up yet again in Theresienstadt on March 5, 1945, he ordered a new "beautification." The cemetery was to be tidied up and decorated with little gravestones; the prisoners' quarters were to be whitewashed, the kitchens cleaned, the coffeehouse, the stages, and the house of wors.h.i.+p all reopened. What was the point? Did this herald the end of the war? All signs pointed in that direction.

In mid-April, Theresienstadt was treated to yet another big surprise. The Danes were told to get ready to go home. The news spread like wildfire. And on Friday, April 13, 1945, between eight and ten in the evening, several white Red Cross buses drove up, all of them fitted out luxuriously. The Swedes escorting these buses even distributed food, cigarettes, and sweets among the other prisoners and made no attempt to hide their disdain for the n.a.z.is. Paul Rabinowitsch, the trumpeter from Brundibar Brundibar, climbed aboard one of the buses along with his mother and stepfather, as did 412 other Danes. He couldn't believe his good fortune. "Those left behind stood there waving and weeping," he would write decades later. "They had felt somehow safe as long as the Danes were there. But what would become of them once the Danes were gone?"2 Those left behind did not know what their liberation would be like. But their belief that it was going to happen very soon grew stronger with every day-as did the bonds of friends.h.i.+ps among the four remaining girls of Room 28: Ela, Flaka, Marta, and Marianne.

As she watched the Danes depart, Ela recalled a song that she most likely heard in the early days of her confinement in the ghetto, when she was still in the Hamburg Barracks. She remembers it to this day, and mentions it in commemoration whenever she gives a talk about Theresienstadt. Ilse Weber, a poet and children's book author who had been deported to Theresienstadt in 1942 and who died in Auschwitz in 1944, would sing it as she played the music on a guitar.

You and I, what friends we are You and I, how close we are Theresienstadt is where we met And there shook hands You and I what friends we are Something we'll not forget.

You and I, what friends we are You and I, how close we are One day the gate will open wide The night will pa.s.s, the sun will rise You and I, what friends we are Our friends.h.i.+p will abide.3 Judith Schwarzbart arrived in Auschwitz on October 28, 1944, along with her parents, Julius and Charlotte Schwarzbart, and her sister, Ester. At the first selection upon their arrival, she saw her father for the last time. A few days later, she was loaded onto a work transport together with her mother and sister and two thousand others. The trip lasted two to three days, and then they arrived at Kurzbach, a small town in southwestern Poland, north of Wroclaw. "There we had to dig trenches to stop tanks," she recalls.

These were deep ditches, and it was very cold, and all we had on were summer dresses. Somehow we managed it in November, but then it turned so cold that the ground froze. It was terribly hard to get a shovel into it-we had already dug very deep holes. It got colder and colder. We were given some sort of coats. Most were old rags, too long for some, too short for others, and wooden slippers.We were housed in wooden barns, a thousand women to a barn. We had only a light blanket-and it was the middle of the winter! When our shoes got wet, they stayed wet, and we had to work with wet feet. When it began to snow they sent us into the forest, where we had to drag whole trees to the trenches in order to camouflage them. I don't think they were ever used, because it was already too late. There was an SS man there, a s.a.d.i.s.t. The women knew that I was fourteen, and so they always sent me into the middle, where the work wasn't as hard. But the SS man kept calling me out and putting me up front, where it was hardest. The dragging left me with a bad back that I still have today.I don't remember what they gave us to eat; it certainly wasn't much. I think there was no breakfast all, and a watery soup in the evening-after working ten hours in the freezing cold. One evening I slipped out into the fields and hid some corn in my blouse-I was lucky no one caught me. I was always hungry. And once as we were marching along a street four abreast, I saw a door open and someone threw us something. I picked it up-it was a piece of bread, and we shared it. You simply can't imagine what that piece of bread meant to us!One day we suddenly heard detonations and shots nearby. We hoped the front line was getting closer and that we would soon be liberated. But we were wrong. It was mid-January 1945, and instead of sending us to work they sent us off into who knew where. It was freezing, there was snow everywhere, and we marched on foot for days. At night we were herded into barns or pigsties that had already been abandoned. We didn't get anything to eat, but in the empty sties we almost always found some potatoes or turnips intended for the pigs. We didn't care. The main thing was we had something to eat. And it was warm in the stalls. All the same, many women died on the way.Finally we arrived in Gross-Rosen. We were brought to the washrooms, and were given different clothes and something to eat. Then they loaded us onto cattle cars, and our journey into the unknown continued. At the train station in Weimar the train came to a halt, and bombs fell from the sky. It was dreadful. The cars were sealed, we couldn't get out, and the station was in flames. The Germans guarding us jumped from the train and took cover under the cars, while there we were in open cars watching airplanes diving at us with a h.e.l.lish racket and dropping their bombs directly overhead. Horrible. You just can't imagine it. Three women in our car died.4 I don't know if they died of shock or from bomb fragments. The corpses stayed in the car until we reached Bergen-Belsen. I don't know if they died of shock or from bomb fragments. The corpses stayed in the car until we reached Bergen-Belsen.If until then I had thought that nowhere could be more horrible than where I was, I was mistaken. The worst was Bergen-Belsen. No human being can imagine what Bergen-Belsen was, what it was like there! It was a starvation chamber. We got a ladleful of water once a day, with a few tiny pieces of turnip floating in it-and that was for three people, plus a slice of bread for each. In the morning, again for three people, there was a ladleful of "coffee"-some dark fluid. We sometimes fought-over a piece of turnip! Can anyone imagine that-fighting over a piece of turnip? I'm ashamed of myself now-but that's how it was. We fought over every spoonful of soup! We didn't fight because we were angry with each other, but over a turnip, over a spoonful of soup.We lay three to a wooden bunk. People were dying all around us, dying en ma.s.se. What an awful thing to be speaking to someone who suddenly falls over dead-it's indescribable. A woman I knew, Suse Hoffmann from Brno, who was the same age as my brother, died right beside me-fell over dead. And once again, roll calls-where we stood outside for hours, no matter what the weather. All I can say is that I am here thanks to my mother and sister. I don't know how often I fainted during those roll calls. Sometimes my mother braced me up from behind, sometimes my sister, so that I wouldn't fall over and end up in sick bay. No one came back from there.It was mid-April 1945 when the Germans fled. They didn't even leave us watery soup or a piece of bread. When the British arrived, we heard that the Germans had prepared bread for distribution, but that the camp elders had forbidden the handing out of the bread. It was handed out in one barracks-and they all died because the bread had been poisoned by the Germans, or so it was said. That's what I was told. I don't know if the story is true or not.At any rate, for those last twenty-four hours, we didn't have any bread or any water-nothing. I wanted to drink from the well, but there were many, many people around it, because it was the only one. There were fights and brawls, and you couldn't possibly get through. It was only later that I learned that many people came down with typhoid as a result of drinking the water.We left the camp in April, and we ate the buds off the trees. I told my sister, "Come here, eat it. It's wonderful. It tastes like almonds." Bergen-Belsen was a horrible camp. I don't know whether enough is known about it. The only thing people know is what was filmed, the footage that the British made. Those truckloads of corpses with dangling arms and legs-that was Bergen-Belsen.

On April 16, 1945-in the presence of leading representatives of the Hungarian Jewish Relief and Rescue Committee (Va'ad Ezra V'hatzolah) and a negotiator named Reszo (Rudolf) Kastner5-Eichmann's henchmen Hermann Krumey and Otto Hunsche delivered to camp commandant Karl Rahm orders from Himmler to surrender Theresienstadt without a fight. Rahm, Kastner reports, was thoroughly surprised. His comment upon hearing Himmler's orders was, "I no longer understand this world."6 The German front lines had fallen apart, the camps in the East were liberated, one after the other; the great retreat had begun-prisoners, soldiers, SS, refugees of every sort streamed toward the West. But the Allies had not yet reached Theresienstadt, and despite Himmler's orders, the SS saw no reason to give up their control of the camp. And so they were still there when the first prisoners from the death camps in the East reached Theresienstadt.

"Dear G.o.d, what is happening here; I can't even describe it," Eva Ginz, Hanka's friend from Prague, wrote in her diary on April 23. "One afternoon [Friday, April 20] I was at work, when we saw a freight train pa.s.sing. People stuck their heads out of the windows. They looked simply awful. Pale, completely yellow and green in the face, unshaven, like skeletons, sunken cheeks, their heads shaved, in prisoners' clothes ... and their eyes were glittering so strangely ... from hunger. I immediately ran into the ghetto (we were working outside) to the station. They were just getting out of the trucks, if you could call what they did getting out. Only a few managed to keep on their feet (their legs were just shanks covered with skin); the rest were lying completely exhausted on the floor of the trucks. They had been on the road for a fortnight and had been given almost nothing to eat. They were coming from Buchenwald and from Auschwitz... . Then one transport after the other began to arrive. Hungarians, French, Slovaks, Poles (they had been in concentration camps for seven years) and some Czechs as well."7 "One very cold day in April 1945," Eva Herrmann recalls, "thousands of people arrived. Many of them were wearing wooden slippers. When so many people in wooden shoes are moving along slowly it makes a dreadful noise, a kind of monotone clacking sound. We heard it at times during the night. And so we got up and followed the noise and watched and waited until the people arrived. We could see that there were all kinds of people from everywhere. They looked awful."

"We heard shots in the distance," Flaka remembers. "We thought the army would be moving in. But it was the poorest of the poor who arrived, specters. It was horrible-many of them simply fell down on the street and lay there. They were emaciated, sick, starved, just rags on their bodies."

"In April 1945, people from the death marches began coming back," says Ela. "At first it was just men. But then one day a transport with women arrived, and we asked them where they had come from, and they didn't know themselves! From then on I always stood and watched when people came back. They always pa.s.sed by where we were working. They could barely walk! They just dragged themselves along, they looked so horrible, like skeletons-completely starved, exhausted."

"I was standing on the street beside Kursawe when the first prisoners from the concentration camps came back," recalls w.i.l.l.y Groag. "They were in an inhuman condition, just skin and bones, their heads shaved. I was horrified; we were all horrified. And I can still see how terrified Kursawe looked. It really was incomprehensible. We couldn't believe that these were our friends, our closest friends."

"The town's heart stood still," Alice Ehrmann noted in her diary on April 20, 1945. "And now they're here. Stinking, vermin-ridden cattle cars, with stinking, vermin-ridden people in them, half alive, half dead, or corpses. They were pressed to the windows, horrible faces, bones and eyes. What had kept us trembling in fear, for months, was coming directly toward us."8 "When new people arrived," Marianne Deutsch recalls, "my father, who worked in the Central Registry, had to enter people's names in the files. And so he went out to these people and had a kettle of soup brought out to them. They fell on it like madmen. And my father said, 'They must be from an insane asylum,' and sent for doctors. The doctors determined that they were normal people, but that they had been through horrible things."

It was not just that these people had survived the death camps. Shortly before the Allies reached the camps, the SS had driven them westward, in the direction of concentration camps at Gross-Rosen, Ravensbruck, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, and Mauthausen. But those camps were by then terribly overcrowded and the roads could not handle such a huge stream of refugees. The SS didn't know what to do with their prisoners, so they would ruthlessly shoot and kill those who could not keep moving or who had caught their eye for whatever reason. Finally they started directing some of these "death marches" toward Theresienstadt.

On April 22, 1945, Benjamin Murmelstein, who still held the post of chief elder, let it be known that Paul Dunant, a delegate of the International Red Cross, had been present at a meeting of the Council of Elders. He had formally announced that the Theresienstadt camp could count on help from the Red Cross and that he was commissioned to establish and maintain a direct and permanent connection with that inst.i.tution. "This is in fact the expected takeover by the Red Cross, even though the Germans are still here," Erich Kessler wrote in his diary that day.9 The hour of liberation was now palpably near. The hour of liberation was now palpably near.

But there was still one last ordeal to face at Theresienstadt. The SS was still running the camp. Even though they were getting ready to pick up and leave, carting away everything that could be carted away, and even though their ranks were gradually diminis.h.i.+ng, the hard core- Hans Gunther, Karl Rahm, Rudolph Haindl, Ernst Mohs-was still there. Using whatever authority they still exercised, they blocked any help being offered to those returning and prevented emergency measures from being taken, such as inoculations to stop typhoid and other epidemics from spreading to the rest of the population. It was impossible to isolate the sick from the healthy. Medicines were in short supply, there were too few nurses, and there was not enough food for the approximately thirteen thousand thoroughly exhausted people who had been arriving since April. Many of them died shortly before liberation became a reality.

Hanka Wertheimer and her mother had been transported to Hamburg in July 1944 with a working brigade. Along the way several cars were uncoupled and shunted in a different direction. Miriam Rosenzweig and the counselor Eva Weiss were in one of them, and they were sent to Christianstadt, a secondary camp at Gross-Rosen not far from Wroclaw. Hanka, however, ended up in Hamburg. The city had been badly ravaged by bombs, and the women were put to work clearing rubble and rebuilding.

Hanka recalls: We were given a special uniform, beige overalls and a pastel blue headscarf. And that's how we marched through the streets. We were always five abreast and sometimes sang songs like "After Every December Comes the Month of May."Of course the residents of Hamburg had to be given some explanation about who we were, and so they were told we were convicts and came from a prison. That's how we were presented-as criminals, as murderers and thieves. That's what was printed in the newspaper, too.We built streets in a new settlement in Hamburg-Neugraben. Sometimes we scavenged for food in garbage cans and made soup of it-we had a place to cook. When people saw us looking for sc.r.a.ps in their garbage, they sometimes put out something edible for us, wrapping it in newspaper and laying it next to the garbage cans, and then we'd find maybe a potato, or an onion, or a piece of bread. Then we'd cook our soup. Those were the best soups!We had a guard from the Wehrmacht. He was very fat and, in comparison to the others, very nice. We even called him Papa.10 I remember a Frau Schmidt as well. She had read in the paper that we were criminals. And my mother, who spoke very good German, told her, "Do you believe everything in the paper is true? Do you believe that my thirteen-year-old daughter killed somebody or committed some other awful crime?" I remember a Frau Schmidt as well. She had read in the paper that we were criminals. And my mother, who spoke very good German, told her, "Do you believe everything in the paper is true? Do you believe that my thirteen-year-old daughter killed somebody or committed some other awful crime?"The "Wehrmacht Papa," who guarded us all by himself, let us speak with people a little, and so gradually we came into contact with the local population. A lot of us could speak German. Gradually people realized that we weren't criminals. And many of those who had had their homes bombed and had very little left themselves were really quite nice to us.I think we were in three different places in Hamburg-in Veddel, in Neugraben, and in Tiefstack, which were all camps attached to Neuengamme. For a while we worked in an oil factory. I remember that we got a very good soup every day at noon. The soup was so good because there were other workers in the bombed-out factories we were there to repair-Germans, French, Italians, all prisoners of war. Good soup was sent to these factories, and we were given some of it. It tasted wonderful... .We were always closely guarded, of course. One day, the SS men found a letter one of us was trying to smuggle out. It had been written by a Hana. All the Hanas had to step forward. My mother was terribly frightened for my sake and told me, "You stay here, because your real name is Hanneliese." They found the Hana they wanted. They shaved her head and sent her to Auschwitz.Winter came on, and it turned very cold. We didn't have any stockings and wore wooden shoes that let the snow in. Many of us got sick. And our overalls were all that we had. I don't even know if we ever washed them. I only know that there were frequent air-raid alarms. The British dropped bombs, the Americans dropped bombs, and large sections of Hamburg lay in ruin and ashes.I was always happy when there was an air-raid alert-because I thought that every bomb brought the end of the war just that much closer. We often fled to an aboveground bunker. These buildings weren't really meant for us prisoners. But the Germans who guarded us couldn't leave us by ourselves. So they took us along. And we were always put on the top, the eighth floor, where it was most dangerous, of course. The Germans were right below us, so that we couldn't run away.I liked going to the bunker. I could finally get some real sleep. I was always very, very tired-I remember that. We usually had to get up very early to go to work. And we came back late in the evening. I got far too little sleep. But if there were bombs, I could get some real sleep. It's strange-I was probably too tired to be afraid. And too young. I told myself, "I haven't committed any crime; why should anything happen to me?" What I really wanted to do was stay in my bunk and sleep. But sometimes my mother would make me join her in the bas.e.m.e.nt, where we were better protected. Nothing ever happened to us, although sometimes bombs fell very close... . Then in April 1945, we were taken to Bergen-Belsen... . It's really not that far away. But it took us seven days by train, because so many trains were going to Bergen-Belsen. Hundreds of cars, thousands of prisoners from every point on the compa.s.s... ."In late April there were suddenly hundreds of people returning to Theresienstadt," Ela says, describing all this as if it had happened yesterday. "I was on the lookout for familiar faces. Suddenly I recognized my friend Helga, and I called out, 'Helga! Helga!' I flung off my wooden shoes, which were much too big for me, and ran to her father and shouted, 'Helga is here! Helga is here!' I bellowed it like a madwoman and ran back so that I wouldn't lose sight of Helga and could greet her before she had to be put under quarantine, because they were all ill. And so I found my Helga again."

"I heard Ela shouting," Helga recalls. "She couldn't get to us because we were separated from everyone else right away and led to the West Barracks. While we were standing there waiting to see what would happen next, a distant relative suddenly came up and brought me a bag of something to eat that my father had sent-my father couldn't walk very fast and so had sent his cousin. No sooner had we reached in for a bite than the bag was gone. Some Polish and Slovak women standing next to us simply ripped it from our hands."

It was the end of April when Helga, Handa, and Tella arrived in Theresienstadt. Placed in the West Barracks, where the children of Bialystok had once been housed, they were handed something to eat, treated by doctors, and given beds. "When these poor devils were brought into the hospital ward and saw beds with white sheets, pillows, and blankets, they began to weep," Erich Kessler noted in his diary. "They were undressed and washed. Their backs were covered with a layer of dirt as thick as your finger. Then they were given a soup that been specially prepared so as not to overtax their stomachs."

When Helga had regained her energy somewhat, she asked for a piece of paper and a pencil and wrote these lines to her father: Theresienstadt, April 1945My beloved Papa,I still can't believe that I am here with you. I'm so incredibly happy that I can't even express it. That I can be a normal human being again is a feeling you can't imagine. The concentration camp is behind me now. And the only good thing about that is that I shall now treasure everything in my life. Papa, you can't imagine what a feeling it is to be clean, with your own clean clothes on your body. Without a white cross on your back. To have your own bed, a blanket, a pillow, and to have peace and quiet and not have to be so terribly hungry. I always used to believe that a person needed to be rich, too. Now I see just how little a person actually needs. When I wake up in the morning and roll over and can stay in bed until nine o'clock, I am so grateful that I don't have to get up at four-thirty, that no one is shouting at me, that I won't be punished by having to stand for two hours of roll call the way I had to in Oederan. I don't have to stand in wet snow anymore-three to four hours long. And we were grateful just to have a coat and a sweater, and shoes and socks, although the socks were much too short and shoes too small. In Auschwitz we didn't even have that. All we had were wooden slippers that were falling apart, and filthy clothes that were too small for me. I want so much for this quarantine to be over soon. I'm so afraid we'll come down with something here yet. Please, Papa, come to see me; we can talk over the fence if you have them send for me. Daddy, my dearest. I want to be with you so much! Try to get me out of here cross on your back. To have your own bed, a blanket, a pillow, and to have peace and quiet and not have to be so terribly hungry. I always used to believe that a person needed to be rich, too. Now I see just how little a person actually needs. When I wake up in the morning and roll over and can stay in bed until nine o'clock, I am so grateful that I don't have to get up at four-thirty, that no one is shouting at me, that I won't be punished by having to stand for two hours of roll call the way I had to in Oederan. I don't have to stand in wet snow anymore-three to four hours long. And we were grateful just to have a coat and a sweater, and shoes and socks, although the socks were much too short and shoes too small. In Auschwitz we didn't even have that. All we had were wooden slippers that were falling apart, and filthy clothes that were too small for me. I want so much for this quarantine to be over soon. I'm so afraid we'll come down with something here yet. Please, Papa, come to see me; we can talk over the fence if you have them send for me. Daddy, my dearest. I want to be with you so much! Try to get me out of here.Please bring me my tattered washcloth and soap. The man from Kyjov, Markus, or whatever his name is, is living in the Sokolovna. Please go to him and come with him to the fence. Our window is right across from a bench. There are too many people up front, and we wouldn't have any privacy there, and they won't let you in the back part of the building here. But because he lives here, they'll let you get closer with him along. And bring some paper for me to write on and fight for me to be moved.Papa, please send word whether the coat I brought with me can be repaired. If only it were just a little shorter. And bring clothes from Frau Bader-maybe Frau Bader will have a blouse for me or some underwear. I don't even have a knife here; I forgot to bring it and left it with you. And Papa, see to it that I get out of here. A hundred million kisses, and a big hug,Your one and only Helga The counselor Eva Weiss had been taken from Auschwitz to a forced labor camp at Christianstadt, where she worked for several months in a munitions factory. Life became a little easier for her. Although there was always a severe shortage of food, her life was no longer in danger. Things changed, however, at the end of January, when gunfire was first heard in the distance. On February 2, 1945, she was forced to join one of the death marches.

Eva recalls: It was cold, the ground was covered with snow, and we dragged ourselves along. We weren't the only people on the road. We saw all sorts of vehicles along the way, Germans and Poles who were traveling in the same direction we were. The Russians were evidently closing in at great speed, causing panic and confusion. It looked as if it might be possible to flee, but if escape was to be possible it had to be planned down to the smallest detail. Since I didn't have the courage to run away all by myself, I wanted to talk a friend into joining me, someone who looked a little like me, not too Jewish-and that was Ruth Iltis.We had one whole day and night to plan our escape down to the last detail. We decided to pa.s.s ourselves off as sisters of German-Polish descent, just simple girls. We invented names-Annie and Gertrud Hinze. The next day, when we got the chance, we disappeared behind some firs in a little patch of woods, hoping no one would notice. Shots were fired in our direction, but they didn't hit us. And after that, they didn't follow us. And so we found ourselves in unknown terrain on a cold day in February.

Eva and Ruth, now called Annie and Gertrud Hinze, first made their way to a farm, and from there they were sent to the "employment office" in the town of Weisswa.s.ser. People bought their story. They were given doc.u.ments and an address where they could work as cleaning ladies. When they got to the place, they were in for a big shock.

We stared at the sign over the door: HITLER YOUTH HOME. HITLER YOUTH HOME. What should we do? It was getting darker and colder and we were getting hungrier and hungrier. We rang the bell. The door opened, and we were received by a motherly woman. She gave us a room, just for us two. We were also given a key and could lock the door. We were told we would be put to work cleaning up the kitchen the next day, doing the least pleasant tasks. What should we do? It was getting darker and colder and we were getting hungrier and hungrier. We rang the bell. The door opened, and we were received by a motherly woman. She gave us a room, just for us two. We were also given a key and could lock the door. We were told we would be put to work cleaning up the kitchen the next day, doing the least pleasant tasks.The Youth Home was full of young boys in uniform, with flags, swastikas, and similar items everywhere. We pretended to be very simple girls, a little dumb and uneducated. The boys especially liked Ruth, now Annie, who was very pretty, but we kept our distance and kept to ourselves. There was always the great danger that they might find out who we really were. A few days later someone said we needed to have a medical checkup, and we were terribly afraid that our tattooed numbers would be discovered. What should we do? We tried cutting them out, but that wasn't as easy as we thought, and our only choice was to burn them off. We had a stove with a fire. And while Adolf Hitler looked on-his picture was on the wall-we each laid a hot ember on our numbers. It crackled and burned and hurt, but we were doing it to save our lives. Afterward I went to the nurse and said that I had burned myself, and she gave me some salve and a bandage, which I then shared with Ruth. She couldn't possibly show up with the same injury without arousing suspicion.A few weeks later, we were summoned to SS headquarters and a.s.sumed that our charade was all over. But we were well treated as cleaning ladies, and eventually sent to a village near the Czech border, where we remained until early May.Meanwhile, we had our roles down pat, and our relations.h.i.+p to the boys training for the front lines had become friendlier. We were even promoted to cooks, and to our great joy we now had enough to eat.As the Russians got closer the Germans started to panic and ran away from the Russians and toward the advancing Americans- "from Ivan to the Amis," as they said. We joined them in hopes of soon reaching the Czech border. When we saw a road sign with the word "Liberec," we simply vanished in that direction. It was May 3, 1945. Ruth knew the name of an acquaintance of her father's in Liberec, and we knocked on the door. We were welcomed and treated with genuine Czech hospitality. Then we started out for Prague.On our way there we experienced what for us was the only air raid of the entire war-a small German plane at low alt.i.tude swept wildly back and forth across the area, but kept coming back heading directly for us, and we had to take cover in a ditch. When the scare was over, we were covered in mud. We first had to clean up and so went to the nearest inn, where friendly people helped us. The people there started asking us questions, and we told them about our experiences. But when we told them about Auschwitz we could sense they didn't believe us.The next day someone saw to it that we didn't have to continue on foot, but could ride to Prague. We sat on the trunk of a car that was decorated with lots of flowers and Czech flags. Some people tossed more flowers to us. To this day I don't know who organized the trip. I only know: The hour of liberation had come.

In late April 1945, after a separation that had lasted half a year, Helga and her father were reunited at the very same wooden fence that had sealed the Theresienstadt ghetto off from the outside world for three and a half years and that was now supposed to keep the healthy from the sick. "Helga's father was so happy," Handa says, describing this reunion. "He wanted to give Helga the best that he had, and that was a little jar of b.u.t.ter. Helga hid it in her blouse, but we couldn't resist. We knew that we shouldn't eat the b.u.t.ter right away. But we each took a tea-spoonful and then another-without bread, about two ounces for each of us. And had terrible diarrhea as a result. We were lucky that it was no worse than that."

Their girlfriends were happy as well, and they also wanted to make sure the returnees had food, especially some of the good soup that Ela's mother had kept in reserve for just this moment. But after learning how dangerous fat was, they managed to get some sugar for the time being. Handa and Helga were so emaciated and weak that their friends had to do something to coddle them.

"Shortly after my return," Handa recalls, "a woman suddenly came running toward me with a cry of joy. It was Jitka, my governess from Olbramovice. She had been deported to Theresienstadt toward the end of the war. She began to weep, and I asked her, 'Why are you crying? I'm here, and I'm alive.' 'But you used to have such pudgy little hands,' she replied, 'and look at them. They're just skin and bones.' "

On April 29 word spread through the ghetto that the SS would have to leave the town within forty-eight hours. So now they would finally have to prepare for their departure, those gentlemen of the SS: Rahm, Haindl, Bergel, Mohs, and the rest of the pack. "Dunant is here, he's in the Council of Elders, without any Germans," Alice Ehrmann wrote on April 30. And one day later: "Capitulation-Churchill presenting it to the House of Commons... ? The excitement is getting unbearable. I just want to sob or die. Things just can't get more intense; they have to come to a breaking point."

"On May 2 the black SS flags and the swastikas were raised at half-mast over the Little Fortress. And we all knew on the spot what that meant," Erich Kessler noted. "We also received confirmation that Hitler had put an end to his cursed life."11 On May 3, 1945, the International Red Cross, under the direction of Paul Dunant, took Theresienstadt and the Little Fortress under its protection. "The SS finally has to make its exit," wrote Erich Kessler. "The news is that Goebbels has been found dead. Rumor has it that peace is already here. Those who come from Prague are to return home within four days."12 These were days for holding your breath. The end was in sight and yet all were surrounded by death. "We were told to be careful, to keep the windows closed, and not show ourselves at the windows," says Handa, who was quartered with Tella in what had previously been Room 1 in L417. "There were still SS men and snipers who were firing at random."

Handa could watch the exciting events on Market Square from her room, and she had a good view of the main road through town. Even so, it was difficult to understand what was going on there. There were throngs of people everywhere-prisoners, German soldiers, Czech policemen. A great deal of traffic was moving in all directions-trucks packed full of hundreds of black boxes, people from Prague and other towns coming to fetch their relatives, the vehicles of the Wehrmacht driving through town on the way to Prague.

"On May 4 I was awakened very early by a strange noise," Handa recalls very clearly. "It was as if a huge swarm of bees was flying this way-buzzzz. I didn't know what it was. I risked looking out the window. I didn't see anything. But the noise got louder and louder. Finally I saw Russian tanks with a lot of people riding on them. They were former Theresienstadt prisoners on their way back to the ghetto, who had run into the Russians on the road. They were shouting to their friends and weeping at the same time."

The Russian troops drove on toward Prague as well. And there were still scattered Wehrmacht units moving through Theresienstadt, with shots fired now and then.

"On May 5, 1945, which was my sister's birthday," Ela says, describing the day, "there was a great shout as the Czech police entered town under the old Czech flag. They drove through the streets. There was jubilation everywhere. We really celebrated."

Bearing the flag of Czechoslovakia and singing a potpourri of national anthems, people stormed the commandant's headquarters, and Rahm and Haindl fled. The Czech police took command of the town.

But in the barracks there was still hunger and death, and in Prague there was still fighting going on. Endless columns of tanks continued to roll through Theresienstadt, the sounds of rifles and machine guns were still being heard, transports of prisoners were still arriving, and SS men were still trying to escape.

On May 6 Otto Pollak wrote to his daughter, who was still under quarantine: My one and only child,I received the sweet lines you wrote from the West Barracks and was saddened at first to know that you will be leaving me again. I didn't sleep much last night either, because there was so much to think about and I didn't have my little sparrow beside me.After much consideration, I've come to the decision to let you depart along with your friends who shared your fate in Oederan. I do this because I a.s.sume your transport will be under the protection of the Red Cross and that Switzerland will be the place chosen for your recuperation. I have nothing so beautiful to offer you for the next few years, my sweet darling, and I hope that you will enjoy the love and care of the Swiss in full measure. Do all you can to get out of quarantine, because I have so many things I want to talk over with you and want us to be able to say goodbye before you leave.If you can't come to me, Frau Sander and I will pack your suitcase for you. And I have a little handbag with toilet articles and some food for the trip to give you as well. I brought your diary out into the light of day today. It is in good shape. So for now, my little child, I send you lots and lots of kisses and remain,Your Daddy On the evening of May 7, almost the entire population of Theresienstadt gathered in the main square in order to finally hear the news with their own ears: Germany had surrendered unconditionally. The surrender doc.u.ments had been signed the night before in Reims, France, by Colonel-General Alfred Jodl. This time there was no jubilation. The war was over, but there could not be any real talk of peace as yet. The very next day, the population was warned to exercise the utmost caution.

On May 8 the thunder of cannons could still be heard almost the entire day. But then the tension faded. Standing at an attic window in the Dresden Barracks, Vera Nath looked down at the streets below: "It was already late evening," she recalls. "Around nine o'clock. Suddenly we saw a woman with a red flag, and we ran downstairs. The barricades to the ghetto had been opened. The Red Army was entering. They were all just children, fifteen-, sixteen-, and seventeen-year-old boys. We cheered them; what else could we do? We stood outside for hours and watched. Everyone sang the 'Internationale'-in German, Czech, Polish, Hungarian, all blended together."

Theresienstadt, May 8, 1945

! ! GENERAL WARNING ! !.

In view of the hostilities occurring in close proximity to Theresienstadt, the following directives are to take effect immediately: 1) The streets are to be used only for official business. And in no case are the ramparts and walls or roads leading around town to be used, beginning at the Litomice Gate, Bodenbach Barracks, Dresden Barracks as far as the Sluice Mill, plus all roads leading to Bauschowitz-Litomice and all roads leading around the Fortress; moreover, everyone should avoid the vicinity of these roads.

2) It is forbidden to loiter near windows and doors or in the courtyards of houses and buildings! At the sound of gunfire, people should take cover against the wall nearest to the windows to avoid being hit by gunfire penetrating windows or doors.

3) Until further notice, children are to stay indoors!

4) If artillery fire should be heard, everyone should immediately take cover in the cellars of residences and larger buildings. Supervisors and directors in all buildings are to make sure that the entrances to cellars are kept open for immediate entry at all times. In such event, at least two men are to stand guard at the cellar entrance.

5) No open fires whatever are permitted until further notice!

6) If gunfire is heard, all streets and public areas are to be evacuated at once and cover taken in houses or beside walls.

May 8, 1945, General Warning

EPILOGUE.

EVA W WEISS and her friend Ruth Iltis were among the first survivors of German concentration camps to experience the end of the war in Prague. There they anxiously awaited their relatives and friends. "But only a few returned," recalls Eva. "And all of them had a sad tale to tell. Everyone knew of many others who would never return. It was a time of highs and of very deep lows." and her friend Ruth Iltis were among the first survivors of German concentration camps to experience the end of the war in Prague. There they anxiously awaited their relatives and friends. "But only a few returned," recalls Eva. "And all of them had a sad tale to tell. Everyone knew of many others who would never return. It was a time of highs and of very deep lows."

Eva Weiss Gross Since no one from her immediate family in Brno was still alive, Eva remained in Prague. There she met her future husband, a Czech who had emigrated to England and had marched into Prague with the British army's Czech Brigade. When he returned to London a year later, Eva could not accompany him because she had no valid papers. Not until three years later did she manage to acquire a joint pa.s.sport, which was issued to an aliyah group and allowed her to travel to Israel, where the couple was reunited. They were married in Kibbutz Givat Chaim Ichud. After a few months they moved to England, where she began a new life.

Eva lived in London for many years and now resides near Winchester in the south of England.

HANKA (C (CHANA) WERTHEIMER only barely survived the h.e.l.l of Bergen-Belsen. Fourteen thousand people died there in just the first five days after liberation which had occurred on April 15, 1945 and another fourteen thousand perished in the weeks that followed, among them Hanka's mother, Lily Wertheimer, who succ.u.mbed to typhus on May 16, 1945. only barely survived the h.e.l.l of Bergen-Belsen. Fourteen thousand people died there in just the first five days after liberation which had occurred on April 15, 1945 and another fourteen thousand perished in the weeks that followed, among them Hanka's mother, Lily Wertheimer, who succ.u.mbed to typhus on May 16, 1945.

Hanka Wertheimer Weingarten Hanka remained in a hospital in Celle, Germany, until July 1945, and was then moved to a hospital in Plze. With her strength for the most part restored, she traveled on to Prague. "I went directly to itna 38," Hanka remembers. "Our Maka was still living in the same little bachelor flat. She broke down in tears when she saw me. If she had met me on the street, she said, she wouldn't have recognized me. I weighed only seventy-seven pounds, and was ill and deeply unhappy."

Hanka had lost almost her entire family apart fr