My Train to Freedom

by Ivan A. Backer

  In Plattling I see the dead and the sick at each inspection, at least ten times a day, and witness how people in concentration camps suffer from hunger and infected deep wounds. And still they have to go to work with holes in their bodies. One person has several feet of gauze stuffed in such a wound. What pain he must have endured when the doctor removed it and then pressed a new similar dressing in. At each roll call people lay down with pussy fingers and legs, infected to the bone. That is of little concern to the Nazis, and they receive no care. In my former life I could not stand to look at a less serious wound, but now I even learn to eat watching such sights. A person becomes used to it under these condition. Typhus breaks out in the camp, but fortunately there are only three cases. I could write much more about Plattling, but we are ending our stay here and on April 24, 1945 we have to leave.

  Death March

  Already by the middle of April many of the older prisoners, mostly Jews, feared that they might again experience another death march. They had already survived a three-week march from Auschwitz, sometimes on foot and at times in open wagons with a heap of dead bodies. Tired as they were they had sat on the bodies and even slept on them. It was rumored that the SS might shoot us before fleeing themselves as the American army advanced. The Jews were particularly upset. I tried to assure them that the Germans must realize that they have lost the war and that they will not want to add to their already huge war crimes.

  But when a prisoner, Tonda Bondy, returns from his work assignment on Sunday, April 22, and tells us that he has seen fifteen prisoners shot by the side of the road, less than two kilometers away, even I start to have doubts. It is a miserable prospect to have survived the entire war only to be shot in the end.

  At the roll call on April 24, after three more prisoners have just died, Tonda tells us: “I just saw four SS officers visit our commander. They were escorting about five thousand prisoners when the Americans surrounded them and arrested everyone. Only they had managed to escape. The Americans are only about 40 kilometers from us and they had even penetrated to Straubing before they withdrew. I think, my boys, that we are going to march out of here and I am dreading it as I recall the march from Auschwitz, and the corpses I saw on Sunday.”

  I hurry to the office to tell my friend the other clerk, a Czech Jew named Honza Schneider. He has already survived both Terezín and Auschwitz. Then I see our superior go to the camp commander, and he soon returns with an order to burn the catalog of all prisoners, pack other incriminating evidence, and prepare for the march. I am already packed. So are all the kapos, who packed a week ago and now go around the camp in civilian clothes without their prisoner numbers. The prisoners from work sites are recalled, and everything is being readied for our departure. I have three blankets and one set of dirty underwear. There is a great demand for civilian clothing.

  After Plattling was bombed, our superior brought an almost full sack of semolina or polenta to the office. As the prisoners prepare for departure, Honza Schneider and I cook the pudding, and we fill ourselves even though it is as thick as cement. We even take some with us on our plates as provision for the journey. I also have a piece of bread in my pocket.

  Dr. Jedličky is a Polish medical doctor and has been a prisoner since 1939, and he is a very decent man. He, Honza, and I debate whether it would be better to hide ourselves in the camp and wait a few days for the Americans. Jedličky shows us that under his prisoner garb he has civilian clothing. He offers to register me as being sick, but he doesn’t try to convince me since another possibility is that the SS will shoot everyone left in the camp. I give him the addresses of Mila and my mother in case he gains freedom faster than me. I ask him to write to them, in case I do not return and instead end up shot in some ditch, that they might know that during those last few weeks I was in fairly good shape. The doctor is ordered to remain in the camp to care for the sick. He was my true friend and perhaps God spared him. We part with deep feeling for each other.

  In the camp everything is topsy-turvy. The younger prisoners welcome the march as an end to their heavy labor, but the older ones are worried since they recall the 120 kilometer journey from Auschwitz in the frost and snow, the open rail cars with their mounds of dead, and being without food. Our superior got drunk, and the other SS officers finished all the alcohol around. We are ordered to march smartly through town, but he himself cannot talk or march straight. He swears at us all the time, but we largely ignore him.

  We are grouped together, counted, and ordered to march. I am in the first five-man line with Honza and Dr. Rottenberg, a Belgian Jew. We look back fleetingly at the camp as our sick friends stand in front of their barracks, and wonder if we will ever see each other again.

  Left, left, left! The marching orders are barked out by kapo Hans. On the whole he is a decent man who does not strike us without reason. He reminds us in front to go as slowly as possible so that the sick in the rear can keep up. He says that we should ignore the mad rantings of our drunk superior who wants us to “parade march.” We in front are in a predicament. Our superior is constantly urging us to look smart marching through town, and we are conscious of those in the back. So we take steps, as short as we can. In town we feel how close we are to the front, since there are soldiers, ambulances with their Red Cross, and army equipment everywhere. By the railroad station there is also evidence of the recent air raid in which one thousand people, including soldiers, died. Many civilians and soldiers crowd around the shops.

  At an intersection in town we bear left, and on the yellow sign it says: “Landau, 23 km.” [See map.] It is late afternoon and we are coming to open fields. The sun has come out, and in my heart I feel lighter, as when a person first encounters nature on a spring day after a long confinement. Honza and I are still full from the cement-like semolina. My three blankets are thrown over my shoulder, my cup is attached through a button hole, and on my plate there is still some semolina. My worn-out boots leak water through the bottom, but a shoemaker repaired the tops the day before we left, so that at least keeps out the sand and stones.

  The larks are singing and I am under the impression that I am on some kind of outing. Soon I hear gunfire on the sides and in the back but the SS are with us in front. I have the impression that someone is hunting rabbits, just as the guards did on the last day before we left Plattling. We conclude that discipline is disappearing since Germany has strict laws against hunting, although Field Marshall Goering is the imperial hunter.

  On the horizon appear three planes, as in the distance a small farm and a hamlet with a church becomes visible. We are ordered to disperse in the fields and lie down. I take refuge by turning right and lying down in some clover on a ridge next to the railroad tracks. The planes veer in the opposite direction. Suddenly there is a loud explosion and the farm and hamlet vanish in a thick cloud of smoke and fire.

  Near me is a small viaduct, and it would be possible to hide there and cross into the fields on the other side. The thought of freedom is very inviting. But I don’t know if at the next assembly we will be counted again, in which case my absence would soon be discovered, since I am in the first row of marchers and the commandant and most of the guards know me. And then where could I flee in my prisoner’s uniform and with a bald band on my head, where they cut my hair. If they caught me, and that is highly likely, I would be shot on the spot. We were warned against this before we left camp.

  After the air raid we are ordered to reassemble and resume the march. In another half an hour we are again ordered to lie down in the fields as the air raids continue throughout the afternoon. More gunfire by the guards is heard as we continue. As we approach the village Wallersdorf, about 12 kilometers from Plattling toward Landau, we learn that the guards have been shooting the sick prisoners. Already, during the first two hours of the march, twelve prisoners have been killed, among them several Czechs. Anyone who cannot go further is shot. So it is not rabbits that are being hunted, but peoples’ wretched earthly journey is ended a few day
s before the end of the war—some of whom have been in the concentration camp four and a half years and were awaiting being freed.

  In Wallersdorf we rest, to give our commanders time to decide whether the march should go on or we should spend the night here. There are many troops in the village. In the end we turn toward the station, go under the tracks, and stand again on the other side. There is a fairly large grassy depression in which it would be easy to herd us to sleep. It would be an easy place to guard, but because the guards would also have to sleep outside and a cold wind is blowing from the north we return to the fields where there is a large barn.

  There we each receive a little bread before beginning a mad scramble for a place to sleep. We all want to be comfortable, and there are many arguments. Everyone knows that sleep is very important, and who knows when we will be eating or sleeping next. Honza, Tonda, another prisoner from Nachod, Egon Horpaczky, and I form a little group because it is a little easier to survive. A person alone is lost, as I well remember from Barrack 9 in Flossenbürg. As we prepare our lair for the night, we share our blankets—Honza and I have three each and the others only one—and we have a little fight with three nearby Frenchmen who try to elicit our sympathy by recalling the historic friendship between France and Czechoslovakia. Eventually we settle the conflict. I tell them that it is uncomfortable for us to be arguing with them since we are all oppressed under the boot of Germany.

  I put my towel, my little bundle of clothing, and what remains of my semolina under my head as we fall asleep, dressed without boots on. In an alcove of the barn there are still four corpses from previous transports that had spent the night here before us. So we sleep together, the dead and the alive, without any sentimentality. After all many of those who started out with us in the morning now lie shot along the roadside we traveled. And any of us may meet the same fate in the coming days. In spite of sore feet caused by miserable boots we keep trucking further.

  We are roused quickly in the morning with shouts, “Everybody up!” My plate with the semolina is missing; only a bit of the paper in which it was wrapped is found in the straw where our French neighbors were sleeping. It was consumed during the night as proof of the historic Franco-Czech friendship. The Frenchmen quickly disappeared in the morning, but I find them in the afternoon and tell them they are thieves. This, however, does not satisfy my hunger.

  There is nothing for breakfast, but I still have the bread in my pocket from yesterday. Now in the morning I feel rested and that is almost like being full. But I will be hungry after marching for a few hours, and then the bread will come in very handy. We pass through a village full of soldiers, past an airstrip, and cross the river Isar into the small town of Landau. There I see a truck with a group of our ill prisoners from Plattling. Why are they dragging these poor souls with us? Before we cross the bridge I eat my bread. Around the road there are tank traps, and the fields have been mined. Beyond Landau we see burned out cars and dead horses. Beside one car I see a burned skeleton, next to which stands a rifle with a helmet on it. It is there probably in respect to the burned soldier.

  We meet a group of Hungarian soldiers, and each one has one or two loaves of bread. It is already afternoon and we have been marching since morning, without anything to eat since the piece of bread we got last night. We are hungry as tigers. The shots we hear from the rear spur us on. If one does not endure one gets a bullet in the head along the road. Here death has already visited us from airplanes that targeted a group of soldiers. So no one will be surprised to see a few more corpses.

  At about two o’clock in the afternoon we head toward a woods with a brook running next to a meadow. Rest! The sun is shining, and we stretch out on a little rise. Honza brings out the semolina he has left, and our little group consumes it all. Then, one by one, we go to the stream to wash ourselves after a very long time. There was no water in the concentration camp for the last week, because, we were told, the water supply was damaged in several places during an air raid. Washing ourselves was accompanied by hunting for lice. All of us are infested with them, and the lice are even multiplying on our bodies.

  We get some “soup” at 4:00 p.m. and then march on. We pass artillery units camouflaged by the side of the road. One of our Hungarian Jews learns from a Hungarian officer that the front is only about 50 kilometers away. In the village of Simbach there is a short break, and we receive a can of food to share between two of us. We eat it cold without bread. I hope it does not make us sick. We spend the night there in a barn. Tonda Bondy tapes up my sore leg with a bandage he saved. He remembers from previous marches how important bandages are on marches. That is the last day we eat something. During the night three kapos and two SS officers disappear. It is easy for them to escape since they are German and have civilian clothes, as well money, watches, and jewelry all stolen from prisoners. It is a sign of the declining morale and general deterioration.

  In the morning we crawl out of the straw. There is nothing for breakfast so we set out on an empty stomach. In a little while we are again lying in the grass as airplanes circle above us. We turn sharply to the west, cross through a wood, and breathe the invigorating morning air. As we skirt another small town we meet other prisoners everywhere, all in the same fix as we. One group of young Jews is even singing as they march in the opposite direction from us. Some poor soul throws a box of biscuits out of a window. The prisoner who catches it is clubbed to death with SS rifle butts. Such is our “escort.”

  As we march on, we skirt the town of Schöenau. The roads are jammed with troops, and with discarded weapons—another good sign. As it begins to rain we find another barn to rest in. Our little group finds a patch of dry clover to climb in. Tonda Bondy is tempted to remain in the barn and disappear. We are all slowly agreeing to flee, but only when there is a good opportunity. It will be difficult for four of us to escape together, but I would not like to do it alone since it is such a huge risk.

  As we leave we are each given some soup with polenta and one potato. Then we march on, but slower and slower. We are in a hilly country, going down and then up again. It is difficult to march being hungry, and the blankets are becoming heavier. Tonda Bondy finds a beet along the road, the size of a matchbox. He cleans it off, divides it into four parts so that we can each have a mouthful. But it isn’t enough for starving men who have had no bread for two days.

  It is already nine o’clock as we pass through the town of Eggenfelden. We hope that we will spend the night there, but we march on to the village of Bad Griesbach, where we find a barn. We wait in vain for some bread. Hungry and tired we cram ourselves in the straw. There is nothing to eat again in the morning. We depart for a nearby hill on which there are three farmhouses. We camp there, and at least we are not going further. They don’t know what to do with us, but we are grateful that at least we can rest our legs. At noon we finally get three little potatoes, and in the evening our first bread, half-baked from barley flour. Never in my life has bread tasted so good.

  We remain in that barn until Tuesday morning. Some of the prisoners who were sick in the camp and had remained there catch up with us here. Among them is Dr. Szamek from Bratislava. In the camp, where I was sedentary, the hunger bothered me more. At least on the march the changing scenery brings new impressions to mind, in spite of the gunfire in the back of us. We are sleeping on top of manure, and black flies that bite ferociously now join the lice. It is impossible to sleep.

  It rains incessantly for two days. The field in front of the barn is a lake of mud. As we survey the terrain we think of a way to escape. Kapo Hans told us on Sunday, April 29, that Bavaria has surrendered, which would mean technically that we are now free. Many prisoners embrace each other in joy, but I am more reserved as long as we are under the bayonets of the SS. Being careful, I try not to show my emotions, but at night we welcome the sound of the distant guns. However, we already heard them in Plattling and still we are in the SS’s grip. During the night from Monday to Tuesday, the rest of the kapos
desert, as well as some prisoners who assist them, and some SS guards also.

  Our old commander is still with us. On Tuesday morning [May 1] our cook is able to get a piece of a horse in Eggenfelden, but there is no time to cook it since we begin to march again at 9:30 a.m. Some prisoners cut off pieces from the horse, and one even takes a whole foot with the horseshoe intact. Perhaps there will be a chance to cook the meat somewhere.

  It is raining as we leave the safety of the barn. Our legs are rested so perhaps we will be able to go on. Tonda has had a bad toothache for three days now, and Egon Horpaczký has a swollen leg and is worried about the march. Tonda’s boot is also coming apart in the back. He stuffed a towel there to prevent the sand from entering, but it does little good. Before we leave we get a half-baked piece of bread. And so we continue the journey into the unknown.

  On the way it is rumored that we are headed for the concentration camp at Mühldorf, but it is 36 kilometers away. We could reach it by nightfall. We cross a bridge that has been mined before the town of Altötting. It is situated on a hill and houses a field hospital. After passing through the neighboring town of Neu-Etting in the rain, we have the impression that the paved road we are on leads to Munich. We continue to hear loud explosions of gunfire, but it seems too near to be the Americans, so perhaps it is from some practice field. As we drag ourselves along the road we pass a heap of half-rotten beets. The prisoners hurl themselves at it despite the blows of the gun butts. The hunger is cruel.

  Only about 4 kilometers from Mühldorf we turn to the left, in almost the opposite direction, and head for a patch of woods where we can rest. Those who have some of the raw horsemeat now eat it. As Tonda is chewing his, he throws a piece of skin away, and a hungry Pole pounces on it. That’s what it has come to. We resume our march on rain drenched field paths. After such a short break our legs hurt again until we get them going. It is becoming dark, and Tonda says that he can’t go any further. We tell him he must endure it, and in the end I tell him to hang on to me. And so we continue for another 18 kilometers. I don’t know where I got the strength that I could drag Tonda along for all that miserable way. At last, in the dark as the snow becomes mixed with rain, we stop at another barn, utterly exhausted. There are fights over space. I myself fight with some German Jew. But Honza and I find a trough for oats, and together we go to sleep.