European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

I didn’t do much, but I was never scared of not being able to make it home one day.

Only during the last three months did I let go:

I could not remember my family anymore,

it was as if that notion had vanished,

and it’s something I could not understand back then.

I was exhausted,

the food was terrible for all of us, but I did my best to survive even in those conditions.

Regarding my weight, you hear people say they were thirty-eight or forty kilos, but I never did weigh myself.

I might have weighed around fifty or fifty-five.

I know I was skinny, but I just had to live with that.

I saw some die in anguish, crying:

Then the Americans arrived at my camp.

They left some guards, but we were free to go wherever we wanted.

They began to find calves - I’m not joking! - then slaughtered them

and put the meat in those beer barrels that you can find in Germany.

We had fresh meat after 15 or 20 days,

and every night they would go out to find something,

so we were finally ok concerning food.