Tag #157094 - Interview #79440 (Leo Luster)

The camp was surrounded by a very large and very dark forest. You could barely see it was so dark. We walked along a street that went through the woods. All of a sudden we heard the sound of motors in the distance. We thought the SS was coming back and we hid in the woods. We came upon a hill. You couldn’t see us from the street, as it really was very dark.  We saw a motorcade approaching very slowly. I said to my friend, “Listen, these cars don’t look like the cars from the Germans.” They were a bit different. But we weren’t sure. They kept getting closer and we could then clearly see that they weren’t German cars. I learned later they were American trucks. The Russian Army received these cars from the Americans. Now we understood, since we could see there was a large red star on the hood, a Soviet star. They were Russians! We walked out onto the street with our hands up. The first car stopped. A soldier with a fur hat got out. That was the first time I saw a Russian. He wore a fur hat with a Soviet star.

I saw that he was also scared. I didn’t know what to say so I said “Yid, ya. Yid, yid.” (Jew, I. Jew, Jew) He looked at us and said, “ya tozhe yid” (I am also a Jew). It became apparent he was a Jewish officer and could speak Yiddish. Many of the Russian officers were Jewish; they could be used as interpreters. We were therefore able to speak with him. We told him that there was a camp. Then his company occupied and took over the camp. The Russians were very decent. Little by little they brought everyone out and looked after them. We stayed there for two more days. We were given food and the officer told us there was a small settlement near the camp. That’s where the German engineers who had worked in the large factory in Blechhammer had lived. It was about one kilometer away from the camp. My friends and I went there and just set ourselves up in a villa. There was everything there, since the Germans had left everything and ran away. There was food being stored in the basement: preserved meat, vegetables, and fruit. Everything was there except for bread. There also wasn’t any water or dishes. We went from one house to another and took dishes. Whatever was dirty was thrown out the window. That was really valuable porcelain, but we had no relation to that stuff anymore. We got water from melting the snow. Some of our friends got diarrhea; that was dangerous.