Thessaloniki, 2015
Then they took us to a village called Tröbitz and we stayed in a house, where Germans were living.
I was born on 20 May 1939. I do not have many memories from those years, just a few memories from a family gathered around a table clapping hands and a little girl dancing on the table. I think that is my first memory. From then on, the scenery turns a bit dark, because I never felt the agony of my family when the war broke out, but I can only imagine how my mother would have felt in 1939 with a baby in her arms… It was a very large family. I recently came across a wedding picture in which there was a huge extended family, cousins, nephews none of whom I ever met.
Then, my next images are of trains, I do not know where they were taking us and all of sudden they were bombarding, and there was panic, the train stopped, the doors opened… Then I remember that the Russians liberated us, this I have heard, I do not remember the Russians myself, I do not… I remember one night on the railway tracks and it was dark and on the railway tracks, people were eating, there was a bucket, a bucket made of enamel, yellow with a bouquet of flowers, we had it at home later, how this came about I do not remember, that was full of sugar and doughnuts and people were eating and everyone was throwing up, because they had not eaten in years. And I remember on the railway tracks these things…the darkness, voices, the bucket with sugar. This is all mixed up in my head and then they took us to a village called Tröbitz and we stayed in a house belonging to Germans, which, as I recall, had three floors. The owners lived in the basement.