European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

I’ve been in four different German internment camps.

The last one I was in, where we were finally set free, was called Wickede and was in Westfalia, near Dortmund.

Normally people used to go to sleep immediately.

The camp I’ve been in for the longest period was in Hagen, again in Westfalia, near Dortmund, which was a very big city.

In Wickede, I had to get up at 5 in the morning, walk 2 km to the station,

travel by train for 70 km, then walk to the job I had,

and sometimes I would end up getting back at nine in the evening.

There were also nasty episodes, although not too often.

They might come to check on us at, say, 10:30 at night, so we would have to gather in the hallway.

One of us was sleeping in the corner, another one was ill, and they would send us all outside to do some exercise.

We wore wooden shoes that could easily be lost while walking down the three steps that led to each shack.

Then they would have us walk in circles for hours, sometimes under the rain.

Episodes of this kind were not too frequent, but definitely happened.

I was arrested, or, I should rather say, we were loaded on their trains on the 16th of September,

and made it home only two years later, on the 14th of September.

We were near the Ruhr area, where most armament factories were located,

including the tank factories that the Americans used to attack with special bombs, in order to breach them.

We were bombarded every night, so I didn’t even think of running away,

because it would have meant running under these same bombs.

That’s what we went through.