“So they were terribly weak, the prisoners, just waiting for the signal to go off and they can get their lunch in a canteen. All those hungry prisoners were terribly glad to be able to eat. So they ran. But my husband, as his legs were bad, he could not run and fell down. Because they unwillingly ran into him and he fell down on the ground. About four of them jumped over him and the others were just stepping on him. Then he could not get up at all and finally got to the hospital.”
“And then, when the end of war was coming, they began to pick all prisoners, well almost all of them to march, it was called the death march. And the doctor left a few ill prisoners behind, he let them stay. There he spoke to a doctor, they were both very glad to know each other and had something to talk about and maybe, when he had to choose amongst the prisoners, so… he had a certain quota of those that remained in the hospital. Of course he went to the death march too, the doctor did. Mirek was terribly sorry about the fact he got free and his new friend had to go.”
“He and several prisoners experienced the liberation. They came to the canteen to get food, I think they were served raw potatoes, so they felt ill, some of them very ill, but meanwhile the liberators moved on as they had to fight. The war was not over yet. And someone called then: ‚Germans are coming back!‘ And that was like a gunshot. They waited for nothing and all prisoners started running away from the lager. So they got to Berlin to a private house, where no one lived at the time, they were ten. And then the Russian liberators came there. They all said they were concentration prisoners, each of them had to present themselves and my husband had a name Schmidt, Mirko Schmidt. ‚You are German! Show us the tattoo!‘ They all had numbers tattooed on their arms. But my husband had none as he got to concentration lager at the last minute. He got there in winter 1944. He got a number, but didn’t have a tattoo and that was a bad luck. They´d have get rid of him. But luckily he was not alone, but together with other prisoners who witnessed for him...”
Mirko Schmidt was born on 18 March, 1920 in Turčianský Svätý Martin (todays Martin) in a numerous evangelic family, which gave him a strong devotion to god for the rest of his life. He apprenticed an electro mechanic, the following studies at the technical school were interrupted by the war. After the Slovak National Uprising broke out in August 1944 he volunteered as an activist to the rebels at the Regional Revolutionary National Committee (RONV) in anti-fascist town of Martin. Here he helped in news coverage, distributing manifests and the town reinforcement. Just before German fascists took conquered the town he ran to Banská Bystrica, where the rebels from occupied regions were evacuated. After returning to Martin, where he hid before the Nazis and Hlinka´s guard he was captured by the members of SD (news coverage SS and NSDAP) on 6 December and he was deported to the Sachsenhausen working lager. Despite many troubles he managed to survive amongst very few and on 24 April, 1945 he experienced the lager liberation. He survived due to his injury, malnutrition and affection of a doctor, who left him hospitalised and didn’t send him to the death march. After war Mirko Schmidt graduated and began devoting himself to theatre. In 1951 he married an actress Olga, née Holečková, and they settled down together in Prague, where he worked since 1954 until retirement as an editor and a presenter in the Czechoslovak Radio. He died in 2012.
