Tag #137152 - Interview #78082 (marietta smolkova)

Then news of the fact that the Germans were losing the war began to filter through. We observed how the SS women guards were whispering among themselves, and they allowed us to put on something like an evening of culture. In short, each one of us sang or recited something, according to ability. It was really a very nice evening, and then in closing one of the girls sang a German song, it was actually this hit back then: 'Eines Tages war alles aus, es ruhten endlich die Waffen.' [One day it was all over. Finally the weapons fell silent.] I remember that during this song we were very happy and the SS women were crying. The news that was reaching us buoyed us. We also heard that a peace conference was being planned in San Francisco in February, and we said to ourselves that a peace conference could only take place after the war. We had concrete hopes and began to count a bit on surviving. But there was still a long road ahead of us.