Testimonials of Auschwitz Survivors
Florian Granek |
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English translation:
The Death March
We left the camp at around two o’clock in the morning. We were led along the road to Brzeszcz, formed into a several thousand-strong marching column, under a powerful escort of armed SS men. It was January 1945. There was a heavy frost of over minus twenty degrees.
We were led along the evacuation route in our shoddy concentration camp stripes which did nothing to protect our gaunt bodies from the wind and the frost. Along the route, the weaker prisoners were left behind at the rear of the column. Then an SS man from the escort shoved them to the side of the road and with a shot to the head, disposed of the prisoners who were slowing the march down.
Along the route, in pools of blood coagulating on the white snow, lay the dead bodies of our friends. The nightmare march intensified the uncertainty as to what was to become of us. It stripped us of all hope. The tragedy of it was that we couldn’t help the weaker ones, even though more than once we tried to.
The Gehenna march went on. In Wodzisław, on 21st January 1945, we were loaded into open, unroofed coal wagons, one hundred people to a wagon. After seven days without food, without anything to drink, lashed by the frost and the wind, we arrived at the camp in Nordhausen. My drama and battle to survive lasted for over three more months.
On 6th May 1945, I was liberated by the American Army. I was saved.