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On 5 May 1945 we woke up from the roar of shooting in the morning. I stepped out of the barrack. The Germans guard warned me to not approach the fence since he had an order to shoot. The shooting was somewhere near. I lay on the ground to not be shot by stray bullet. All of a sudden the gate of the camp open and camouflage color trucks drove in. I could’t see from afar whose troops these were, but then I saw Negroes in the trucks. American soldiers. All inmates ran out of their barracks hugging and kissing the Americans. It’s horrible to think of how we smelled – we hadn’t washed for a long time before… The Americans gave us meat cans and bread. It didn’t occur to many prisoners that after a long period of hunger they had better not eaten fat food and bread, but they pounced on the food. Few hours later many of them felt ill and even died. But we were free! We were issued certificates of prisoners of a concentration camp indicating that the US army liberated us. I said I was a citizen Czechoslovakia. I thought Hungarians were occupants. In my certificate my name was written as Ladislav in the Czech manner. I had to obtain another certificate confirming that Laszlo Ringel and Ladislav Ringel was one and the same person. The Americans hauled those who were ill to a hospital. The rest of us could do whatever we wanted. Few of us went to Linz. On our way we saw an abandoned vehicle. We got inside – there was no gasoline left. We saw a broken vehicle nearby and a canister of gasoline inside. We took the canister and drove to the town in this vehicle. We told the first patrol on our way that we were liberated from the concentration camp. They took us to former German barracks with other former inmates of concentration camps. This barrack was dirty and overcrowded and we decided to stay in the town. We lodged on the attic in a house where there was only an old woman staying. She was glad to have us. We kept wandering in the town not knowing what to do. I recalled how many people were taken to hospital by Americans and felt like helping these people somehow. I decided to find the hospital and see whether they could employ me there. I visited several hospitals before I got a job in one of them deployed in the former German Air Force School. There were 3-storied barracks where they arranged wards for patients. There were French and Slavic patients in the camp for the most part. They had been taken there from concentration camps. I knew French, Ruthenian, Czech and Slovak. At first I helped the hospital attendants to carry the patients to the reception room and then take them to their wards. I interpreted for the doctor, captain of medical services in the American army. He spoke French and I translated what patients were telling him. He put down their names and home addresses. There were many French, Belgian, Serbs, and Croatians in the hospital from all over Europe. I could understand them all. I made lists of patients for the Red Cross. There were many women. Once, when making another list, I noticed that there were 4 women with the same surname and home address in the hospital. All four had enteric typhus, high fever, all were in poor condition. One was about 50 years old, the others were much younger. We decided they were relatives. Few days later one young woman died and the rest were on their way to recovery. They happened to be the mother and 3 daughters, all came from different camps and didn’t know about each other. I worked there for about 8 months. I aw man7 people with different lives. There was a Polish woman taken to the hospital from a concentration amp. I don’t know how she survived: she was skin and bones. She was in her 9th month of pregnancy and weighed 40 kg, but the baby was born with standard weight, a good strong girl. She was born on 9 May 1945, and chief of the hospital, American, named the girl Victoria in honor of the victory. There was another story: one of the Americans working in the hospital met a girl from a concentration camp and they fell in love with one another. When she recovered they got married. The girl got pregnant. He wrote his parents that he got married and they were going to have a baby. There was a war with Japan going on, and all of a sudden he was sent to Japan. A short time later his wife received a notification on his death. This guy’s parents too her with them to the USA.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Laszlo Ringel