The recording was created as part of the project „Preservation, Development, Digitalization, and Promotion of the PIASA Collections – Stage V,” co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.
Nagranie powstało w ramach zadania: „Zabezpieczenie, opracowanie, digitalizacja i promocja zbiorów PIASA – etap V”. Dofinansowano ze środków Ministra Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej.
From My Memoirs:
The Last Days
The end of April 1945 is approaching. The German extermination camp in Mauthausen is swelling with an overflow of new transports. Every day, transports of human phantoms, ravaged by hunger and disease, drag themselves in. There is no more space in Mauthausen; we sleep four to a single bunk. So they drive people further to Gusen, but since there is no room there either, they are sent back to Mauthausen. The road back and forth is strewn with the corpses of those exhausted by hunger and the march, mercilessly finished off by the SS guards.
In the camp, hunger and disease reign. In the first camp, they still give out sugar beet pulp once a day, but even that is not for everyone. The rest receive almost nothing, for hot dirty water cannot be called soup. In the second and third camps, piles of corpses lie unburied, as there is no one left to bury them. At night, like jackals in the desert, the shadows of prisoners creep toward these human remains to practice cannibalism. These are mostly Soviet prisoners from distant Asian provinces, though there are others as well—those who try to quell their hunger in this way just to survive until liberation.
And liberation seems so close that one could almost throw a stone at it, yet at the same time, it remains so far—unattainable! On the right bank of the Danube, turmoil rages day and night; the American forces, aside from gunfire, have not attempted for weeks to cross to the left bank to free the tens of thousands of people in Mauthausen and nearby Gusen. Work in the aircraft factory has already ended; we still descend into the “Vienna mines” quarries to build anti-tank barriers. “Vienna mines” – the Vienna granite mines! How much more fitting it would be to call you the “Vienna graves,” for indeed, they have become the graves and eternal resting place for hundreds of thousands of victims of both the First and Second World Wars.
On April 30, 1945, at 10 p.m., the camp authorities ordered an alleged evacuation. In reality, as the camp commandant Ziereiss later testified, we were to be driven into tunnels carved into the quarry rocks to be exterminated or blown up. After long hours filled with tension and fear, an order came to return to the barracks. The camp commandant feared that some of the guards would refuse to carry out the order and abandoned the plan. For now, we were saved.
On May 1, 1945, a police unit from Vienna took over the camp guard as the SS guards withdrew or were sent to the front. White flags were hung on the camp gates, and each of us felt that the war and our suffering were coming to an end. But would we have the strength to survive the final hours of hunger and captivity? Soviet prisoners began to threaten: ”Wait, wait, tomorrow the Russians will come, and then we’ll deal with you”. These were not empty threats — if the camp were taken by Soviet forces, many people would not regain their freedom, being labeled as enemies of the people.
The American troops remained on the right bank of the Danube, showing no willingness to cross to the left. Even the artillery fire had completely died down. In this uncertainty, on the afternoon of May 5, 1945, people sitting on the camp walls began to shout: „Tanks! American tanks!” People went mad—they cried, laughed, and screamed: „Freedom! Freedom!” The camp gates opened, and three American tanks rolled onto the roll-call square. Soldiers jumped out, and the horde of doomed prisoners no longer shouted or sang—they roared with an almost insane voice. At last, they had lived to see freedom.
In one of the bunkers, seven American airmen, shot down over Mauthausen, were being held. One of the soldiers found his own brother among them. He lifted the half-alive skeleton into his arms and carried him to the tank, weeping—he had saved him at the very edge of human endurance. After a few hours, the tanks left, without leaving any guards behind. Bands of German men still roamed the area. We were defenseless, left to fate. A camp militia was formed for protection, but what kind of defense could it offer with only a few abandoned rifles left by the fleeing guards—without even any ammunition? If a crazed, vengeful SS gang stormed in, not a single soul would remain alive after liberation.
Finally, night passed—a night full of fear and uncertainty about what fate had in store for us in these final hours. During the day, in this lawless void, the camp became a scene of judgment day. After a few hours of relative calm, scores were settled among the prisoners. A hunt began for the kapos – the supervisors and their assistants — just days ago, they were the masters of life and death, yet they were slaves like us. They were beaten, trampled, and their tattered bodies were dragged across the cobblestones and gutters. It was the prisoners’ reckoning for the torture and murder of innocent victims of German barbarism.
After a few hours of massacre, a unit of American infantry arrived and pacified the enraged crowd. Once again, Poles and Russians were placed behind barbed wire, isolated from the rest of the camp—ostensibly because they had instigated the lynching. But this was merely a pretext. The real reason was the demand of Soviet liaison officers, who, citing the Yalta Agreement, insisted that Polish and Russian citizens be forcibly handed over to the authorities of their respective countries. The Russians were given up, but we were saved by an order from the Supreme Allied Commander, General Eisenhower, stating that Poles could only return voluntarily—no one could be forced.
Meanwhile, the remnants of the crematoria continued to perish, lacking any medical care, for no one had thought of it. The bodies of those exhausted by disease no longer had the strength to fight for life. It was a dreadful sight: a still-living human skeleton lay on the ground, trembling hands trying to eat corn gruel drizzled with margarine, dying over that bowl—unaware that he was dying free.
The recording was created as part of the project „Preservation, Development, Digitalization, and Promotion of the PIASA Collections – Stage V,” co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.
Nagranie powstało w ramach zadania: „Zabezpieczenie, opracowanie, digitalizacja i promocja zbiorów PIASA – etap V”. Dofinansowano ze środków Ministra Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej.