A sigh of relief could have been heard as the prisoners of the concentration camps saw the Allies or the Russians for the first time. In 1945, the Nazi’s empire began to shrink as the world came in and began to free these death camps. The soldiers fled in the night and many were never seen again as the boundaries of the Nazi Empire began to cave in.
As soldiers came into these camps, the pictures that were captured in their minds were ones of death, people holding onto dear life, and starvation. The soldiers came into these camps hoping to find people alive, since they had visited some camps that didn’t have a single prisoner alive. One soldier commented that they had hoped to find at least one camp that had people still alive. The hope was always there, even in the midst of the camps.
The conditions that many of these prisoners endured were worse than inhuman. At the camp of Mittelbau Dora, these survivors were in caves that had little to no ventilation. They didn’t have any toilets or running water so these prisoners were often working in the middle of their waste. These people were forced to stay in these caves for long periods of time and often many died from this exposure and the temperature that often only reached 48 degrees Fahrenheit. Angela Fiedermann, a staff member of this memorial site commented that the people just dropped like flies.
Not only was the exposure bad, but many of these prisoners were only fed a piece of bread and a few potatoes. They were worked so hard that many couldn’t physically go on in this same manner. Their bodies began to eat itself for the need of nutrients and energy. This is another cause for the deaths of so many of these prisoners.
As the Allies and Russians came into these camps, many of these survivors left them alive. As time went on, many died of malnutrition or disease due to the prolonged exposure to starvation and disease. Eva Goldberg describes the scene of the moments following the opening of the gates to Salzwedel. She says that they stormed into the town of Salzwedel and began to eat all kinds of things. Many of the people came down with typhus because of this. Many others were too far gone in malnutrition and there wasn’t anything that could be done for them.
As many of these prisoners ran or walked to find food and shelter, many of them were unable to move because they didn’t have any energy. Bela Braver states that "we were in such a condition that no one moved, no one went out. We did not laugh, we were not happy, we were apathetic." These people didn’t know what to be because of the wear and tear on their bodies. Many of the young survivors said that the only reason that they survived was because their bodies could take a lot of abuse.
The aftermath was in many cases more severe than the actual Holocaust. Many of these people began to lose their minds because of the torment and torture that they endured. One person stated that they didn’t count the amount of dead bodies, they counted the living. This was one attempt to keep their sanity. They also learned how to live for that moment because the next wasn’t guaranteed to them.
As one might imagine, after being exposed to these conditions, a person may lose their sense of worth and their trust in the human race. Eva Goldberg, a survivor of Salzwedel, said that when she saw the first German women after her freedom, she went after her to destroy what she had in her hands. Her hatred was so deep that she just wanted this women to feel what she did.
Although there were many cases like this, there were also ones of victory. The "boys", a group of young men that survived the Holocaust, say in their book that they were lucky and proud that they survived the Nazi Death machine. Many other survivors share the same view of luck and gratitude that they survived the Holocaust. Perhaps one of the greatest stories of liberation is that many of these people didn’t go on the rest of their lives blaming the Nazi’s or the German race, rather, they dealt with it and went on. This is not to say that these people never had problems later.
Once a person is exposed to an event like this, there are scared that
it will last a lifetime. Many of these people were unable to deal with
or cope with what had happened to them or their families and were damaged
for life. Although this was a horrible event, it is encouraging to see
that these people made it through the hardest, most degrading section of
human life.