European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

After an hour it went quiet.

Then the neighbour came and said we could come out now.

It was such a relief that she came to us.

I don’t know what would have happened, if we – little children – would have stayed on our own.

The oldest one was six,

then three years, four years and I was five years old.

A cousin of mine had stayed at home.

She was suffering with a contagious infection, scabies.

The Gestapo saw that and did not take her. They were frightened of being infected.

She came to the neighbour’s.

The neighbour said that we could not stay with her, because she had five children of her own

and she was alone with them, as well.

They had taken the oldest daughter, the farmer girl and the farmer away.

On the day they arrested our family,

they arrested so many people that a horse stable near Eisenkappl was full.

They took them away in lorries

to Klagenfurt and from there to various concentration camps.

Even my godfather, the neighbour, did not come back.

He died in Dachau, but his daughter and the farmer girl came back.

They were the only ones who came back from the concentration camp.