Josef Dvořák

“We arrived at night. There was yelling: ´Alles raus!´ Some got hit with rifle butts. I didn’t, fortunately. We had to assemble in rows of five and we walked on a paved road, it was at night, and there were lamps from both sides, and yelling: ´Those who get out of the line will be shot!´ I don’t know for how long we walked. We saw only darkness around us, and the light from lamps which were aimed directly at us. The only thing we saw in the light were the lines of SS men. There were SS barracks located opposite the concentration camp. There were young SS men who now got out with their German shepherds. They had trained German shepherds who had to find prisoners who attempted to hide somewhere when they escaped, which was a desperate act. We reached a wide open space. We saw prisoners in striped uniforms running there. I thought: ´Is this some mental asylum or what is it?´ Some people who were there talked to us and we learnt that we were in a concentration camp. We had to stand in line, and they were gradually taking us to a wooden barrack where there were tens of showers inside. We showered in hot and then in cold water. They had shaved our heads completely before that. Then we put on the prisoners’ uniforms.”

“There was the Stehkomando for those who were weak and didn’t work. All prisoners later had to work, even those who were basically on the brink of death. They had to stand there, and nobody was allowed to sit down. When we marched, there were always some SS men around in the camp, and one SS man allegedly had one prisoner do an exercise. He kept ordering him: ´Run, get down, get up, get down, get up.´ Things like that. This did not happen to our block, but to people from another block. One man from the block sat down, and therefore everybody from the Stehkomando had to line up there and it was freezing. The temperature was thirty-two below zero. They had been standing there for about an hour before we came there. The SS men then remembered us. We had to line up, too, and stand there. We had gotten some mittens made from artificial fibre. My hands froze in them. I don’t know for how long we stood there. They would drag somebody away every once in a while. Persons who froze to death or fell down. One hundred prisoners allegedly died that day. About forty prisoners were dying every day during that winter. They were bringing prisoners in and not releasing anybody.”

“He was a political prisoner. I don’t remember his name anymore. There was the Strafkolone – punitive column. They were bringing in fine sand to cover a swamp and they were running back and forth. He probably had some green helpers there (talking probably about imprisoned criminals who were marked with a green triangle – auth.’s note). He himself was a political prisoner. He turned this workplace into a separate ancillary concentration camp, so that the guards would not have to walk there. There were watchtowers around and it became a small concentration camp. He became the lageralter, the camp elder, the leader. Later, some skullduggery occurred there, and he was called off from his position as the leader and he was sent back to the camp. The camp leaders in the concentration camp already knew about it. How did they learn about it? They knew that he was coming back, and they informed their communists and social democrats, who knew what people he had killed in the Strafkolone. The people were being sent to the Strafkolone for punishment, and so they knew about it in advance. The former leader was sent to the same block where he had been before. The evening roll call was now over and they were returning to their block. All of a sudden all went out and only a few men remained inside. They had agreed on it beforehand. One told him: ´You have killed my friend. You have killed this and that man.´ There is a rope and a bouquet of flowers for you.´ They went out and he hanged himself. That’s what we learnt there.”