Day 97

For any new readers of my dad's memoir -  I started blogging late December 2011 and I have been blogging on an ongoing basis.   Day 96 is the 96th blog of 97 blogs to date.


Day 1 is the introduction - I guess it is quite confusing when your first log on to this blog - although my daughter said that most people know a blog is in reverse order or backwards.


 Sorry if it is confusing! I am still a rookie blogger and have not had time to make it more professional!  


The purpose really was just to get my dad's story from the concentration camp out there!  He would have been very happy if you liked how he wrote!

Day 96 - Quelle Courage Louis and Antonio!

June 8, 2012

"An S.S. was looking straight down the ranks at us now as a Jewish prisoner moved along and put himself in between Antonio and I.  He was pushed by the others and would have fallen out at the end and been shot by the S.S. if it were not for us covering him.

Pleading he looked at Antonia and I - I'll never forget all this!

Antonio was Jewish too but that was not known! We would have been shot had they found him in between us!

Not a word was said and the danger passed missing a potential victim.  The retrieved man (my dad's exact words - the wrong word but that is how he put it!) just looked at us and stayed with us for a while to disappear later!

After the S.S. had their numbers right they went out and we had another reprieve: we then descended to our blocks determined not to get up anymore, that was it, whatever was to come, this was the finale, them or us!

The ones left were the survivors and fighters left among us, the weak ones and the unfortunate ones had been sorted out but we were a pack of skeletons, an army of the walking dead.

In the evening, we stood watching the fighting now developing in the valley below.  What a spectacle that was, guns blazing, spitting fire and brimstone, it was like a land and sea battle combined.  People were still dying around us en masse.  

I just about had eaten up all the little tidbits I had saved for such an emergency ................

To be continued

Day 95 - Waiting for the U.S. 8th army at Buchenwald!

Today's Date: June 8, 2012


"Toward the end we were kept in the camp and all commando's were now stopped.  I had a last outing to Weimer and found myself a bit further away from the camp than normal and came across a bombed out police station with adjoining stores.


The bombing had really shaken the house to pieces, it was full of Masonic regalia and trinkets.  This explained a lot to me, right up to the end it had been a secret masonic type house.


It turned out that a lot of our German connections had been ancient members of this organization, mostly in the police department.  The Belgians that had helped me turned out to be masons as well. 


So, the people who helped me were not all communists as some people would have liked to have made out. 


My own inclinations were very much the same after the war!!


Many of the Germans went into hiding by mixing with us and trying to prepare a place of refuge for themselves.  Richard Thalman, they were after him soon enough and just the same got him near the end.


When transports were assembled now the personal roll calls ceased, no more time for that, that is what we had waited for our time was coming.....................


The Russian guard went first, voluntarily, with the idea to jump their guard in unison, on one signal, they did just that successfully and got away with it.  At such close range, there was no way the guards could take evasive action and shoot all of us.  To accomplish such action you had to have the right people with you which I had realized all along. They offset some death transports which received the worst of it!


Instead of seeing it out with us, Wing Commander Yeo Thomas, rushed ahead which nearly cost him his life.  Later on he was picked up by an American advanced column from the many dead and dying..


The camp commandent was begging us to get out  - promising nice carriages, food etc.  Now we could smile a bit at last!
We knew we had to refuse and stand up but not before they tried to make a last attempt to get us out with all the force they had left!


Suddenly, on the loud speakers we heard a croaking voice speaking quickly and saying, Schnell!!!  Schnell!!! All to the assembly place all blocks out.  This was seven days before the eleventh of April, 1945.


No more food had come and we knew the Americans were not far off, the 8th army but not near enough yet.  Old S.S. now came storming down from the tower, their pistols in their hands, shooting wildly around them.


They were screaming, Jews first and anybody who was too slow or anybody who ran back down to hide was shot at; so we had to walk very slowly up to the hated square. Their forces were very much diminished now and that was the last show which was spread out to the most dangerous proportions. 


Together with Antonio, we carried his Dad out between us.  We were trailing along a bit too long for our own good with the old man.  He told us to let him go!  Regardless, we insisted on taking him out.  Now and then I glanced at the murdering going on!


Eventually, we joined the ranks to be counted for the last time!!!!


To be continued

Day 94 - Dispirited Prisoners! at Buchenwald!

"Also, present with me at that moment were two very frightened people from a little town in Belgium.  A town mayor and his helper, batsman I should say!  The batman was always trying to do things for the mayor instead of helping himself.

After an opulent beginning in life the mayor was now old and  starving - he failed to survive to the end of the war.  The servant died in Belgium, shortly after the end of the world, broken hearted and dispirited.  Those two were an inseparable pair.  They worked in the camp incessantly - not daring to look up from their work for a minute!

I have witnessed a pair of twins who came into the camp on adjoining transports suffer the same fate!  They both died in quarantine - dispirited and broken hearted!........

To be continued .....

Day 93 - The big bulk of the hangman was always near!

"On the occasions where something was going to happen, the big bulk of the hangman was always close by - like the evil sighting of a banshee.  On one occasion, I was not too far away from the shootings and executions.   I was in the presence of a small German criminal notary.  We were now nibbling on some of the the much looked for triangle nuts under some trees growing in the area.

The butcher hangman, now appeared, as if from no-where and told us to be quiet just before we heard shots!  He was stroking his black moustache in consternation now and had a look of deep concentration. It appeared to be a matter of the most serene ritual for him!

Who was he after all???It seemed to me to be a bit more than just a job for this man - why was he always appearing, as if from nowhere, at these moments!  Was he like a counterpart of a Fiddler on the Roof - softening the impact of tragedy????

I was sorry for the fellows when I heard the rattling, short bursts,  in quick succession, all was over them at the moment -  the bravest...............

I hoped, somehow, that my nearness would be of some help to them in their last moments -  as there was no priest amongst us!!!............

To be continued ........

Day 92 - Weimer at the Xroad of the German Retreat!

"Maybe from then on we were safer in the camp!  Mob violence was now occurring and we might encounter retreating troops or be attacked by S.S. squardrons on revenge raids,  if we ventured out of the camp boundaries!

Weimer became the crossroads of the German retreat and that is why I think the planes were concentrating on this area.  I also think that the two S.S. men, with the Volkswagon,  that I had noticed the previous day, just before the bombing, were planting something near the fence to attract attention.

I don't know what! Possiblly, something to guide the planes to a particular target.  Again, they were more likely S.O.S. then S.S. - surely they were infiltrators!  I was so convinced of it that it made me confident that the camp would be saved. 

I was thinker lesser and lesser of excaping now than before.! It wouldn't have been wise all things considered.  On the other hand, I thought, never underestimate the strength of the S.S. or their capabilities!

On the night of the twentieth to the twenty first, I felt very disturbed again !
I knew something horrible was going on, my senses were acute all the time!  I was sitting in the dining hall, talking to the nightwatchman,  While we we talking inside, the old S.S., known as, "The Hangman", crept in - we knew him by this name due to his patrols within our barracks.

At this point, he warned us not to risk ourselves that night by going outside for any reason at all!  It was the night of the horrible executions, in the cellar of the crematorium, of all the German families and plotters.  Wholesome German families and the accomplices were actually being murdered there by the S.S. for treason against Hitler.

This proved to me that they still had enough power to do what they liked and mete out their vile retribution according to blood curdling tortures.  So much the more reason for us to beware and to be ready at all times!

Wing Commandent Yeo Thomas and a contingent of a dozen British with twenty three or more French and Belgians, all S.A.S., Special Air Services.  They had come in to Buchenwald about the same time as the German families.  Most of the service men were from, The Channel Island", and fully bilingual.  Recent radio broadcasts had made it clear that they were all considered to be terrorists and agents.

I remember when they had appeared, it was  near to the end of August 1944, just after the bombing of Guzloff.  They were brought in quickly on the advance after the landings and also when Antonio appeared on the scene.

After the war!!!The film made in honor of, Wing Commander Yeo Thomas,  "Sentenced to Die", from the same book as the "White Rabbit" was shown only once and for a selected audience and then destroyed.  A  fifty thousand pound epic, Kenneth Moore was the actor who played,  Wing Commander Yeo Thomas.   Why was it abandoned? I believe because it was going to be shown around the Commonwealth then.

During the last days of Buchenwald, similar to Pompei, things followed each other in rapid succession - from the shooting of the S.A.S. inmates to the murdering of the rebellious few German plotters and their families.

To be continued ...

 

Day 91 - War and Confusion!

"We now looked upon the body of an outstretched S.S., who had been killed by a concrete slab,  jettisoned right onto his chest.  He couldn't have been more dead.  We carefully put him onto a stretcher and by alternately changing the pole bearers we carried his body away from the disaster zone.  Taking his body out of the disaster area would help safeguard us against further complications!


Further along, we eventually caught up with our guards, who were headed for the village and close to a ravine.  They asked, ""what are you carrying there?" We told them and they said, "Throw him into the ravine and good riddance".


From the ravine, civilians started appearing now in bunches.  On meeting us and the guards they looked a bit worried.  For a few moments they looked back and forward from us to the officers and eventually,  in confidence,  they said,   "You don't look like terrorists at all, the Nazi's made us believe all that crap!


We now helped them get over the last steep edge, giving them a hand to pull themselves up and out.  We were now taken back in trucks that were provided for us, all the way back to the camp.....................!


To be continued