Michael Kraus gelesen von Chris Pichler

Gunskirchen

It was probably April 28th when we dragged ourselves along, in terrible shoes with nails sticking into our feet, through the heat, past the quarries—the dreaded Mauthausen quarries! How many camps had we seen here, how many prisoners lugging rocks? What was our destination? Wels!

Walking Again

It was noon when we trudged again through the small town of Mauthausen. What did it look like now? It looked like everywhere else we had passed through—ragged soldiers, volunteer guards, more soldiers, camouflaged vehicles, horses and tanks. Most were members of the German army air force (Wehrmacht Luft). We waited a while on one side of a railway bridge across the Danube. Then, in groups of one hundred, we crossed to the other bank and then marched on through small villages and towns. The heat was terrible, and we were scarcely given time to rest. Then chaos set in; the groups of one hundred got mixed up and formations fell apart. Yet, with soldiers everywhere, there was no thought of escape. We pressed forward through the heat in our bad shoes. The guards, too, were tired because they were all elderly members of the local police, mainly Viennese. They talked to us and were quite pleasant. The leader of the entire transport kept coming by, urging us to walk faster. There were SS troops in the rear who occasionally shot the poor stragglers who could go no further.

I remember that journey quite vividly, the villages teeming with soldiers, the ridiculous youngsters in uniforms, the tanks, the artillery, the vehicles, the exhausted lines of prisoners in striped uniforms. At every water pump we greedily gulped down cold water. And on we went! The many places we passed through, the many stories and events that happened, are engraved in my memory. We walked on, even when the entire landscape became shrouded in darkness and the moon popped into the sky. On we went!

It was about eleven o’clock at night when the procession slowly came to a halt and we waited on the road for our turn to get food. The food was not bad. Soup and a piece of bread with margarine, something we hadn’t seen for a long time.

It was dark everywhere. The field kitchens had probably been set up in a large farm. They then herded us to a fenced meadow where we lay down in the wet grass and, in spite of the cold and dampness, we soon gave in to sleep. After all, we were exhausted! We were on our way again before the sun was up. The field kitchen went ahead of us so we would have some soup in the evening. At noon we received a small piece of bread.

On and on we walked. We spent the next night in Weißkirchen; again we slept in a meadow near a small forest. In the evening we got soup, in the morning a piece of bread, then we continued walking for the third day. It started to rain, to pour! The pace quickened. The march required our last remaining energy.

Wels. From the hilltop, as we approached the town, it looked fairly large. Everywhere there were encampments with Red Cross military field hospitals and destroyed houses. We crossed a long bridge over a filthy river. It rained steadily. We walked through the town and kept on going. Where were they taking us. We left the town and walked on. When would this march end?

We were looking forward now to at least some decent accommodation where we could dry out, receive food and sleep in comfort after the difficult, exhausting march. Not many from the tent camp had made it this far. How many lay dead among the tents, how many had died along the road to this place, and how many were still dropping dead on the muddy road?

We turned off the road onto a muddy path into the woods.

Disappointment

It was still raining. We were drenched to the bone. We staggered through puddles and mud on a path through a dense forest. Here and there was a primitive cabin, with tanks and soldiers standing nearby. There were even airplanes hidden here. The forest began to thin out. We approached log cabins surrounded by guards. Was this supposed to be a camp? It was awful!

Was this the camp? Impossible! Crowded together, we sat on the bare floor. Soon we were asleep—without food, soaked, terribly disappointed.

Yes, this was the camp of the dead, forgotten among the trees of a dense forest, without air and without sun. Huge puddles surrounded the barracks. In the back, a primitive latrine, that was all.

There were Hungarians everywhere. They fought and quarreled; a terrible scum.

Our hopes for a better camp vanished. Shouting awakened us. We went outside for the morning roll call among the trees. Our teeth were chattering with the cold. I stood there with Míša Grünwald under a wet, torn blanket. We were both ill and we were beginning to lose hope of surviving, yet so near the end!

The memory of my mother commanded me to endure. I thought she would surely survive and that without me she would not be happy. Endure! These were terrible, hopeless moments in the forest, among the puddles, where the sun did not shine and where even in summer it was cold. This went on for ten days—ten terrible days.

The nights were awful and so were the days. By day we either sat in the barracks (our place was at the entrance, so that everyone coming and going kicked and shoved us) or staggered through puddles in that little piece of forest. And at night! No one could sleep on this narrow piece of ground, on this wet earth, with nothing to cover us. We trembled with cold. There was not enough room.

Anyone who was sicker than the others was thrown out into the rain where, unable to move, he would die within a few days, or would drown after having been thrown into a puddle. That’s how terrible it was there. Several times during the night, these poor wretches were tossed out over our heads. I remember that Harry Kraus wanted to take the shoes off one of them.

It was hopeless. We wept from the hopelessness, the cold and the hunger. The pouring rain soaked everything, and the sun never shone.

Red Cross Parcels

What kind of food did we get? Once a day, we got a little soup, no more. Otherwise nobody cared for us. Several times a day the SS would drive out the stronger men by hitting them or firing their guns, to bury the corpses. There was no water here. For several thousand people, only a single demijohn of water was brought daily. It wasn’t even enough for drinking! Everybody had lice crawling over their bodies. It was awful.

I could only pray and hope. That was my defense. The memory of my mother strengthened me; the memory of my father told me to survive and take revenge.

Then something happened that was the most crushing of all, mentally: the arrival of parcels from the Red Cross. They were meant for all the children up to the age of fifteen.

They were meant to be handed out the next day.

We rushed to the kitchen. But the SS confiscated the parcels and only a few fortunate ones managed to take some food away, but they became sick after eating the delicacies.

One of them, a Slovak boy, slept with us. He was so sick he had to lie down the whole time and had terrible diarrhea. It was really foolish. For weeks he had hardly eaten anything and now he was drinking condensed milk and eating chocolate.

We waited to get the parcels but our turn never came. I cannot describe the awful moments, the terrible craving for something sweet, and the hunger. I cannot describe it. You have to experience it yourself to possibly understand it.

Some were driven mad and kept going to the kitchen. Some of them were shot; others were beaten up.