My year in hell.
April 25 1945. It has been a while since I last wrote. I wasn’t able to. After being moved into a Ghetto and living there for 2 years I was transported to a workcamp. The workcamp was the most horrible experience imaginable. Every day was a living hell but most days I didn’t even feel alive. The workcamp was called Bergen-Belsen. The first couple of days was so horrible, dead bodies everywhere, starving kids, the smells. Some of them had been there for years. After a while I just felt numb. I didn’t even see the difference between alive and dead. Sometimes I had to transport dead bodies and I didn’t even feel sad for them because it just felt so normal there. Even the nights were horrible. We slept in tiny beds and most of the time we had to share beds. The first month I found a friend. He had been there for a year. Even though he was so skinny and weak he seemed happy. He was always joking and made every day a little easier. His name was Kalle. One day we had to stand on a line with our shirts off. The soldiers walk next to us. I was so scared, Kalle had told me that they kill the ones who look too thin and weak, because then they couldn’t work. They walked past me and I breathed out. Then they walked next to Kalle and said something that I didn’t manage to hear to each other. I looked at Kalle and then they shot him right in front of me. I gasped but in that moment I decided that I am going to survive this. I couldn’t let them win. I was going to fight to make it out.
And now I’m out! The British soldiers walked into the camp April 15, ten days ago. They saved us all. The offered us food. I tried to stop myself from eating too much. I could imagine that it was bad to go from nothing to everything in a moment. I told my friends but many people could not hold them self.
I am now 56 years old. I don’t know what I am going to do now. It feels like the last 25 years is a dark cloud and when I walked out I got nothing and no one. I tried to imagine my life before but I barely remember anything. I remember my good friend Lilly Bentzen but I don’t even know if she’s alive or dead. I feel alone and lost. Can I move on from this?