My Dad’s narrative continued:
"After a few weeks we were told that we could go home, but under the escort of the Germans, and we had to sign a consent for it. I did not want to sign it because I was afraid to expose myself to German authorities. So I didn’t leave with the first shipment as many did. I stayed for at least two more months. The conditions were really bad and we were hungry every day. It was during that time that something interesting happened.
I was told to go to the central office, which I did escorted to by one guard. There they showed me a packet which came from Marseille. I didn’t know anybody in that city, but yes someone had sent it to me. However the guard told me that he couldn’t deliver it to me because I already was receiving a daily portion of food. What happened is that every day, before we received our daily portion, one of the guards would come and bring some fruits which he was selling to those of us who still had some money. Later on we figured out that the camp administration was paying for those goods with government money, and selling it to us! So we decided never ever to buy anything again, which we started doing the very next day. When the guard in charge figured out that we were very adamant about it, and that we knew about the whole operation, he just dropped everything on the ground and never tried to sell it to us again.
So, back to the parcel I got in the mail, the officer didn’t want to give it to me. I told him that in such a case I insisted that he destroyed the whole thing in front of me immediately, which he didn’t want to do because he probably wanted to keep it for himself and take it home. Thus, after a while he finally agreed and gave me the packet. I was so weak at that time that I couldn’t carry the packet; so another officer helped me and carried it for me back to my place. The packet had close to 20 kg of good food, which helped me much to recover from the typhus I had had.
There were some Catholic priests with us kept as prisoners. May be as many as 30 of them in our camp. One day the main priest in town, the Bishop, invited them to his place, and actually told them to come back the next day and he would give them lots of food and other goods. It happened, though, that they also had signed up to leave for Germany the next day. So one of them, who I was friends with, told me to go to that place the next day and get some food. He actually gave me a priest certificate and told me to present myself as being a priest. When I presented my “certificate” to the guards at the camp, they started to treat me better. I was enjoying that “being a priest” business… The guards made a truck available to me, so that I could bring more goods to the camp. When I came back it looked almost like a party at the camp, with the abundant food I had brought. Priesthood was a new experience for me…, but I sure “endured” it very well!...After all, it was very good for my stomach…
The camp was at the beach, but we were not allowed to go into the water. There was a fence separating us from the sea. But in a few weeks the fence was removed and we could finally have a bath. A salted bath. But after months of having no bath at all, it was great to go every day and jump into that water. One day there was a great storm and without considering the danger I went to swim in the sea again, when suddenly I realized that I was not able to get out of the water. It seemed that a current was pulling me out. People wanted to help me, but couldn’t and I was in great danger at that moment. After much fighting with the waves, I finally made it back to the shore and got out.
It was time to go home, but I didn’t want to sign that paper agreeing to the German escort. It was then when a Jew came to me and told me that he didn’t want to sign it either. So we made our plan: I would sign his paper and he would sign mine, and this way nobody could ever prove that we actually signed it. Once we had no personal documents, when they called us by name we just switched and signed each other’s paper. I became Peter Wolf for a few days... It worked, and soon we were traveling back home across occupied France, in a slow trip changing trains very often. After a while we came to Vijay, where the German police was waiting for us, but they would refuse to help those who were Russians, Czechs, and Polish. They would send those back. Since I spoke German fluently, I just didn’t identify myself as a Czech but rather as a German… They interrogated me asking where in Germany I was from. I told them I was from Berlin, since I knew that town well and could produce details if needed. And sure enough, they asked me where in Berlin I lived, what school I attended, etc. I passed the test with no problem. I was going to be sent back to Berlin. So I was finally included in the group of Germans that would be sent to Paris and then to Germany. Those officers were actually embarrassed and concerned with the fact that a German citizen was kept in a concentration camp that was under German administration…
In Paris we were put in a kind of hotel, and given new shoes and some clothes. The worst had always been the hunger that we had to suffer for many months. Even in Paris we still didn’t have enough food. Soon we discovered that at the train stations there were some eateries that gave food to poor and homeless people. So we just went from one to another of those places and got some food. The hotel where we were staying was managed by German soldiers, and one day they called us all and said that they had heard that some of us had been getting meals at those eateries and that it was not allowed, and that we were eating the equivalent to six meals each time. We explained to him that we actually had a hunger equivalent to six people. But we had to stop that to avoid complications. Soon we became friends with the cooks (French people) at our own place and they would give us a little more food each time. It was still difficult, but we were all on our way back home and we knew that the nightmare had finished. We stayed in Paris for about one week. After a long period without any shoes, now I had gotten a pair of shoes, which helped me to walk throughout the city, thus getting acquainted with that town. Yes, I had been walking barefoot for a long time…
After that week in Paris we were put on a train and sent “back home to Berlin.”. What a happy time that was! We were going home. But…, my home was not in Berlin, it was in Belgium, so I still had to figure out how to manage that situation - of being a German without being a German, and going back home but not to Berlin…. When we arrived in Luxembourg we were again put in a small shelter for a few days, waiting for what would be the next step. This was right before Christmas. Then I was put in a train going to Berlin, but a few minutes after departure, and in the middle of the night, I jumped off that train - after all, I was not going to Berlin. I went back to the train station and tried to get in a train to Belgium, but I was detained by the German police. There were other people going to Belgium that were detained as well. But, after talking more closely to one of the officers, some of us promised him that we would come back within a week if he allowed us to go to Belgium for Christmas. He finally gave in and let us go. I felt like going home for good. Of course I never went back. After a few hours in a train I reached Liége, where we had lived before. However, my memory was so bad at that time, after so many months in a concentration camp in those horrible conditions, that I couldn’t remember where we were actually living after that. I didn’t know if my wife and the children were still alive, nor did I know if they were still living at the same place! But after a while I found my way and made it back to where we lived. Nobody can imagine the feeling of hoping to be reunited with the family after those seven horrible months.
But then… before being able to make it through the door at my home, a major problem got in my way. I will explain it in the next segment."
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