Stutthof

I was what they called in our language a Müselmann, that means one who couldn’t die yet, you know, one of those skeletons who hung between heaven and earth. Wasn’t quite dead yet. And again, by one of the miracles, I was allowed to be ill. Otherwise, people who were ill were killed or sent to the ovens. And I, again, one of the many miracles was that officially I was allowed to be ill. Certificated. And there the Russians came, one day, I mean I was lying there on that cot, half dead, and there the Russians came in. Unbelievable! It was Easter ‘45.

My mother and I we were in Poland and we were liberated by the Russians. And my mother quite rightly didn’t trust them a bit and refused to be repatriated by them… because a friend was repatriated by them and ended up in Russia. And didn’t come out till late 50s. So we, we…we stayed in Poland. We… we, …stayed away from the transport. It wasn’t- the atmosphere and the discipline wasn’t very strict any more. You could hear the Russian guns. So of course the Nazis were not very strict; on the contrary, they wanted to have testimony from us that they were good - that they were not nasty to us. And anyways, so we stayed behind my mother and I and a group of women hid in a barn, while the transport marched on. And …we stayed there and… the other women tried to be repatriated by the Russians when they came. And my mother and I we didn’t. We stayed on an abandoned farm. And… the Russians pressed me into work. My mother was too ill. But I had to look after cows. I was a town child. I didn't know that cows had horns; I thought that only wolves had horns. But anyway…it was good fun. Because I had…I had a dog which the…English prisoners of war had to leave behind. They had been on that farm before, and they were repatriated to Germany proper. And they had to leave the dog behind. And nobody wanted that dog. It only…it only responded to English commands. So I had it. It was a lovely dog. And it guarded me. If any Russian came near me… it guarded me.