To Dachau

About ten buses then began transporting Danes and Norwegians from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp north of Berlin to Neuengamme outside Hamburg. The rest of us were to start with a long journey to Dachau near Munich. We drove on regular roads to the Berliner Ring, an autobahn encircling Berlin, and from there directly onto the autobahn to Munich.

As evening approached, we left the autobahn and drove into a forest of thick-trunked trees where we were to spend the night. While we checked the vehicles, put up tents, and arranged other necessities, the cooks prepared the main meal of the day. Most of the food consisted of Swedish military rations. The most common were canned meat, and the first time we received it we called it “Canned Meat No. 1.” Now canned meat was on the menu again. As a side note, I might mention that during the wartime meat shortages, meat from fox, badger, squirrel, crow, magpie, gull, and others was used.

It was completely official that the animal carcasses were delivered to slaughterhouses and canneries, where they were checked to ensure they contained no trichinae or other hazards. Most of it went to the canneries, where it was mixed with more common raw materials. That evening’s canned meat tasted good, as usual. The food was eaten straight from the cooking pots in the usual field manner, and once the dishes and other necessary chores were done, everyone crawled into their sleeping bags in the tents and fell asleep immediately, exhausted as they were.