The last few months, as the end approached, the Germans grew very afraid of the Soviets. They began spreading rumors that they would burn the whole camp to ashes if the Russians came. They stepped up the selections. Those who were sick, who couldn't walk, or who didn't get up for the morning roll call, were sent straight to the chimney.

In January or February 1945, the Germans accepted an agreement of the Geneva Convention which allowed the International Red Cross to take sick people from the camp, but only those whom the Germans allowed to go. Big school busses appeared to collect a few people. Again, you needed some connections or you had to be a prominent person. I remember they let out some Norwegians, a few professionals, and people of well-known families. This was very good because those people would survive and might say something after the war. I never thought I would live to tell this story myself. I never once dreamed I would be in the West telling this story. So it was very important that the people who understood the situation be the first to go out and tell the world how it was. I think maybe five hundred people left for Norway during February, March and April of 1945.

Then the day came when the Germans told us that anyone who couldn't walk would be left behind, and they'd burn everything. Everyone who could walk would go with them. They agreed to leave the old and sick with a few people who said they would care for them, but those of us who were working didn't know about this. We started walking.

First, the officers and higher officials vanished--escaped altogether. Some of the others took off their uniforms and put on our camp clothes so they wouldn't be recognized. But this didn't help. Many of them now had to face the revenge of women they had mistreated, and it was very, very bad. The Russian women were the worst. I saw with my own eyes Russian women attack a Nazi officer. They took him into the bushes, tortured, and killed him right away. They knew nobody would say anything.

It was April 1945, and we were walking across Germany to the west. The only Germans with us were the low-ranking soldiers and their dogs. The entire highway was clogged with people; it was so crowded that you were in a line moving in one direction, impossible to change.

The Germans took us by military roads, past fields where there were frequent aerial attacks. It was the last days of the war. The earth rumbled and shook beneath our feet, like being on the ocean, and it all made such a big noise. We walked and walked, from maybe the 20th of April until the 3rd of May.

I remember that day very well. It was rainy and dark when we came to a small city not far from the ocean. We could go no further because night was coming on. I had a very big headache from my bad teeth, and nothing warm to wear. I found a big warm shawl, dirty of course, but I picked it up and put it on. We were in one long line in the road, a thousand people, more or less. German people came, bringing us vegetables or fruit to eat, whatever they had. We asked where we were, what was happening. They told us that the Russian and American armies were about to meet here. And indeed during the night an historic moment occurred: the Germans surrendered. We could see and hear the weapons being thrown down. An enormous bonfire of these weapons burned until morning. Many people were crying, "Thank God, they are finished with this war." But others were not so happy about it, yelling "We'll come back!" A few were like that, not giving up their weapons, but shooting themselves, patriotically.

The German soldiers were still with us. They went over to the American officers saying to them, "We are bringing these people to you from jail."

"From jail?"

"We are political prisoners," replied some of the old women the Germans brought along because they could speak fluent English.

"All these women!" The Americans could hardly believe it. They prepared an empty school building for us with beautiful, nice, fresh straw all over the floor, and for the first time, we finally slept a night in warmth, under a roof. It felt wonderful.

Now we were free to go wherever we wished. Some women went directly to Hamburg, fifty kilometers to the north, where there were boats waiting and the passage was free. But I had my two sisters and mother at home. I had been away so long, I didn't know what had happened at Sandomierz. Were they all right? What had happened to the town? My father had been dead since the first year of the war; as the elder sister I felt responsible. I joined a group going to Poland.

I walked with them toward my home until the end of May. We had no money. For food, we went from house to house. One day we came to a house that looked empty, but in the dining room we found a family of six Germans sitting in their chairs. Everyone was dead; they had slit their wrists.

At first it was a large group of about fifteen women walking together to Poland. We had no leader. As we got closer to our homes we split off into smaller and smaller groups going in different directions. Being women walking at that time was very difficult because the territory we crossed was entirely under Russian occupation. Every afternoon we looked for a place to barricade ourselves in for the night.

I was not very brave. I was a chicken, really hiding, and nothing happened to me, but many were not so lucky. The Russian soldiers were just like animals when they were drunk, and they were always drunk.

My last ride into Sandomierz was on the evening of May 28th, on the roof of a train filled with coal. The station is across the Vistula River from the town, and the bridge is very long, but I walked across as if I had wings on my arms.

For the previous six months I had heard nothing from my family. Before that my mother had been allowed to send a small monthly food package to Ravensbruck. Sometimes I received it, sometimes I didn't. I also sent her a letter. Of course the letter only said that everything was beautiful and nice, that I was working and healthy, which was all we were allowed to write. But at least they knew I was alive, and I knew they were alive. However, for half that year their area on the Vistula River had become the front, and I had heard nothing from them.

When I arrived at the house, my aunt and her two girls were there, but my mother was at evening Mass. I ran to meet her. You can imagine how it was, the first time we met. Of course, everybody was crying.

They washed me, fed me, gave me everything. I related my whole story from the time of my arrest. I told them everything. My mother looked at me. Later she came to the bathroom to help me wash my back, staying with me a long time. Finally she stood before me and said, "I know you are telling the truth. I know you were there, but nevertheless, it is unbelievable."

When I told the story again to everybody around the table--friends, neighbors, people coming and going, whoever would stop to listen--nobody could believe it. It was impossible to believe.

In Ottawa I was once asked to tell my story at a symposium. It was the first time in my life that I spoke before an audience and with my poor English, I was trembling. When I finished, a young man asked: "Why did you help while so many other people from Poland did not?" "How can I answer for the whole nation?" I said, "I can only answer for myself." He and his parents were Polish Jews living now in Toronto who had had terrible experiences during the war. I told them that I can not answer even for my closest neighbor, but I could say, thank God, my sister helped as I did.

Now I am able to tell this story, but during the war it was not so easy; it was very hard. I could always feel my heart squeezing, not knowing what was going to happen in the next five minutes. It was like being in a cage with vicious dogs. I never had time to analyze why I did these things, or that maybe I shouldn't. I had no time for that. I knew that more people should have been helping, but I realize that others may not have had as much strength, or as much help as I had from my mother. From the beginning, she told us that if we can, we must help others; we can't all hide under the pillow. If she had said no to what I was doing, or had started to cry, maybe I wouldn't have done it. I just don't know. But I didn't have that kind of situation. I was fortunate.

Barbara Szymanska Makuch gave this interview at her home in Montreal, Canada in 1986,. She currently resides in Sandomierz, Poland.

Go to HALINA SZYMANKSKA'S Story

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