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It's my guess that we must've gotten into a sector where Russians had been before. The night we arrived, there was a huge orange tent standing there. It reminded me of a circus tent. We were separated from it by barbed wire. All of Bergen-Belsen was divided up into various sectors by barbed wire. Individual parts were also then divided up into smaller parts. So between us and this tent there was a smaller fence. Smaller in comparison to the ones that separated the sectors. Well, and when the roll call took place, they'd eliminated the entire tent along with the Russians. There wasn't anything at all there anymore.
At first they were giving us black coffee and square bread that was as black as coal. A ration of this bread was about 35 cm, and was about 3 cm thick. Gradually the rations grew smaller. The last month, they were almost nonexistent! Then we also got soup made from fodder beets, with pieces of poor-quality meat or skin floating in it. At first you couldn't eat it. In order to get used to it, you had to "train". Occasionally you'd even find a spud in this "soup". The soup became gradually thinner and more meager. At first they stopped putting spuds into it, and finally also the "meat". They stopped giving us coffee after three months. For Christmas and New Year, instead of that disgusting soup, we got two or three potatoes cooked in their skin, and red cabbage.
We were in Bergen-Belsen from the end of October up until its liberation [15th April 1945 – Editor's note]. It lasted 7 months. Not far from our blockhouse, to the east, was another, empty one. The blockhouses were separated from each other by a fence and gate. Around the third or fourth day after our arrival, a transport of women arrived there. It wasn't until then that we saw what kind of shape people who'd been in concentration camps since 1942 were in. They looked horrible. They were more dead than alive. They were so starved that they ate everything we didn't eat. I have to emphasize that in the beginning we weren't used to such food.
At first they were giving us black coffee and square bread that was as black as coal. A ration of this bread was about 35 cm, and was about 3 cm thick. Gradually the rations grew smaller. The last month, they were almost nonexistent! Then we also got soup made from fodder beets, with pieces of poor-quality meat or skin floating in it. At first you couldn't eat it. In order to get used to it, you had to "train". Occasionally you'd even find a spud in this "soup". The soup became gradually thinner and more meager. At first they stopped putting spuds into it, and finally also the "meat". They stopped giving us coffee after three months. For Christmas and New Year, instead of that disgusting soup, we got two or three potatoes cooked in their skin, and red cabbage.
We were in Bergen-Belsen from the end of October up until its liberation [15th April 1945 – Editor's note]. It lasted 7 months. Not far from our blockhouse, to the east, was another, empty one. The blockhouses were separated from each other by a fence and gate. Around the third or fourth day after our arrival, a transport of women arrived there. It wasn't until then that we saw what kind of shape people who'd been in concentration camps since 1942 were in. They looked horrible. They were more dead than alive. They were so starved that they ate everything we didn't eat. I have to emphasize that in the beginning we weren't used to such food.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Ladislav Urban