דן הדני

One day we arrived at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. The prisoners of the camp were mixed, from many European countries. There were prisoners from Russia, Poland Ukrainians and French. I connected with a mixed group of Poles and Russians. They considered me one of them. I was not considered as a Jew.

 

 Few days later, the German SS men who command the camp announced suddenly, outside of normal hours, a general order. They gathered all the thousands of prisoners on the main Order place, and gave us an order to stand in fives. Immediately after, in the first order, all the Jews were ordered to take one step forward outside the fives. I didn't hesitate for a moment, I stepped out. My gentile friends, I was standing with, were shocked. They thought, I was one of them. I was not considered to be a Jew. The group attacked me with insults and curses.

 

The SS men rounded us up outside the general order of the camp. I thought, that were about 3000 Jews there. I noticed someting unusual. With the group of the SS leaders, stood a man together with the commanders of the German camp. At some point, he left them, and stood aside. He was without military uniform but was well dressed. His leather boots he wore and his leather clothes. His battledress and in particular his leather trousers.

 

When all the Jews were standing outside the general order, the man approached and stood in front of us. Studently, he began to speak to us in Yiddish fluently. I hardly could hear what he said. But everyone understood that he was informing us that we will be be treated better. We thought that he said something, that our group will be replaced by heavy trucks. I asked one who was standing next  to me, he also said that he didn't understand what it was about.

 

After his speech, the man disappeared. Then, we started walking for about an hour until we reached a forest. I thought an SS unit was waiting with machine guns for us here. Luckily for us, high walls with a huge gate suddenly appeared in the forest. We approached a huge gate. After a while, the gate was open. In the early morning hours, we have enter into a place which the entrance and the opposite site had a 7-8 meter high wall. On both of other sides of the place we could see a huge storage houses.

 

Until now, we have not received any food or drink. When the last of the group entered, the entrance gate closes automatically. The place became cramped from the amount of people it contained. After all, we were about 3000 people. We didn't know why we were here. Various thoughts went through my mind. At first, I thought that this is where they would kill us.

 

In the late afternoon, the doors of one of the barracks were opened. Suddenly we saw that the giant store belong to UNRA. We didn't know exactly what it was. We were ordered to stand in line, then they started giving us a blanket and 2 packages of UNRA package. One package was of 5 kg. and the second of 3 kg. When they finished giving us the two boxes, they informed us that they will give us one more package, of 3 kg. The total weight of all the supplies we received was over 11 kilos.

 

When we opened the packages, we saw that contains cans, cigarettes and a variety of other things. Obviously, these things were very dangerous for people starving hunger as we did.

 

Carrying such a weight was quite impossible for us. Many of us were malnourished. Mostly skeletons. There were quite a few who attacked the canned food and ate excessively. In the UNRA boxes we received, there was no bread only very little of crackers. There was barely one small box of biscuits. These packages caused death to many victims. The disease of dysentery, diarrhea, spread rapidly.

 

One product in the box was very positive for us, these were the American cigarette boxes that were in every food box. We honored with a cigarette the Wehrmacht soldier, who was guarding us near the open door of the wagon. We started feeling a lighter hand of the German rule.

 

 

 

 

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