Statement

written with Mr. Evžen Schönfeld, born 11. 8. 1925, resident of Praha-Bubeneč, Belcrediho 465, student dormitory, Jewish nationality, profession student of medicine, former prisoner of the Auschwitz/Birkenau, Warschau, Dachau, and Mühldorf-Waldlager V and VI concentration camps.

In May 1944, I was deported from Mukačevo to Birkenau, where, fortunately, I stayed for only 4 days. After the selection process I was sent on a labor transport, and they took us to Warsaw. They housed us in brick buildings, about 350 of us per building. Compared to other camps, the housing here was better. We worked in the former ghetto, clearing away the rubble. It was hard work and the food was poor. Only ½ kg of bread and two soups per day. Work was supervised by the SS from 5 in the morning to 6 in the evening with an hour-long break at noon. Roll call was at 4 in the morning and at 6 in the evening. Nighttime silence started at 9 in the evening. Our clothes were horrible. We were issued summer prison garb, which we wore even when we worked in the rain. One day, a lockdown was initiated. We had to stand for the roll call and the Lagerführer let those who didn’t feel strong enough to survive a 100 km foot march step aside. These people were then shot. In fact, everyone in the sick bay was shot as well. Then they gave us some bread, filled us into lines of 5, and we marched. (About 300 people stayed behind in Warsaw to clean up after us. When the ghetto rose up, some of these individuals were beaten to death, and some managed to escape). After we had been walking for about 120 km, we reached Kutno. We walked 30-35 km a day. It was July and incredibly hot. There wasn’t enough food and they didn’t give us any water. People collapsed from thirst, and when we arrived at a body of water not everybody got to drink, because the SS wouldn’t allow it. Here, SS-men killed 2 people, one of them my best friend. They shot him, and, when they saw that he was still alive, they ordered him to be tossed into the water. He was thrown into the water by two kapos. We walked on. We suffered horribly from thirst, and we didn’t know what to do. Once, when we stopped for a moment, we started digging in the earth with our spoons out of desperation. We were lucky. We struck water about 50 cm below the surface. We could finally drink. Others followed our example and soon the camp was full of small pits, out which the thirsty people drank. They didn’t give us any food, but we didn’t even think about that, because our thirst was much greater. In Kutno, we waited in the rain on an open field for two days for a train. When the train finally arrived, they loaded all 90 of us into a single closed cattle car and made us sit along the two sides of the car. The middle was reserved for 2 guards and two kapos. Everyone had to sit down. Whoever didn’t sit was shot. It was unbearably hot. Our clothes, laundry, and blankets had dried up completely in the car and we were gasping for air. People who became sick were shot and their bodies were thrown from the train. We rode for 5 days and finally arrived in Dachau. They left us here for about a week and then took us to Mühldorf, Waldlager V. We were housed in paper tents, 30 per tent and we were packed in so tightly that we couldn’t sleep at night. There was one blanket for every two 2 people. We had no water to drinkor towash ourselves with, they only brought us water for cooking. We were building an airplane factory. For 12 hours a day with no breaks, we carried cement and never even went back to the camp for lunch. There was a day and night shift, and at the end of every week we switched from one to the other. We didn’t get any clean clothes, there was no water for washing, and so it was not surprising when we all got lice, which only multiplied until we were covered in millions of them. There wasn’t enough food and, over time, there was even less and less of it. In the final days, we only got a little soup — dirty water with potato scraps floating in it. So many people died, every day 20-30 of us perished. Every 14 days more transports arrived from the main concentration camp. There were cases when people were killed while they worked, when they were too weak to work any longer.

When we were liberated, we left about 3,000 dead people behind.

After the liberation, the files of all the prisoners who went through the camp were kept by Ing. Stefan Pál, who was the Lagerschreiber. He probably went back to Budapest, where he worked as a mining engineer in the Tata coal mines before he was deported. The last time we were together was in the sanatorium in Exberg, where he had the files with him.

The Lagerführer’s name was Everle 1Note 1: Sebastian Eberl. He held the rank of Oberscharführer SS.

Spievek, a Jewish captain from Chicago, came here from America after the liberation. He exhumed the bodies and had them buried at the cemetery in Mühldorf.

Signature:

Schönfeld Evžen

Statement accepted by:

B. Gerzonová

Signature of witnesses:

2 Note 2: Unreadable

On behalf of the Documentation Campaign:

16. 9. 1945

Scheck

On behalf of the archive:

Alex. Schmiedt